The Giving Tree

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
The Giving Tree (fan) 1 0 0 1.0
Defensive Groot 0 0 0 1.0
Groot Protect 0 0 0 1.0
The Giving Tree by unrat 0 0 0 1.0
The Giving Tree by Unrat (groot dev) 1 1 0 2.0
Eu sou o Groot, você não é o Groot 0 0 0 3.0
The Groot Tank 5 3 4 1.0
Groot - Trevor's Brew - "Press The Button" 0 1 0 1.0
Groot Protection 2 0 1 1.0
A Pedro le crece la rama 0 0 0 1.0

dr00 · 39715

<I am groot I 'am groot' I am, groot, I, am, groot, I am groot I am 'groot I am groot,...>*

the_giving_tree

*Translated from groot

The Giving Tree

Many multiplayer games include a 'holy trinity' of classes, tank, support, and dps, along with the mantra: 'If the tank dies, it's the healer's fault. If the healer dies, it's the tank's fault. And if the dps dies, it's their own damn fault!' For most multiplayer games of Champions, I find myself generally building self-sufficient decks, and I see that most of the community follows this strategy as well. I am here to buck that trend with a full tank/support build for Champions that excels in multiplayer. This is not a solo deck, but can work in 2-4 player by focusing all your attention on allowing other heroes and their decks to work at their fullest potential.

The Tank

Groot's 3 DEF is powerful for allowing him to 'defend and take no damage. This is supplemented by Groot's amazing ability in Flora Colossus. Included in the deck is Armored Vest to bring his DEF 4. Additionally, there are 3 copies each of Desperate Defense and Never Back Down, increase his DEF by another 2 and reward you for taking no damage (more on that later). And finally, Groot has his own Fruition to help refill his counters. In a ping, Root Stomp can be used as well. All of these combine together to allow Groot repeated blocks while staying healthy.

The Support

Defending for your fellow heroes is one thing. Defending while getting rewarded for it is another. There are four cards in the deck that reward you when you defend and take no damage: Desperate Defense, Never Back Down, Hard to Ignore, and Unflappable. Play Desperate Defense or Never Back Down, defend while taking no damage, draw a card with Unflappable, remove threat off the main scheme with Hard to Ignore, and either ready or stun the attacking enemy. Rinse and repeat until you've won.

The above cards are either events or only work once per turn, but there are a few additional support options if you choose to defend multiple times per turn. Dauntless pings enemies every time you are attacked (if you can stay at 10 or more hitpoints), and Electrostatic Armor pings every time you defend, even if you take damage.

The supporting doesn't stop there. Groot has his own "We Are Groot", as well as Get Behind Me!, The Night Nurse, Down Time, and Endurance.

  • "We Are Groot" is valuable to further protect your fellow heroes. It is also the perfect card to play just before swapping quickly to alter-ego to refill on growth counters.
  • Get Behind Me! is perfect for stopping things like Shadow of the Past, Advance, and other nasty treacheries depending on the scenario.
  • The Night Nurse can help cleanse other heroes from being stunned or confuse. You won't need to worry about using it on yourself that much as you won't be attacking or thwarting that often, but occasionally you will want to play "I am Groot" or "I. AM. GROOT!" if you have a big stack of growth counters.
  • Down Time and Endurance are to be played under other the control of other heroes. It further helps keep them healthy and also keeps your deck thin. Generally, don't really play them for yourself as they aren't typically needed.

The Economy

The deck's economy is very low-cost, having only 8 cards, 20%, costing 2 or higher. For this reason, the usual staples of Energy, Genius, Strength, and The Power of Protection are absent, and a few other key cards have been included to help fuel the economy.

  • Assess the Situation allows you to get the most out of your hands each turn, either being usable as a resource or playable to draw additional cards on the next turn.
  • Fertile Ground draws additional cards and provides extra tokens. Although you won't flip often, it is a helpful for accelerating your gameplan when you do. Additionally, it can help refill more counters after an ill-timed Wilt.
  • Deft Focus helps make Groot's superpower cards cheaper. Not many of them are a priority, but it does allow you to cheaply play Entangling Vines, Lashing Vines, Vine Shield, and Vine Spikes. Even if you don't use them, they will help by thinning your deck.
  • Nerves of Steel may seem a bit out of place in a deck with only 6 defense events, but you will find that you draw through your deck quite quickly, so it definitely gives a return on investment.
  • Unflappable has two copies because it is so central to the deck running smoothly. It will trigger nearly every turn due to Flora Colossus, even early in the game before you have set up.

