You Are (Not) Alone - SP//dr Recursion

SP//dr is one of the most unique heroes to ever be released in Marvel Champions, and yet their unique kit lends itself well to the strategy that seems to work with any character in any setting: Leadership Recursion. Dr. Suit has the resources to play powerful allies and their limited hand size makes the resources that spew out of cards like #Regroup and Nick Fury even more appreciated. Adding the consistency and power of the Web-Warrior tribe package is just icing on the cake, creating a strategy that has few weaknesses with only a little bit of initial setup.

Big Money Buys Good Allies

The most obvious obstacle SP//dr face is their low hand size: only 4 in Alter-Ego and 3 in Hero form. This is mitigated by the Sync Ratio ability allowing the player to pay for cards using Interfaces instead of by discarding cards from their hand, but the real problem with a low hand size is a loss of consistency; drawing fewer cards means it's less likely you'll have the cards you need at the right time.

Luckily, Peni has powerful friends. Ironheart, Maria Hill, and especially Nick Fury draw you cards when they enter play, meaning they dig you deeper into your deck to find your all-important Interfaces and once you're set up you might even go hand-positive after playing one of this trio, increasing your options while also getting a body on the board to thwart, attack, and/or block with. Of note: of these three, Ironheart only draws you a card when played from the hand, so Make the Call will not activate her effect.

Web of Life and Destiny and the Web-Warriors provide even more card draw through allies, with WoLaD drawing a card every time any WW ally leaves play for any reason. This goes magnificently with Ghost-Spider and Spider-Man, with the former most often grabbing All Systems Go! and the latter either refreshing your Host Spider (and by extension the Suit) or one of your Tech Interfaces for another free card and resource.

And that's just the allies themselves; Strength In Numbers is a good panic button to draw some extra cards if you're digging for a particular piece to your puzzle early on but I find I don't use it as much as I thought I would because I want my allies to take consequential damage so they can make room for more allies to trigger their when-entering-play effects. Regroup bounces allies that you use to block back into your hand so you can trigger them all over again, and honestly Make the Call is the star of this and any SP//dr Leadership deck. Since you mostly pay for cards using Sync Ratio, Make the Call effectively acts like having any ally from your discard pile available in your hand, letting you very easily reach in and pull Nick or Peter Parker for more card draw or board control. This is doubly useful when Aunt May & Uncle Ben toss some of your more important friends into the pile.

The odd ally out is Machine Man; he doesn't draw you cards and he isn't a Web Warrior, but he does very effectively turn excess resources that you were going to float into board control. Dr. Suit often has more resources than they have cards to spend them on, so Machine Man has been a fun and natural inclusion to squeeze that much more efficiency out of your engine.

Interesting Notes and Interactions

Spider-Man is the very best kind of card design; you could easily build an entire deck around him, but he's also splashable and will make immediate impact in any Web-Warrior deck. SP//dr has a easier time than their comrades actually getting Peter to the table even without Make the Call/Across the Spider-Verse due to the variety of resources available through Sync Ratio, and once he's there their beefy 2/2/2 statline along with Psychic Link and Web-Fluid Compressor make the free refreshes highly valuable. Between Host Spider, All Systems Go!, Limitless Stamina, and Peter, in almost every game I play with this deck I have at least one turn where SP//dr Suit activates at least 5 times, and the deck isn't even built around refreshes.

Command Team is useful for getting even more refreshes out of Peter, but it's also nice for intentionally making allies take more consequential damage so they can clear the way for more allies. Even with The Triskelion I often find myself at the max limit for allies, so be liberal with consequential damage! They don't mind, honest.

You might have noticed I'm not running any Resource cards in this deck; no The Power in All of Us, no The Power of Leadership, not even Genius, Energy, or Strength! Honestly, SP//dr doesn't need them. Sync Ratio generates so many resources and you naturally draw so few cards that you really want the cards that you do have to affect the board; when I initially tried running the Resource trio, most of the time they just sat in my hand, not providing me any value.

This deck has been a lot of fun to play, and through SP//dr's weirdness offers some variety if you feel like the Recursion strategy has gotten stagnant. SP/dr's hero kit leans heavily on the Suit making huge damage/thwart basic activations multiple times a turn, and the consistency and speed the rest of this package offer gives you the freedom to leverage those stats into board control quickly without having to worry about running out of steam. Turns out, all Shinj-I mean Peni needed was a little help from her friends.