Marvel’s Super Heroes Avengers Assemble Commander Deck Upgrade Guide

“You think you’re the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you’ve become part of a bigger universe; you just don’t know it yet.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D..”

“Oh.”

“I’m here to talk to you about Universes Beyond… uh, I mean the Avengers Initiative.”

That’s right, it’s finally time: after many months of anticipation and sneak previews, fans of Magic and Marvel Comics alike finally get a full look at the precon we’ve all been waiting for! 

Nick Fury’s been working way harder than anyone anticipated, and this time the Avengers Initiative has a much higher headcount than its early cinematic outings. We’re talking Endgame numbers here: 99 of Earth’s mightiest cards in the main deck, led by the ultimate team player and moral compass: Captain America.

MEET THE COMMANDERS

Normally, I’d give a little more detail on the character and lore of the deck’s commander here – but I figure for most people who’ve been living in the superhero-saturated pop culture zeitgeist of the past 15 years, Cap needs no introduction. For those who would like to know more, I can recommend a few decades of background reading, plus a handful of modestly successful movies.

That said, we still need to talk about Captain America the Magic card, and what he does for this precon. Obviously Steve Rogers is rocking the red, white and blue mana cost (USA! USA!) giving our deck a Jeskai color identity. Captain America does actually feel like a good match for Jeskai philosophically, which is cool EVEN IF it means none of the Hulk cards in this deck can be green. We’ll call that a heroic sacrifice.

Cap’s card design also feels very fitting for the character. He’s decently-sized (for a human) but not excessively big at 3/3, and his ability adds some simple but meaningful value whenever another hero joins him on the battlefield. This makes him work best as the first creature you play each game: an exemplary vanguard leading his Avengers from the front. Making his allies stronger also makes him stronger, helping him grow from relatively humble origins into a legitimate win condition on his own. But even if Cap goes down, his empowered allies are sure to finish the job he started.

I’ve seen some haters underestimating the impact of this card online, but let me assure you that free vigilance and haste on all your creatures is a huge upgrade for any combat-centric deck. Even adding a +1/+1 counter is much more significant than it first appears: there are other effects in the deck which play off of those counters: proliferating them, scaling off your heroes’ improved stats, or buffing any creatures that are “modified” (which that single counter from Cap automatically qualifies them for).

I do love that every hero has their own subtle ways of synergizing with these effects, and that overall the mechanical themes of this precon feel more subtle than the average deck. Each Avenger’s card feels like it’s focused very much on that character’s own legend and abilities, with Cap’s leadership (and +1/+1 counters) helping to tie them together as a team. Stack enough of these heroes on the battlefield together, and their overlapping strengths will overpower any threat humanity might face!

In that case, maybe the biggest hero of all is the man who worked to put this invincible team together? There’s no way you could leave Nick Fury out of an Avengers Assemble deck – and since he and Cap share the same color identity, you can easily swap their places and play Nick as your commander.

Much like Captain America, you’ll want to get Director Fury on the field to start basically every game. But while Steve Rogers is a frontline threat who makes allies stronger, Nick Fury prefers to lead from the shadows and focus on hero recruitment. You’ll notice that his draw ability triggers whenever “you attack”, not “Nick attacks”!

This is sweet from a strategic perspective because it means you’re in very little danger of losing your commander in combat and having to re-cast him to benefit from his bonus mana and card selection. With so many other mighty Avengers prepared to dish out the pain, a non-threatening commander doesn’t seem like a big drawback: you’re much more likely to win with conventional beatdown than commander damage even if you do stick with Captain America in the command zone.

Ultimately these two legends serve a similar role in your gameplan, so the choice of which to start in your command zone or your deck comes down to personal taste. Just be aware these are your only two valid choices from within the precon list: every other Avenger is missing at least one of those colors, and dropping any of the three from our identity would require us to cut lots of Avengers cards just to become a legal deck again.

THE SUM OF MIGHTY PARTS

In some ways I find it quite exciting to have a Commander precon that takes a “good cards first” deckbuilding philosophy, instead of every card being obviously picked to fit a single line of synergy. The Avengers Assemble decklist really feels like an all-star team in most sports: unique individual capabilities all round, but with limited ability to coordinate their moves as part of a cohesive strategy.

There are some strategic benefits to this kind of deck as well. You’re much more resilient and flexible in the lines you play each game, as there’s no critical piece your opponents can target to derail your plan. 