Customising Your On Your Own

There are quite a few options available depending on player count, what other heroes are the table, and tailoring for specific encounters.

  • Flora and Fauna is incredible if there's a Rocket Racoon on the board. You can gain some more growth counters and attack or flip and recover, or you can refill ammo on one of Rocket's weapons and allow him to fire it again.
  • Endurance will greatly depend on which heroes accompany you and how many heroes there are. In general, i like to have x-1 Endurance, where x=number of heroes. The reason for this is that Groot typically doesn't want it himself. So with a playset of three, you can give every other hero +3 hitpoints and a free heal. It's also very helpful for an expert campaign to keep everyone topped off from one scenario to the next.
  • Now that Venom is on the site, Crew Quarters is a wonderful replacement for Down Time which serves a similar purpose but is a bit easier to use (and sharable if multiple identities happen to be in alter-ego). Definitely give this one a try!
  • Med Team can be used in lieu of or in addition to Down Time and Endurance to help keep everyone healthy. It has the added benefit of healing allies as well, but the cost is higher than most other cards, so it might be a difficult spend. If you find that difficult, but really want the healing, First Aid is another perfectly viable alternative.
  • Indomitable isn't included here, but it can be quite useful. I occasionally use one copy as a way to help Groot ready if Unflappable draws him a Desperate Defense or Never Back Down. It's not in the main build because you can use Lashing Vines in a pinch.
  • Preemptive Strike can be helpful for pulling even more attacks to you. On low-ATK villains like The Collector, it can be a useful strategy that won't waste that many growth tokens. It will also give your more mileage out of Nerves of Steel.
  • If threat is a major concern, Bait and Switch can help supplement dealing with it, but I generally find that Hard to Ignore is enough. Neither one can deal with side schemes or crisis icons anyway.
  • If you want to flip more often, you can include some allies to help block for you, like Clea, Iron Fist, Ironheart, Mockingbird, or Multiple Man.

The Final Word

I'd like to remind again that this is not a solo deck. It struggles with side schemes and dealing meaningful damage to minions. It also moves at a glacier's pace for taking down the villain. but in a multiplayer setting, you can help keep your team alive so that they can do their job, dealing with side schemes, minions, and helping to defeat the villain.

This deck was honestly a blast to put together, and for me, it's incredibly fun to play as well. I've played it through many scenarios with varying player counts, and it feels satisfying to support my fellow players so that they can have incredibly impactful turns, keeping all of their items, being free of statuses, and staying healthy. Play this if you want to be the solid oak that others can lean on. Sometimes it's a thankless job, but hopefully your team will appreciate you, The Giving Tree.

26 comments

Jul 13, 2021 Onions · 79

Finally, some love for classic Protection! Protection is my favorite aspect because you can just sit there and laugh at the villains attempts to deal damage to your group. I never understood the hate.

Jul 13, 2021 DoctorWhomst · 390

@Onions I think the biggest knock on Protection is that it doesn't help you win, because most of the time you'll spend your resources and actions on defense, and not have anything to attack or thwart with.

Green doesn't have many good attack events, so you wind up behind on damage even if you're not taking much, and even if you've got some decent damage in your hand, you're behind on threat, forcing you to thwart instead.

I say all of this in spite of the fact I enjoy playing Protection, at least in multiplayer, but even then it doesn't really help unless you're helping the other players.

Jul 14, 2021 rstorcdk · 4738

Good deck. One of my friends played it a few hours ago in our 3 man Mutagen formula on expert. He defended for us (Rocket & Venom) a lot of times and his growth counters were on the high end throughout the game. On the villain's turn he consitently removed 3 threat with the triple Hard to Ignore and drew a card. He seemed to have a great time with it and we had so much freedom to play upgrades and do our thing. Smoothest Green Goblin kill we ever had.

