Calling all Sky Cyclists

If you like my decks, bookmark my profile. I have many decks that are works in progress, and are not published / do not yet have a full writeup. I am trying to only publish what I would consider to be a final form for the deck. Obviously new cards do get released, and I would encourage anyone to always try a deck first, and then tweak it to their heart's content.

Description of Deck:

In this deck we are abusing Doctor Strange's extremely powerful hero cards and spell deck, and using that strength to assemble a team of allies fully kitted out with upgrades. 14+ card hands, or 50+ damage rounds are not uncommon with a little bit of setup and luck.

A note about deck size:

I'm usually very strict about deck size. If the minimum size you can have is 40 in a card game, 99% of my decks will have 40 cards. After all, technically speaking, the 41st card would be your worst card, and should be cut. However, I'm okay breaking the rules from time to time with good reason, and I went over this time for two of them.

First, this is basically a combo deck (assembling kitted out allies), and it requires a lot of cards to get our Avenger friends working at max efficiency. Second, this deck plays a LOT of card draw, and the downside of having more cards in the deck is greatly offset just by seeing so many cards each round. I have played this deck at 40 cards, and I prefer how it plays here at 47. I'm not saying there aren't cards that could be cut or replaced, I'm just saying I'm happy with how it performs in its current state.

Mulligan Strat:

Usually just sticking permanents to the field (upgrades, supports) is good enough the first time through the player's deck, but there are some cards to look out for. The Cloak of Levitation, or the copy of Mystical Studies to find the Cloak, is just about the best turn 1 play you can have. Since the top card of the spell deck isn't revealed until after our mulligan, we won't know if we can Winds of Watoomb in the first round, so don't count on that when taking your mulligan.

The Spell Deck:

Doctor Strange's spell deck gives him a significant power advantage over most of the other identities in the game. In addition to essentially having 20 cards included in his Hero deck over everyone else's 15, 5 of the most powerful ones (the spells) can be drawn into and played faster than the normal cards in your deck, at no penalty (encounter card), and their effects are usually better than even the most aggressively costed effects you can get from an aspect card or most other hero cards. In short, you should be either casting them whenever they are relevant. or removing them from the top of the spell deck when they aren't, on most turns.

Vapors of Valtorr:

This is the weakest of the five spells, so most often you will either be using Wong or Steven Strange's ability to discard it. That said, it does cost zero, so casting it is not the worst way to get rid of it. If you can turn a Confuse or Stun on yourself into a tough, or if you can do the opposite to the Villain, that's a solid play.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak:

If everything is under control on the board, you'll usually just discard this spell. But it can be a really nice safety play if you are low on health to stun the boss, or if you don't have a hand that really does anything (which can happen), and there's really no better way than this to get rid of some of the scary high health minions that come from the various modular encounters.

Images of Ikonn:

If there is threat to remove, this is the best way to do it. 4 for 1 and a Confuse on the boss will deal with most side schemes, or give you a decent amount of breathing room on the main scheme. I would say this spell gets cast most of the time, unless you know exactly what the last spell in the spell deck is and would rather cast it instead.

Seven Rings of Raggadorr:

This is VERY strong in our allies based deck. You can use the allies activations first if you want, and end with everyone having tough tokens. This is great if you intend to block a lot of attacks the next round. You can also use it as a +1 hp to get that extra ally activation you need this round to get things under control in the game. With 5 targets on board (Dr Strange, Wong, Iron Man, Giant-Man, and Stinger), you can also usually cast it twice with Master of the Mystic Arts and get some crazy value out of the tough tokens.

Winds of Watoomb:

And this is the spell that breaks Dr Strange. I don't know what Watoomb is, or what is in that wind, but it's the perfect weather for crazy wizard shenanigans.
By holding certain cards at the end of a round, and cycling through the spell deck aggressively, with a little bit of work its possible to set up a turn where...

You start with Winds of Watoomb as the top card of the spell deck, and a 6 card hand (from Sorcerer Supreme or alter ego form). You draw a card with Avengers Mansion (7 card hand). You use The Eye of Agamotto to Cast Master of the Mystic Arts, drawing 3 cards (going up to 9). Then you do it again with the Helicarrier and the Second copy of Master, going up to 11. Then you hard cast with Doctor Strange the copy off the top of the spell deck and discard it, going up to 14 cards. Then if you have all 4 allies in play, you can exhaust them with Strength in Numbers to draw 4 lose 1 and go up to 17 cards in hand. I know this sounds like magical christmas land, but its really not that hard to do once you get going, and I'm usually ready to do this after just one time through Doctor Stranges deck. And the possibilities of what you can do with a 14+ card hand are wonderful. How about play Iron Man, and a bunch of upgrades on him for free? How about Avengers Assemble! to untap all your avengers (Which is all 5 targets), and give them +1+1? How about casting 3 first aids in a turn and allowing your allies to activate aggressively while resetting with Sky Cycles? Or you can always keep casting more spells from the spell deck.

