It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Have you ever looked at a relatively mediocre Marvel Champions card and wondered, "How much better would this be if it also had 'draw a card' printed on it?" This deck aims to address that question (spoiler: the answer is "a lot better").

Ever since Guardians of the Galaxy was spoiled, I knew I wanted to put this deck together. The idea is to get Iron Man into play, slap down the team support, and start festooning your red and gold tree with as many decorations as he can bear. When set up, every upgrade in the deck can be played for free on Tony--AND will replace itself with another card. You'll tear through your deck while assembling a 4/4/7 monster with overkill that attacks or thwarts twice a turn and can ping off tough cards. Trust me--once you have Guardians of the Galaxy in play, Tony will be kitted out in a HURRY.

Card Choices

• Iron Man - the engine of the deck. I generally keep a Guardians of the Galaxy in my opening hand; otherwise, I will typically hard mulligan for Tony. This deck includes Call for Aid to give you more shots at drawing this crucial ally (he is the only Avenger in the deck). Get him down and go to town. If something goes awry or you just need a reset, Rapid Response will keep Tony in the game.

• Guardians of the Galaxy - the real impetus for this build. While it works best with Iron Man, adding "draw a card" to all your upgrades makes them infinitely more playable. It also enables a very satisfying play pattern of "play a card, draw a card, play a card, draw a card..." that appeals to the combo/synergy player in me.

• Adam Warlock - a very versatile, non-Avenger ally who fills multiple roles in this deck. He keeps Peter topped off, snipes troublesome minions, or chips away at schemes. He can easily be swapped out for Maria Hill or some other generically good non-Avenger, but I've grown to value the flexibility Adam brings to the table.

• Nick Fury/Mockingbird - generically good allies that get even better when cheated into play with Star-Lord's ability or recurred with Rapid Response.

• Rapid Response - a single copy to bring Iron Man back into play or get extra value out of Nick Fury and Mockingbird. In the mid-late game, you'll be cycling your deck almost every turn--so you should see this regularly.

• Ally Upgrades - we're playing pretty much all of the ones that we can include (I'd love to include Honorary Avenger as well, but it doesn't work with Star-Lord). 1x of the Avenger upgrades since only Tony can take those, 2x of most others, and 3x Honorary Guardian because it cycles for free even if you play it on Adam Warlock, Nova Prime, or one of your other allies.

Other Card Considerations

• Get Ready - deck space is very tight, but you could add a couple of these to get more mileage out of your souped-up Iron Man.

• First Aid - I prefer Rapid Response as my ally "heal" of choice, but this might be a viable alternative.

• Make the Call - it's never a mistake to include this card in a Leadership deck; I just don't find it very interesting and wanted to try something different.

• Blaze of Glory - we aren't playing enough ready effects to really make this card shine, but it has such tremendous synergy with Star-Lord that it might be worth a copy to close out games.

• Additional copies of Call for Aid/Guardians of the Galaxy - this would increase consistency at the cost of adding a few more dead draws once you have the combo assembled. That's not as much of an issue for Star-Lord, since he can always pitch redundant cards to trigger Element Gun or Adam Warlock. I think the current setup strikes the right balance, but more testing may change my mind.

If I were going to swap out anything for these cards, I'd probably pull the double resources. They are nice, but definitely not essential here; all your important pieces can be deployed for 1 or 0 resources thanks to Star-Lord's ability, and a huge chunk of your deck will deploy for free once Tony is on the table.

Summary This isn't the best Star-Lord deck out there, or even the best Star-Lord Leadership deck you can build. But it is quite strong and can get off the ground very quickly. More importantly, to me, it's a very different archetype that finally makes full use of Leadership Iron Man (a card I've been wanting to build around since it was released). Help Peter decorate his tree and see what gifts you unwrap!