Spider-Man's League of Justice

Here comes scenario number 2 in my series of decks designed to teach new players, following the first scenario against Rhino (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/36599/learning-to-crawl-1.0). This time we're taking on Tower Defense.

In the prior scenario, the new player witnessed you playing a primarily event based thwarting deck, with a little bit of card synergy with Monica Chang and Surveillance Team. This time around, Newbie will be taking over the threat removal role, and we'll keep those cards in due to their familiarity. Aside from that, a lot of what's going into this deck is going to go beyond event-based thwarting for several reasons:

• just thwarting can be pretty boring, especially if you have the schemes under control
• getting some damage in is a good way for the new player to feel like they're contributing. Any experienced player will tell you about the importance of a good thwarter, but it doesn't feel as important as damage to a new player
• Newbie needs to learn that there's more to Marvel Champions than event-based play

First things first, we're going to introduce them to player side schemes with Lay the Trap. Letting them choose when to drop 10 damage on one of the villains lets them carry that big game-finishing attack in their pocket while still focusing on Justice and thwarting (especially if they attach Followed for an extra 4 damage). Another important concept they can learn here is the value of the hard mulligan, discarding everything in their opening hand if they don't pull Heroic Intuition since Spidey's thwart is a bit sad. Under Surveillance will give a bit of extra wiggle room as well to make up for any shortcomings.

Tower Defense is a good example of utilizing justice properly because there will always be two main schemes going up each turn, and the new player will have to balance their efforts to keep both under control. Cards like For Justice! and Impede will help cover Spider-Man's thwarting weaknesses, while Multitasking will let them take a bit from both main schemes. Monica Chang and Surveillance Team can help have a near-constant extra thwart, and Marvel Girl and Wiccan are two allies who can help handle threat and minions simultaneously.

The basic cards in this deck are very similar to the last deck, but we've added Machine Man who can drop a sizeable thwart if your hand just isn't doing it for you.

Overall, Spidey should be able to keep things under control pretty well, but this is an opportune time to teach the new player about cooperating together. There will be times that they pull a Swinging Web Kick and the thwart is all under control, so encourage them to blast the villain or a beefy minion if their responsibilities are handled. Likewise, if they're not pulling the cards they need at the right times, having two main schemes can feel overwhelming, and they shouldn't feel bad about asking you to toss them a thwart action or to take out a minion engaged with them. This will be the game where they start to learn to be a team player, while still focusing on their main objective: keeping the threat under control. It's also a good opportunity to teach them about letting threat get away from you intentionally: The Armies of Thanos popping isn't really a huge deal, especially if it's infrequent, and prioritizing a little extra damage to end the game sooner might be worth the risk of an extra encounter card.

During this game, the new player will witness you playing as Captain America in Protection with a perfect defense build (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/36643). This will give them a thorough view of one side of Protection, while they'll be running a stunlock deck, teaching them about archetypes (albeit in the next game). Since Spidey isn't the best thwarter, the experienced player may have to help them defend from time to time, which should be easy with Cap's shield.

This deck pair has been tested on Standard Tower Defense (plus an additional Shadow of the Past from Standard II and Seek and Destroy from Expert) with an extra module (City in Chaos). It was a pretty balanced game but the threat on the main schemes does go up a little faster than Spider-Man can remove it, particularly if a side scheme comes into play. Nonetheless it should be very manageable with Standard Tower Defense.