Overall Strat:

Okay, now that we know that enlightenment can be found in Watoomb, all we have to do is devise a strategy that allows us to get there. For this deck, that plan is to generate a lot of extra resources each round that will build a snowball effect and allow us to get more and more things in to play. For that purpose we should place a high priority on landing the following cards on our first time through the deck -- you may even consider holding these cards between rounds if you would have to make a choice about discarding them to play a different card:

In order of Importance:

The Cloak of Levitation

Wong (and to a lesser extent Honorary Avenger)

The Eye of Agamotto

The Sorcerer Supreme

Quincarrier / Helicarrier (really only need to stick one or the other)

Once we've landed the basics, we can use our increased power to start assembling Iron Man or Giant-Man + their gear, and use them along with their activations to take control of the game.

Allies:

The final Lineup of in play allies will look like this:

Wong + Honorary Avenger + Sky Cycle

Iron Man + Sky Cycle + Reinforced Suit + Power Gloves + Inspired

Giant-Man + Sky Cycle + Reinforced Suit + Power Gloves + Inspired

Stinger

Wong:

By becoming an Honorary Avenger, Wong receives access to his very own sky cycle. That allows him to ready himself once a turn, and be readied by Avengers Assemble!. Since his special action does not cause him to take damage, you can use it 2-3 times in a turn to either heal Doctor Strange when needed, or dig through the spell deck to set up the Winds of Watoomb draw turn. Wong is also great to put a tough token on, since giving up one of his activations to stop a lot of damage is usually good value.

Iron Man:

The beauty of Iron Man is he's so cheap to get going (compared to Giant-Man). He costs 1 less to get in play, and then every upgrade you get on him is free. Sometimes you will have turns where you have Iron Man and a bunch of 'filler' cards (First Aid, Magic Blast, Astral Projection, etc.) and 1 upgrade, and it's great to just slam him, play the upgrade for free, and know that any upgrades you draw you can just slam for free as well. Because of the resource discount, you will usually want to get Iron Man set up and going before you get Giant-Man going, but card draw order and opportunity can change that.

Board buffed, Iron Man will have:

6 Health, 3 Attack + a 1 Attack ping, or 3 thwart + a 1 Attack ping which he can do twice with his Sky Cycle, so 8 damage, or 6 threat and 2 damage a round. If you avengers assemble after his first activation, He'll get the normal 3+1, and then he'll have two 4+1 activations. So in total he could do 11 thwart +3 damage, or 14 damage.

Giant-Man:

Giant-Man is basically Iron-Man, but instead of his base attack hitting for 3+1, it hits for 5+1. With a reset from Avengers Assemble, and if we give him the Inspiring Presence reset as well, Giant-Man tops out at 27 damage in a single round.

Stinger:

Stinger's special ability means she doesn't count against our ally cap to put in play, so there is no penalty for having her out there. What she does do is let us potentially draw 1 extra card from Strength in numbers, and she blocks attacks with a tough token (like the ones you will be making all the time with Seven Rings of Raggadorr), freeing up the activations of our more powerful hero and allies, and letting them use their tough tokens as 1 hp heals more frequently. She's also useful just for her 1 value attack (to knock off tough tokens), or thwart (to get that pesky 1 threat needed to finish off a side scheme).

Other Notes:

Cloak of Levitation

I can't overstate how powerful this card is, especially when you want to be casting spells, or sometimes just thwarting for 2 with Doctor Strange. With the cloak you can..

Cast a spell, ready, cast a spell.

Thwart for 2, ready, cast a spell.

Thwart for 2, ready, flip, recover.

Cast a spell, ready, flip, recover.

Recover, flip, ready, cast a spell.

Recover, flip, ready, thwart for 2.

On power cycling:

So how many cards from the spell deck can we see exactly?

1. Discard the top with the Steven Strange alter-ego action
2. Discard the top with Wong
3. Flip to Doctor Strange and cast Avengers Assemble! then discard the top with Wong
4. Ready Wong with Sky Cycle and discard the top
5. Ready Wong with Inspiring Presence and discard the top
6. Cast the top spell with Doctor Strange
7. Ready Doctor Strange with the Cloak of Levitation, and cast the top spell

What about that 50 damage round again?

27 from Giant-Man

14 from Iron Man

3 from stinger

8 from Wong

That's 52, and we haven't included Doctor Strange, who could cast Magic Blasts from hand, or a top of the spell deck Crimson Bonds, or attack with a buffed activation from Avengers Assemble! or some number of copies of Magical Enhancements.

First Aid:

You can use this on yourself in a pinch, but all three copies are in because they allow us to keep using Iron-Man and Giant-Man without our buddies ever leaving play.

Endurance:

You can cut this card, but I find a max HP of ten to usually be about 2 unlucky encounter cards away from death in a close game, and by getting 3 more HP, you can increase that to needing 3 unlucky encounter cards, which can sometimes save you.

Call for Aid / Inspiring Presence:

These cards both kind of fill similar rolls. On turns where you have no better play, or where it would be the best play, then let you play an ally. Make the Call is the easiest to use, as it lets you play them from the discard pile. Call for Aid will dig very hard in your deck for you though, and since you know what is in your deck, you can decide how risky that is. But for example if you want to play Iron-Man, Stinger is already in play, and GIant-Man is in the discard pile... you know you will hit safely, you just may burn a few cards to do it.