Even Cap (or Nick, if he’s your commander) is more of a “nice to have” than a true essential, which gives you freedom to adapt your early game sequencing when the gamestate calls for it. While they do help you get Avengers into play or into combat a little faster, you don’t need them to simply curve out all the way from Patriot or The Wasp up to Professor Hulk and Captain Marvel.

Those heroes on their own are already a potent force in combat. But we’re happy to multiply that force by suiting them up with Gift of Immortality or Hulkbuster Armor. Just because we aren’t going all-in on synergy doesn’t mean we can’t have cards that work well together! We just want to make sure we’re using equipment that will measure up against an Avengers-level threat.

LEGENDARY TEAM-UP

There is one clear exception to our “not doing themes” approach here. All but one creature in our deck is legendary, and all but two have the hero creature type. This makes cards which buff either legendaries or a particular creature type extremely consistent, and some of the best overall support for our army.

The main reason to try and avoid synergy-dependent cards is to minimize any “worst-case scenario” where those synergies aren’t online. But so long as we keep this all-hero creature lineup, that basically cannot happen. The only way for us to not get benefits from these effects is if we have no creatures at all – which is a problem shared by any creature-supporting card without an alternate mode.

Kindred Discovery, Raise the Palisade, Folk Hero, Avengers Tower, Avengers Quinjet, and Plaza of Heroes are all super-effective backup for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. So is Jarvis, Earth’s Mightiest Butler – even though he’s not counted as a hero himself! C’mon, they gave the benefit of the doubt to Director Fury… poor guy.

NEW CARD REVIEW

Unique printings are an important part of every Commadner precon review. There’s a huge swathe of awesome new cards for all the heroes in Avengers Assemble, even for characters who were already featured in the main Marvel Super Heroes set. Then there’s all-new Marvel themed art for the reprints… 

Sadly, it’s all too much to cover in the confines of this article. But we can still cover some of the highlights! 

Firebird, Blazing Ranger

I can’t say I’m too familiar with Firebird’s canonical role in the Avengers, but in Avengers Assemble she’s one of the highest-impact finishers we’ve got! She can multiply the benefits of single-target buffs like Hulkbuster Armor across our ENTIRE team without any conditions or extra costs. 

Firebird’s modest casting cost, decent toughness and flying are perfect survival tools: by the time we want to play her (hopefully with a haste buff from Cap!) there should be mana left over to protect her with Arcane Denial or Heroic Sacrifice on the same turn.

West Coast Expansion

No matter how many Avengers they made cards for in this deck, there was just no way we were going to have room for every hero to ever cameo with the organization. That didn’t stop the designers from sneaking in a few more wherever they could – West Coast Expansion celebrates one of the regional sub-teams and its… shall we say under-appreciated superhero members. 

X-cost draw spells at sorcery often feel like too big a risk for me in multiplayer games. They’re a magnet for enemy counterspells, and even when they resolve you’ve usually just tapped out on your turn while also announcing yourself as a massive threat if you survive til next turn. But so long as you cast this for five or more, you’re effectively getting the card draw as a free bonus on top of a creature you’d normally be playing for turn. Your opponents will probably still try and target you – but good luck with that if you just cheated Captain Marvel into play!

Black Widow, Agile Avenger

Black Widow isn’t a super flashy or dominant force on the battlefield, but she will definitely annoy your opponents and if she lives, alter the outcome of your games. Seems like a perfect fit for Natasha Romanoff! She’ll be effective in almost any multiplayer scenario, but I see her being most impactful for red-white decks that don’t have access to blue card draw – including as a commander choice herself.

I only see one reason to hold back the hype for this card. A 2/2 body for three mana is quite risky, especially when Commander players have learned to respect and fear this kind of passive scaling/card draw. But white should have a lot of efficient ways to keep Agent Romanoff safe from targeted removal – and if you can do that, she’ll swiftly be earning back any cards spent in her defense.

Hawkeye, Avenging Archer

Like most of our heroes, Hawkeye starts out strong but really shines with any extra keywords and stats the Avengers Initiative can supply to him. When the opponent’s creatures are weaker he can bully them by turning any chump block into free cards, and if they’re stronger he can hang back before tapping to get a one-damage “assist” on the unlucky creatures trying to block Shang-Chi or She-Hulk.

