Rictor

Rictor is a solid card that meets the expected value for a 3-cost ally with no use of his Response, and he can output ridiculous extra damage when the stars align. That makes him a card I'm happy to include in any Aggression deck even when the scenario doesn't have that many minions. Rictor is a must-have in a Domino deck as she doubles the resources counted on discarded cards or in a White Fox+Digging Deep deck looking to add ways to discard from the top of the deck. Should see a lot of play, especially when more X-Force support is in the game.

Stretch22 · 454
Uncanny X-Men

This card sent X-Men Leadership into the stratosphere. In combination with Utopia, 2-cost X-Men allies become Limitless Stamina with bodies attached. For Cyclops in particular, this is absolutely ridiculous, as he can pull every 2-cost X-Men ally available into his deck. (Playing Armor for a single resource to get a Hero-ready and two blocks is obscene.)

As powerful as that is, it's still not even the limit of what this card does. +1 HP makes all of your ally plays even more of a value proposition than they already were. Because the discount is not limited to once-per-turn or anything like that, playing Pixie into another ally in the same turn becomes astoundingly easy; a 5-card hand can get you Pixie and Gentle, who can put out 11 damage combined and defend twice. Using Cerebro to find the ally that fits your resource situation for the turn is even better when that ally's cost is reduced.

One thing to keep in mind is that, in order to receive the discount, all of your characters have to be X-Men, meaning that it only works in Hero form (barring Honorary X-Men). This also means that it doesn't combo well with Danger Room, which only works in Alter-Ego.

Another is that the value of this card goes up as you play more allies. It leans toward playing lots of inexpensive allies rather than a few expensive ones, and encourages cycling them rather than keeping them out in perpetuity; playing X-Mansion and the Training cards to extend your allies' lives will generally be less efficient than just playing another ally.

And lastly, because Uncanny X-Men makes it easy to play allies quickly, and those allies get extra HP, it can be easy to bump into the ally limit. (Playing Utopia heavily mitigates this issue; I really can't overstate how powerful the combination of these two cards is.)

Leethus · 14
Flying Formation

This is an interesting card for an Angel deck, but it's exceptionally weak elsewhere, and I personally wouldn't play it in Angel either. It has a massive inherent cost of 4, massive set up cost of having 3 Aerial characters in play, and underwhelming effect when it's all put together. Readying allies is a weak ability, so you'd love to ready other identities with it. But if your turn is before somebody, they might not be exhausted yet, and if your turn is after somebody, they won't have a use for being ready. This was intended to be played in an Angel deck due to Archangel dealing 4 damage after you play it, and Angel has lots of ways to help reach the resource cost, but it's so much less efficient than Angel's own cards and Air Supremacy even when you get it set up. I think it can be a fun casual deck, and this one by dr00 is highly upvoted if you want to give it a try:

marvelcdb.com

Stretch22 · 454
It Ain't Over...

This card is hands-down my favorite design in the game. The rules of Marvel Champions dictate that adding acceleration tokens increases the total threat you accumulate throughout the game, thus decreasing the room between the threat floor and the threat ceiling. "It Ain't Over...", in classic Deadpool style, breaks all the rules by actually increasing the threat cap the more acceleration tokens get added. Mechanically, it gives Deadpool a cushion to fall back on in case he gets mirked too many times. Thematically, it represents Deadpool's ignorance of how much stress he causes everyone else just by existing in the same space as them. When the Deadpool player (usually me) hitches this card up to the main scheme and starts getting in character, it never fails to put a smile on my face.

SP_Rocks · 11
Band Together

This card has the potential to be totally dead and useless... however, certain heroes can make excellent use out of it even in its "dead" state when you have no cards in hand and it is a zero resource card.

Captain America requires a discard to use "I Can Do This All Day", making this a great card in a Captain America deck when he has no allies out but letting him act twice.

Alpha Flight Station is also a great card fueling a discard effect so that Carol can cycle her deck.

Finally, it can satisfy discard requirements for:

Wonder Man, using his good ATK score. SP//DR Command, for the card draw. and... Spiritual Meditation, if you make a Mystic Leadership deck, probably with Summoning Spell because you thought (correctly) that it looked cool.

Soulfire · 30
Sorry to be pedantic, but this reflects more on the value of resource sinks that you've mentioned and nothing on Band Together. Literally every card in the game can be discarded to serve those effects. (Note it doesn't work with Adam Warlock because there are no printed resources) — Stretch22 · 454
I think his point is, when you are in the situation where Band Together is useless (no allies), you'd rather discard this otherwise useless card for those listed effects instead something else that might be playable. — erikw1984 · 6
I understand how it can feel better to discard a useless card than a useful card, but I object to the suggestion that it is good to run this just because you can discard it to these other effects. It is strictly better to have an option between playing a card and discarding it than it is to have it earmarked for discarding. Also, there will be turns where attacks are useless because there are no minions, or thwarts are useless because there is no threat. I want to minimize my likelihood of cards being useless. It should be acknowledged at this point that Band Together is exceptionally powerful to build around, and commenters in the other review cover this well. — Stretch22 · 454
My point was that the element of the card that makes this otherwise "bad" has viable workarounds in the hands of the right Hero. — Soulfire · 30