Marvel Super Heroes is the biggest crossover yet under the Universes Beyond banner… not only in terms of hype, but in the sheer number of beloved and awesome characters making their first appearance on Magic cards! From Earth’s Mightiest Heroes down to some of the deep cuts and cult classics of the Marvel roster, there’s a good chance your favorite hero is ready to sleeve up and build a deck around.
But the most beloved comic books rarely revolve around just one hero, especially in Marvel. The Avengers. X-Men. The Fantastic Four. The Guardians of the Galaxy. Heroes for Hire. Thunderbolts.
Can clever brewing replicate the unique chemistry of these famous super-teams in Magic form? Let’s find out.
THE AVENGERS
As Earth’s best-known and most celebrated superheroes, the Avengers are more or less the centrepiece of Marvel Super Heroes. In fact, Wizards of the Coast already understood the demand for an Avengers-themed deck, and made it one of the set’s tie-in Commander precon decks!
I’ve already reviewed the Avengers Assemble precon on this blog, including recommendations on how to upgrade it out of the box. If you’re looking for a quick and easy path to building your Avengers deck, go ahead and check that guide out!
That said, the Avengers name has accrued a sprawling legacy over the decades, with countless different lineups as heroes come and go from the group. The Avengers Assemble precon (and the cards for most of the “core Avengers”, like Captain America) focus on buffing Hero-type creatures and utilizing +1/+1 counters. It’s not hard to find other cards featuring Avengers alumni who would work well with these themes, allowing you to tweak the deck and make it your own..
The other good route I can see for building a unique Avengers list is to use Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the commander. This Nick Fury counts as a five-color commander due to his power-up ability. There are a lot of other strong cards with this mechanic in Marvel Super Heroes, and some of the most powerful ones happen to be certified Avengers.
To really support this theme, we want to look for any cards which directly interact with or enhance the power-up mechanic.
Quinjet Technician, Advancing the Spirit and Hulk, Gamma Goliath help pay the power-up activation costs. Wonder Man, Hollywood Hero and Shang-Chi, Martial Mentor amplify the benefits. She-Hulk, Attorney-at-Law and Goliath, Mass Manipulator kick in a late bonus for having powered up our other heroes.
While the high activation costs mean we won’t always be able to get the most out of any one power-up card, having so many in the deck will make sure this version of the Avengers is always doing something powerful!
THE RUNAWAYS
Our second super-team are about as different from the Avengers as can be. Rather than a massive global volunteer network of legendary superheroes, the Runaways are just some L.A. teenagers who rebelled against their villainous parents.
They may not have the same manpower or firepower as their famous counterparts, but the core lineup of Runaways still made it into Marvel Super Heroes through the supplementary Jumpstart set.
The Runaways are all castable with red mana (although not all of them have pure red color identity) and care about using your cards from the exile zone. That’s some awesome flavor for a group who are themselves in self-imposed exile from their families, and we can keep following that theme to find other cards that might fill out a full-sized Runaways deck.
Pick Up the Pace, Stick, Fearless Mentor, Heroes’ Hangout, Daredevil, Fearless Fighter, Asgardian Inspiration, Hex Magic, Blazing Crescendo, and Wanda’s Vision are just some of the other ways to play cards from exile in this set. I also like that none of them break from the mostly-red color scheme or the lower-power, street-level feeling of our Runaways cards.
Maybe the best card matching these criteria is Heroes for Hire, which (along with cards of associated heroes like Luke Cage and Iron Fist) specifically use Treasure tokens as a power source to play cards from exile. This option gives you the most control over when to play from exile, and also lets you include a ton of powerful treasure-generating cards as additional play-from-exile effects.
What card you choose as your commander will likely come down to a question of color access. Karolina Dean is the only choice which lets you play all the Runaways together, since her five-color identity makes her incompatible with any of her teammates as commander. Nico Minoru is probably the most powerful and dynamic option if you don’t mind losing access to Karolina (or Gert and Old Lace), but with so few members in the team to begin with I would prioritize fitting all of them in.
YOUNG AVENGERS
Assembled by a younger, more idealistic version of time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror, the Young Avengers are another up-and-coming hero group. Despite their wildly varying origins and power levels, they show some very effective teamwork!
In their Jumpstart booster pack, all the YA’s have their abilities turned on by casting a noncreature spell before combat. The exception is Iron Lad, who enables the rest of the team by making noncreature spells cheaper to cast.
In a nice touch for those looking to fill out an entire Young Avengers deck, Marvel Super Heroes also includes additional versions of Stature, Hulkling, Wiccan and Patriot, as well as Kid Loki, Marvel Boy, and (Lady) Hawkeye’s Bow. These additional cards are not as tightly themed as the Jumpstart ones, although they can definitely still work together in a YA-themed deck.
If you’re interested in extending the creature-plus-non-creature synergy through the rest of the deck, those mechanics are decently supported by some heroes who have been associated with the Young Avengers, such as The Scarlet Witch, The Vision, and Monica Rambeau. But you could also team them up with…
THE FANTASTIC FOUR (AND FRIENDS)
Marvel’s “First Family” were the other superhero team besides The Avengers to be granted their own Commander precon deck with this set. We’ve also got a precon review and upgrade guide for that one, so I won’t go into much detail on it here. But it is very relevant to note that – like the Young Avengers – the mechanical theme is creatures benefiting from noncreature spells.
That means that the YA’s will work great if you slot them into the Fantastic Four deck; likewise, borrowing cards from the Fantastic precon will be the easiest way to fill the slots of a Young Avengers brew.
My first choice to include would be the Inhumans, led by Black Bolt and Medusa. You can also find a few more Inhumans (such as Ms. Marvel and Quake) outside that precon who will fit the theme.
Any mixture of these superteams will feel very smooth, so once again there’s plenty of room to pick your favorites while keeping the deck synergistic. All three have some kind of connection to the alien Kree and Skrull empires, so perhaps we have them to thank?
THE COMBINATIONS ARE ENDLESS
The range of superteams to recreate from across Marvel history is truly enormous, considering nearly every hero has cycled through several in their history. Even with the ambitious scope of Marvel Super Heroes, not all of them could fit into a single set.
The most prominent omission is surely the X-Men, who only got a few cards devoted to their most prominent members. But anyone hoping to build a full, themed deck featuring Charles Xavier’s proteges will have to be patient until they get their own signature Universes Beyond release. Same goes for the Guardians of the Galaxy and other space-faring heroes like the Nova Force.
But their time will surely come soon. For now, I’m glad that Marvel Super Heroes is more than just “the Avengers set”.
Tom’s fate was sealed in 7th grade when his friend lent him a pile of commons to play Magic. He quickly picked up Boros and Orzhov decks in Ravnica block and has remained a staunch white magician ever since. A fan of all Constructed formats, he enjoys studying the history of the tournament meta. He specializes in midrange decks, especially Death & Taxes and Martyr Proc. One day, he swears he will win an MCQ with Evershrike. Ask him how at @AWanderingBard, or watch him stream Magic at twitch.tv/TheWanderingBard.