Jul 14, 2021 Zacharuni · 355

Made a deck just like this recently but I love your idea of dropping the double resource cards. Thanks for the write up!

Jul 15, 2021 dr00 · 39715

@Onions yeah! i love it too! also don't understand it.

@DoctorWhomst i think justice is in the same boat tbh. it focuses on threat, so you don't lose. protection focuses on staying alive and not losing. also thinking about it, i was initially going to point out that Fighting Fit really changes things up, but honestly they've had some pretty interesting ways to deal damage, like Preemptive Strike, Energy Barrier, and Momentum Shift. imo, its biggest problem was dealing with threat, and i think Hard to Ignore helps a lot with that, even though it's main scheme only. it's not very bursty, but thankfully there's also Bait and Switch, and Ever Vigilant helps aerial heroes. i do agree though, it's pretty much one of the best in multiplayer and in spite of all of these new tools, still struggles a bit solo.

@rstorcdk that's so awesome! sounds like your friend played it to perfection then. thanks for sharing that <3

@Zacharuni yeah, there were so few targets for it, and i honestly didn't play them very often anyway, or i'd get a discount with Deft Focus. Assess the Situation fills the gap really well to help smooth things out though. thanks for having a look, and thanks for the comment!

Jul 15, 2021 KennedyHawk · 17279

Played several games with this deck in 2-players. It was quite a blast. I've always liked playing healers and supports in MMOs so this was just up my alley.

Jul 17, 2021 stephenfurmanek · 13

This is almost identical to my Groot deck we used for GMW expert campaign. The only downside is if your team gets so used to you defending for them if you ever need to spin back down to restore your counters it can be a rude awakening.

With Venom's release you can also hand out Crew Quarters instead of downtime.

Jul 17, 2021 dr00 · 39715

@KennedyHawk so great to hear! and same.

@stephenfurmanek yep, i was just about to come here and post that Crew Quarters can largely replace Down Time. as for flipping down, "We Are Groot" really helps for allowing safe transitions, and that's why Endurance and (from now on) Crew Quarters will help keep everyone topped off. i think if you really need the extra help, as i said, there are a few decent allies like Clea and Multiple Man that can fill the gaps as well.

Dec 07, 2021 Graceclaw · 27

Just introduced my friend to the game - she wanted to play Groot first, so I queued up this deck for her and played Justice Wasp. She really enjoyed it despite it being a bit slow and a TON of reading for a new player, and she ended at 13 hp and 10 growth counters and got to finish the villain with a max damage I.AM.GROOT :) The picture perfect multi-player Groot deck!

Dec 07, 2021 dr00 · 39715

@Graceclaw that's so great to hear! glad she enjoyed it :D

who is she wanting to play next?

Sep 16, 2022 SubTric · 21

This has rapidly become my favourite deck to play in the whole game. I typically play 3-player with my boys, who have found their sweet spot favourites to be Venom (Aggression) and Spider-Man [Mile Morales] (Justice). This deck lets me sit back support their 'high damage' and 'very high thwart' strategies without them being hampered.

Those extra turns that this deck buys those other IDs in hero form without needing to flip is huge and we find that as a group is just makes the game flow better than ever. Plus, Groot can still dish out some hefty damage when he needs to.

After quite a few games I've made very little changes to this deck, which my kids are now simply calling 'The Groot Tank': -1 Get Behind Me, -1 Down Time, +2 Crew Quarters. I've considered putting the 1x Get Behind Me back in and running at 41 cards, but so far this works! Aside that, this is highly consistent deck that has made our games of MC more enjoyable as ever.

Thanks!

Sep 16, 2022 dr00 · 39715

@SubTric hey that's so great! i'm glad you're enjoying it. i've thought about revisiting this deck to update it. there are a few more cards you can give to other players, but more importantly, there's Forcefield Generator, which lets you preserve growth counters, and Symbiote Suit, which gives you a massive health total to work with. Also Flow Like Water will get lots of triggers along with Electrostatic Armor and Dauntless.

