Now that the wasp Hero pack is out, are we able to play the Ant Man or Wasp ally cards when both hero decks are in play?

I can’t find a ruling on this anywhere, but it seems weird to include a mandatory card that can’t be played based on the limitation around unique card names.

When you play it, do you get to add the +3 hp right away or it only raises your maximum? Also, if you are at 2 hp and you lose this card, is your character considered having 2 hp left or he goes to 0 hp?

Thanks.

This is not just some random card that you may or may not throw into a deck, this is one of the core “power up” cards in the game. The general flow of the game (in a tough battle) is that you start out weaker than the enemy, try to survive while you power up, and hopefully power up to the point where you are stronger than the enemy, defeat all threats, and smash the enemy into the ground. And the way you power up is to play power up cards like this one, cards which give you a permanent benefit every round for the rest of the fight. And the most universal power up cards from the core set are Helicarrier and Avengers Mansion.

Your hero probably has some custom power up cards of their own, which are often slightly better than the generic powerups, and of course you will likely try to play those out. But the majority of heroes don't really have all that many custom power up cards and need to put more into their deck in order to power up sufficiently. After experience with playing the game, I have found it is better to add more powerups to hero decks which don't start with many, and add fewer to decks which already start with a lot (like Black Panther). If you are playing Iron Man, he already starts with an absolute ton of power ups in his own 15 hero cards, and he really doesn't need any more. By the time he is finished playing out all of his own powerups he is plenty mega strong already, adding more powerups to his deck just makes the game slower and more tedious as he sits around powering himself up more and more excessively, and by the time he finishes he is so powerful the game is pointless. While someone like Spider-Man or She-Hulk or Captain Marvel doesn't really have a lot of their own power ups and definitely need some more, so I often add at least Avengers Mansion and Helicarrier plus one or two smaller powerups (maybe swapping something out with cards from expansions, like Quincarrier).

In terms of functionality it should be noted that this is one of the big teamwork cards in the game, players in my game spend a lot of time either begging other people to give them an extra helicarrier action, or announcing they don't need their helicarrier and someone else can use it. But note that helicarrier is not a resource, so you can’t use it during the villain phase in order to help play a response or interrupt.

To call this a good card would be a huge understatement, this is a critical part of Iron Man’s character, he just wouldn't be nearly as strong a hero without it. It would be crazy not to play this card. Not only is this one of the tech upgrades he is required to play, the basic default use for this card is to give him an extra thwart, essentially letting this card remove two threat per turn for the rest of the game, which is way stronger than any normal card. But this card is more flexible than just that. While thwart is usually the best action for Iron Man, this card lets you do any extra action you choose during the turn. Also, there are many situations in Marvel Champions where the game tries to hose you by having an encounter card exhaust your character on a turn when you really need to exhaust to do something. Iron Man can just ready himself and do it anyway. This card more than doubles the number of basic actions he can perform during a game, since it doubles the number of actions he gets on a normal turn, but on turns when he he's exhausted by the villain and would normally not get an action at all, this card turns 0 actions into 1 action, which is better than doubling. And the Arc Reactor is even better in combination with cards that grant a bonus for an entire turn (like Lead from the Front) or indefinitely (like Heroic Intuition), as Iron Man can use the bonus on both of his actions.

When I first saw this card, I thought it was meant to be used on players, and I thought it was a weak card. Spending two cards to heal two points of damage he is not very efficient at all, it is usually much easier to take a recovery. Later I realized this card is primarily meant to heal your allies, and is one of the generic cards that is actually rather good and is tempting to include in a lot of decks. Healing an ally of two damage so they can perform their action two more times is really great. If they have a thwart value of 2, that means you are spending two cards to remove 4 threat, which is super-efficient. And you can even use it on your friends’ allies! Of course you can't do that all the time, sometimes there are no suitable allies or you need your allies to chump block for you, but that is why the game lets you pick which cards to play and which cards to use for resources.

What makes this card good is healing allies, but occasionally you may use it to heal yourself or another player in a situation where someone really needs healing and there is no better way to do it.