Captain of Heroes, '24

After a long swim all the way from New Zealand, I was blessed with the opportunity to attend Con of Heroes 2024. I had an absolute blast meeting so many people for the first time in person. It was especially wonderful seeing many people I've known online for so long. Anyway, enough of the sappy stuff, here's the deck one of the decks I brought to Con of Heroes 2024, specifically designed for 4-player games. I was lucky enough to receive a large alt-art version of her identity card featuring the above art and used it through the Con of Heroes campaign where we played through 5 total games on expert without a single loss. It is extremely focused on one thing: dealing lots of damage despite being a Justice deck. How does it accomplish that? Well, two ways:

Getting By With a Little Help From Her Friends

The first method revolves around Float Like a Butterfly. This card can pump out a metric ton of extra damage, especially with the likes of Domino or Deadpool at the table, who have multiple actions per round dealing damage with pistols constantly firing and katana constantly flinging. You should ideally not give it to yourself. You do a lot of damage, but not many instances of damage. Besides, we all know who's doing all of the real work here (it's... it's you. The Captain Marvel player is doing all the work).

Just add confusion. Banshee, Dazzler, Spider-Woman, and Sonic Rifle x3 provide a whole heapin' hecka lotta confusion, even against scenarios with Steady villains. Chance Encounter also allows you to find Banshee, Dazzler, and Spider-Woman more often. Bonus that it's as well. You will even have enough confusion to allow people to flip down often and still confuse on the next turn. Just be careful about when you flip down. I managed to bump into an issue several times where I needed to flip down to heal but was the 4th player on the following round, so I wasn't able to confuse the villain until my turn, leaving all those gains on the table. Be sure to communicate with your group about any access to confusion and when you can do it. Domino might not get any extra damage from her basic attacks, but she can shoot her pistols any part in the player phase (as long as she's in hero form), so sometimes holding off on the shooting can help. If you are unable to confuse at the start of the turn, try to see what players can do off-turn with called actions to get the most out of their float.

An Old Cap's Old Tricks

The other method of extra damage is the old reliables: Photonic Blast and Energy Channel. Being able to take 5 second turns where you say 'I deal 15' or even 'I deal 25' feels so satisfying. This is especially helpful against Stalwart villains, but thankfully much of the Justice cards included in this deck are or , for a total of 25 cards in the deck. Float Like a Butterfly won't pump out the massive damage it normally does, but you'll much more often just swing for so much damage. I managed to have a turn where i used a fully-charged Energy Channel and played all 3 copies of Photonic Blast in a single turn. Achievement Unlocked!

Justice... Like Lightning!

Although we are focused on pumping out the damage, we are a Justice deck after all and will need to thwart at least some of the time. Dragging kicking and screaming into this task, we can thankfully do it relatively easily with just a handful of cards. Even the Odds thwarts for so much in multiplayer and even puts a little bit of damage onto the villain. It's especially useful for clearing toughs. And bonus, it's an icon with a trivial requirement. Passion for Justice and Operative Skill can also increase your thwarting to 6 on each side scheme. With Overwatch, you can hit something for 12 or even remove some threat from the main scheme.

As a backup, Passion for Justice and Operative Skill can be used to increase the efficacy of Crisis Interdiction. Just remember that it only thwarts two side schemes if you have Cosmic Flight out. This happened uh... once. Over the campaign and the other couple of games played with the deck. It's there cos you don't have the option, but maybe it'll help you more than it did me.

Field Notes

• Quincarrier is included for the inevitable Build Support that someone will bring. If someone else is running it, you should argue how you deserve it more because you can constantly pump it into Energy Channel or Rechannel if nothing else.
• The deck uses both Genius and Strength because I have the Captain Marvel print-and-play alternate resource cards. If you're feeling spicy, you can take them out for more or icon stuff (like Chance Encounter). They were also very helpful for setting up important pieces like Float Like a Butterfly, Cosmic Flight, Operative Skill, and Sonic Rifle. They're also still decent for Photonic Blast, since you just need 1 for the card rebate.
• No Eros because there isn't much .
• Banshee doesn't even come up that often, but he still makes the list because he's got an icon. He didn't end up doing much because we found the extra damage on minions usually wasn't necessary. Keep in mind that you can't 'double dip' on Float with Overkill attacks since it specifically calls for attacking a confused enemy. That said, confusing the minion does give 1 more damage to the villain after overkill is applied.
• The third copy of Sonic Rifle can be replaced with Professor X. It's just really nice being able to have Sonic Rifles sit on the board until you need them. Alternatively, he could replace Banshee, Cypher, Dazzler, or even Chance Encounter, but you are lowering your count to do that. Ultimately it was decided that maximizing and maximizing confusion was the way to go. See if something else works for you. At the very least, you would have more options like stunning a minion or readying Banshee to confuse two minions in a single round.
• No Skilled Investigator cos it's the wrong icon and people need to discard their own cards to Caught Off Guard.