I agree that Crew Quarters is a good replacement for Down Time, especially since you can play it under anyone's control, and it can potentially help heal other players. there are a few other sharable upgrades that have come out since that are also really good, like Plan B and Ready to Rumble

Get Behind Me! is probably scenario-dependent (or if you just reeeeaally don't want Shadow of the Past to trigger lol)

Sep 16, 2022 SubTric · 21

@dr00 Forcefield Generator is probably a good call, though the pain of dropping something else is already kicking in :)

Symbiotic Suit scares me. My kid with the Miles deck used it for a while but the extra encounter card for the whole game ended up hurting more than anything else, especially when you're not the first player. Flow Like Water is a good call, and it is actually something I tried, but I had attempted to keep as many 3-cost cards out as possible. Maybe finding space for 1 of them would be good!

Sep 16, 2022 SubTric · 21

Ooops, Flow Like Water is actually a 2-cost card (it's Forcefield Generator that's a 3). I might just give it a whirl this evening!

Sep 17, 2022 dr00 · 39715

@SubTric good luck! i need to do some testing as well. and yeah, one of the things i love about this deck is it's basically just all 1-cost stuff

Sep 17, 2022 SubTric · 21

@dr00 we had a hefty marathon and smashed through three games. Forcefield Generator was okay game one, but the three cost really hurt the deck set up, so it's gone as even without it I'd still have never taken any actual damage all game. Flow Like Water is a great card but I felt it needed more synergy - as such, for game three I added 3x Preemptive Strike, which is a really great fit, given it can be played with Nerves of Steel and the combo of damage caused by the card, plus the Flows Like Water trigger is excellent. I cut 1 copy of Unflappable, which I was worried about, but honestly, I didn't notice the cut. It's left the deck at 42 cards, but by the time you've been through it once, it's half that and feels fine. I could probably leave that in and run 43 cards without this deck feeling troubled.

This feels really strong.

Nov 25, 2022 dr00 · 39715

@SubTric thanks for your report! sounds like you had a great time. i guess Forcefield Generator isn't so necessary anyway. i think there are also a few recent rulings that really muddle up how they all work anyway, so we'll see how that shakes out. i'll definitely have to keep this in mind the next time this one hits the table. thanks again!

Nov 25, 2022 SubTric · 21

@dr00 no worries - I actually wrote up my revisited version after a bunch of games. It's still my go-to deck for 3-4 player games, especially when introducing new players to the game to give them support as they learn. Link-> marvelcdb.com

Jan 06, 2023 Sarge144 · 1

Thank you for creating this list! I've followed the conversation between you and @SubTric and I'm planning on bringing this to my first multi-player event.

I think protection hate comes from players miss out on group dynamics. Players may forget that they were able to blast the enemy for 12 damage because someone else removed their Stunned status for them, or that they were able to include an extra copy of an important card because another player included Crew Quarters to give to them. Support classes aren't impressive in and of themselves but enable other team members to reach their maximum potential.

Jan 07, 2023 dr00 · 39715

Hey @Sarge144 i'm so glad you like it! i hope it goes well for you. please let us know how it works :D

Apr 16, 2023 GoodOldPolly · 1

Thanks my friend. Me and my pal were stuck against the Collector (Escaping) because we were using Rocket (Aggression) and Groot (Justice). After we swap to Rocket (J) and Groot (P: This deck XD ), we were able to complete session.

Apr 16, 2023 dr00 · 39715

@GoodOldPolly that's so awesome! yeah, lots of supports/upgrades that don't discard, no allies, lots of events. seems perfect for it! i tested it on just random scenarios with my local group, but maybe i'll give GMW another look with this one :D

Oct 01, 2023 dachmuse · 1

Really enjoyed the Grootster here. Very complimentary, self sufficient, simple & tough as he builds up. Great in multiplayer!

Oct 01, 2023 dr00 · 39715

@dachmuse hey, thanks for the comment! i really love it for multiplayer a lot too

Dec 24, 2023 Tamaky · 31

A pure multiplayer deck! Yes! Yes! I say yes and thank you^^! Great deck i really like it! We feel the hight resistance of groot :)!

Jan 13, 2024 dr00 · 39715

@Tamaky yes, i'm glad you like it! i really love multiplayer support decks. they're so underappreciated!