However, this is another card which arguably has the most potential as the leader of its own Commander deck, or at least in a deck dedicated to abusing these kinds of indirect-damage abilities. There’s a lot of niche tech you can exploit to make Hawkeye an absolute killing machine (and thus card-draw machine): giving him deathtouch, ways to repeatedly untap and reuse him, even effects like Chandra’s Ignition which let him sweep the whole board and draw you cards! 

Photon, Mighty Marvel

Photon is definitely just a role-player in the Avengers Assemble gameplan, although she is very strong if you’re able to play her right after your commander and accelerate out the rest of your opening hand. The main reason she caught my eye is that I’ve become a real connoisseur of red’s many options for generating bonus resources through combat – a theme I’ve described on this blog as “war economy”. 

Photon’s effect is arguably the most valuable thing you can have in a war-economy deck, generating most of the mana you need to chain-cast “additional combat” spells and snowball the game in your favor. She’s no Neheb the Eternal or Reaver Cleaver, but she’s probably just behind them in terms of her ceiling – and that’s more than good enough to see play.

$50 “UPGRADE GUIDE”

Deciding how to approach upgrading this deck is going to be very personal for everyone who owns it. Like the Doctor Who and Warhammer 40,000 precons before it, these Marvel Super Heroes decks are decked out with 100% Marvel-themed art. 

Some readers may prefer to just run the deck as-is to preserve that theme; I’m sure others won’t even think twice about it. Even if you are happy to mix in non-Marvel cards to improve this deck, the loose gameplan and underlying typal theme make choosing budget upgrades surprisingly tricky. 

Turns out $50 isn’t really enough to pivot away from the current legendary-heroes theme. Having near-total consistency with those types in the stock list is a big chunk of its power, and having to dilute that by a card negates most of the benefit you’d get from upgrading to some stronger, non-hero creature.

This is why in all seriousness, I think the best way to spend $50 upgrading Avengers Assemble is to buy a single copy of Roaming Throne, replace the Hero’s Blade from the precon decklist, and call it a day!

Roaming Throne has that hefty price tag for a reason. It’s an incredibly effective addition to any Commander deck with a typal theme, including Avengers Assemble. The Throne doesn’t just make our heroes better, it makes them better in a fun way by letting them do twice as much stuff. It’s certainly going to have $50 worth of impact whenever we draw it, and a one-card upgrade plan will cause minimal disruption to our mechanical and aesthetic themes.

ALTERNATE TIMELINE UPGRADE GUIDE

Now, some of you may baulk at the idea of a single $50 card “upgrade guide” – what other options do we have in that case? There ARE other hero cards available, both in Marvel Super Heroes and Spider-Man, but the power level of Commander compared to Standard means that only the strongest rares (and other Commander deck printings) are really worth consideration. 

I’m specifically looking heroes who offer effects that Avengers Assemble feels light on, like card draw or defensive interaction. Ideally they also contribute to our hero and modified creature synergies too, along with having reasonably low mana value. 

My shortlist is:

• Captain America, Wings of Freedom
• Captain America, Super-Soldier
• Araña, Heart of the Spider
• Hyperion, Supreme Hero
• Spectacular Spider-Man
• The Wondrous Wasp
• King T’Challa

Those total about $50 at current preorder prices, so you could choose to bring those in and replace whichever Avengers have least impressed you during your initial games with the precon.

Finally, I want to give a special mention to Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. When this set was first announced my expectation was that this Avengers precon would end up with a five-color identity, the better to capture the feeling of all Earth’s heroes teaming up! 

You can’t put Nick Fury, Agent of Shield in this deck due to his WUBRG ability cost. But you COULD make this version of Nick your new commander, thus achieving five-color identity and gaining access to heroes like Cloak and Dagger, Entwined or Deadpool, Trading Card. The only hurdle is you’ll likely need to redo the manabase, and multicolor lands don’t always come cheap. But hey – if organizing the world’s heroes into an effective fighting force was cheap and easy, everyone would do it.

HEROIC INTERVENTION

I’m always a little more excited than usual for these all-new-art-all-in-theme Commander products: they show Universes Beyond in its most committed and coolest light. Even if you’re not a huge Marvel fan, the sheer spectacle of seeing all these cards with similar artwork and style has got to feel cool.

As to the actual heroes of Avengers Assemble themselves: I was initially a bit let down. Both default commanders overlap significantly in their cost and role, and I was surprised by the near complete lack of wincons and combos among them. But like the deck and its gameplan in general, I’ve felt like I’m finally beginning to understand it properly – and my enjoyment of Avengers Assemble has taken off as a result.