Doctor Strange: Gestalt Rules Reference Deck

Aight, so this is an extended post explaining both this bizarre and probably terrible Dr. Strange deck, and the utterly weird and wonderful house rule known as gestalt (which Dr. Strange is banned from, hence the location). The sections of the post are mutually exclusive, so feel free to ignore either shenanigans.

SECTION I: THE WINTER SOLDIER IS A GHOST STORY There's an imprint of Marvel Comics, or rather a storyline which I'm rather rudely assuming you haven't read, called Secret Warps, in which there exists a variant Winter Soldier known as Bucky Wong (a fusion of James Buchanan Barnes and Wong) who accompanies a variant Captain America, the Soldier Supreme, also known as Stephen Strange (a fusion Steve Rogers and Dr. Strange). This deck is meant to emulate that twist without dipping into homebrew (though there is a homebrew Soldier Supreme deck out there).

This is a Dr. Strange aggression build, and I'm sure it will be fundamentally similar to a number of Dr. Strange aggression builds out there, which in the interest of fairness I haven't read. It centers roughly around two ideals, transforming Wong into a mean, lean combat machine (which a Leadership deck would work better for, but give me a break, I'm trying out an idea here! Besides for which you can run this deck alongside a Leadership buffer, and you probably should) and transforming The Sorcerer Supreme into a bona fide Soldier. Probably won't work, but here goes!

Post-build notes: Well, that could've gone better but I'm kind of happy with it, all things considered. It's a thicker deck than normal (full 50 cards) but I consider that part of the charm. The trick here is to use Battle Fury and Earth's Mightiest Heroes to ready Dr. Strange additional times, which allows for three invocation uses on a friendly turn, and the former is in turn triggered by two attack events and one attack upgrade, for a total of nine in the deck. If you feel this is too expensive, maybe switch out a TBE or two for a Mansion or Helicarrier? Don't look at me, this is my first deck and I'm probably screwing it up.

Anyhoo, on to the next section!

SECTION II: THE EXPLANATORY PROVISIONS OF GESTALT My family has a house rule called gestalt, which is designed to make cool heroes even more broken. Choose two identities. Take the higher value of their REC, THW, ATK, DEF, hit points, and hand size (Iron Man keeps his hand size of one, and Hulk still drops his hand at the end of the phase). You count as being both of your identities and having both of their traits for the purposes of triggering hero abilities and for the purpose of resolving encounter cards; add both your obligations to the encounter deck. Your deck has a lower bound of fifty-five cards and an upper bound of sixty-five cards; thirty of these cards must be the hero cards of both your chosen identities. For the remainder, you may choose two aspects for deck-building, which do not have to be of equal number. I'm not saying this is balanced, this is designed to be broken. Counter with tougher scenarios and modular sets. Now, when you resolve Shadow of the Past - and this is the main counter-balancing factor - you add both of your nemesis sets to the encounter deck and put both of your nemesis minions and side schemes into play. And that's all the details I've got left. Nuff said.