ExcelsiThor!

Welcome, true believers!

Those who've been playing the game for a while will know that the most exciting thing about spoilers isn't how the new heroes function, but thinking about how new aspect cards will give a lease of life to heroes who might have waned in popularity over time.

Thor never quite felt fully together when he was first released, but he's one of those heroes who has really benefited from an expanded card pool. That was certainly true with the release of Change of Fortune back in Nightcrawler; after all, the God of Thunder loves collecting minions and finding creative ways of dispatching them. But when I saw the reveal of Excelsior in Civil War, Thor was the hero I was most excited to try it in, given his natural access to energy resources and his desire to gather and then kill enemies.

And it turns out... it's very fun!

Defender of the Nine Realms

The main strategy of this deck is to get set up with the key upgrades Excelsior and Change of Fortune, and then use the first to trigger the second. Excelsior is funded readily using either God of Thunder or Quincarrier, and the villain phase turns are then augmented by defense events for additional damage and/or readies. Plus, Nova is almost Excelsior on a stick so there's also that. Once that's set up, the aim is to keep pulling minions into play from the encounter deck, using them as targets for the Excelsior/Change of Fortune combo, and giving Patriot tough status cards for the privilege.

But, I know what you're thinking. "Thor doesn't like to defend! If he's exhausted he can't swing at the enemies he pulls!" Well, to that I say:

1. This deck deals so much damage in the villain phase he doesn't really mind if he can't do a basic attack every now and then.

2. The readies from Desperate Defense and Limitless Stamina come in handy to make sure he can swing during the player phase when he needs to.

3. Powerful Punch is an attack that makes you the defender without exhausting, so you can play Powerful Punch into Riposte to do 7 damage to an enemy (usually the villain) without needing to exhaust to trigger the Riposte condition in the first place. That villain damage might not trigger Change of Fortune for you, but if you’ve left a minion with 2hp Excelsior will do it with a cheeky energy.

I think this is my new favourite way to play Thor, but I do have a couple of caveats:

a. I don't usually play true solo, and this deck will struggle with thwart in true solo. Defender of the Nine Realms is a great card, especially in this deck to get extra Change of Fortune fodder once you're set up, but it's probably not enough to rely on in true solo given Thor's 1 THW. So I'd recommend running this in games with 2 or more heroes.

b. Obviously, Thor wants to collect minions, but in this deck he really wants to defeat them too. So the deck might be less fun if you're playing alongside other heroes who really want to kill minions, like Winter Soldier or Rocket Raccoon, especially if it's a scenario with not as many minions as some.