Shield and Protect

This deck is meant to be played by an experienced player in support of Spider-Man Justice (https://marvelcdb.com/deck/view/676120) in order to teach a new player as the second of 4 scenarios. The intended scenario for this pair of decks is Tower Defense.

This time around, the new player will be taking on the thwarting duties and throwing a punch here and there to help out. Meanwhile, this deck needed to check of several criteria:

• a hero whose cards and abilities are fairly straightforward. Sadly, this took Ghost-Spider out of the running, as she often has a lot going on

• a hero who was fairly well balanced and able to help out with other things as needed

• a Protection build that exemplified the concept of protecting: not taking damage and defending for others

This left me thinking Cap with a perfect defense build would be perfect, especially with his pair of Shield Blocks. He has a naturally high defense as well if Captain America's Shield is in play (which is should almost always be) and he can still dish out enough damage to handle the villains. I included almost no Basic cards, but changed that after a test play to give him Endurance and Down Time. Both probably aren't necessary, but if he gets hit a few times (especially with Proxima Midnight hitting for 4+) he can have a hard time trying to take on more than his share and recover, so at least one of these is really helpful.

Once again, this one wants a good mulligan, but unlike Kamala's Justice deck, we have several cards we're trying to set up so we have more leeway. Namely, we want to get Armored Vest, Electrostatic Armor, Flow Like Water and Unflappable onto the table sooner than later. Together with his shield, this will put him at a defense stat of 4 with an effective retaliate of 3 (since you'll be playing defense cards pretty much every turn) and an extra card draw. From here you'll want to be using cards like Expert Defense and Judoka Skill to ensure you're always avoiding damage, and cards like Never Back Down and Counter-Punch to keep the pressure on the villains. I've thrown in Momentum Shift just in case Cap could use a health top up while the threat isn't doing so hot, but this and Defiance could be replaced by additional copies of other cards, but I'd avoid allies because chump blocking will negate all the sweet effects of defending that you've built up toward.

Since some of Cap's stuff can be a wee bit expensive if you need to throw his shield around or drop a Heroic Strike, it's a good idea to try to get his two Super-Soldier Serums into play, discarding everything in hopes of picking those up since you'll always have a handful of good defense cards.

This deck was tested as described in the Spider-Man deck mentioned above.