Let’s Get Mystical - Early Thoughts on the Doctor Strange Deck for Marvel Champions

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) has been announcing a lot of new stuff for their Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG). Some might argue that they should focus on getting more stock of the products that have been already released, but those kinds of issues usually take weeks to fix. In the meantime, last week we found out about the newest hero that will be coming to the game, Doctor Strange. Currently, the schedule has this hero deck becoming available in May (March = Thor, April = Black Widow, May = Doctor Strange). 

This time, instead of going into my thoughts blind, based on a comment I received on my Black Widow post, I watched the live stream in addition to reading the FFG announcement post to get a feel for what they intended out of the deck. It definitely helped out a lot, as there were cards that were teased in one format that were not mentioned in the other one. If you have more interest in this deck after reading my thoughts and haven’t watched the stream or read the announcement post, I suggest you do so.

(Images taken from FFG’s blog post or capped from the stream)

First of all, getting around to the basic stats of Doctor Strange, there’s nothing surprising here. A hand of 6 and hit points of 10 is very similar to the 6/9 we’ve seen from other “normal humans” (remember, Steven Strange is a normal human, he just has the ability and training to cast magic), and the focus on thwarting over attacking makes sense to me too. While Doctor Strange does have powerful abilities and can deal damage to foes, you typically see him using those abilities to warp the situation in his favor. Both in the movies and in the comic books, you often see Doctor Strange trying to trip up his opponents instead of straight up bashing them in the face.

Now that we got the basics out of the way, it’s time to talk about the real star of this hero: his Invocation deck. This is a separate deck of 5 spell cards that comes in addition to Doctor Strange’s normal 15 character cards. The top card of this deck is always revealed, and you can exhaust Doctor Strange to pay the cost and use this card’s effect. Or, while in his alter ego, you can take an action to discard the top card of the Invocation deck and get to a different card. I really like this concept. It allows you to have a couple of powerful cards on you at all times without worrying about keeping them in your hand or cycling back through your deck to get a certain card. Especially on scenarios like Ultron, where cards from your deck can get pulled out and used against you, having this as a separate stack is really awesome. While it sucks having to exhaust Doctor Strange in order to use them, considering the power of the invocation cards it’s a fair trade off.

What are some of these invocation cards? First up we have Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, which stuns an enemy and deals 7 damage to it. I know in my group, we have those rounds where we are counting up damage and trying to squeeze out every drop of damage to get to the next phase - this card will definitely be great for those scenarios. Winds of Watoomb wasn’t shown on the stream but the blog post briefly mentions it - it allows you to draw 3 cards for 0 resources. Then on the stream they showed off Vapors of Valtorr, which is probably the coolest card of the bunch - it allows you to take a status card and replace it with a different status card. So you can take a Tough card on an enemy and change it to a Stunned card. Or you can take your Confused hero and change it into a Tough card. This is also probably one of the most thematic cards that was revealed, as you feel as if some crazy magical stuff is going on when you play this card.

Only a couple of Doctor Strange’s actual character cards have been revealed so far (by FFG at least). Master of the Mystic Arts takes the already awesome power of the invocation cards and doubles them. Astral Projection takes away 3 threat, plus you get to look at the top card of the encounter deck. If there are any boost icons on that revealed encounter card, you get to take away an additional threat for each icon. There are a couple of other cards in the game that let you look at the encounter deck - if paired just right, you could get rid of a LOT of threat from just this one card. Regardless, even without any combos the card is never not going to be a good play.

Moving on to the aspect cards included in the deck, I first need to mention that Protection is probably my least favorite aspect to play at this point in the game, with Leadership being a close second. Some of this is that I’m not the biggest Spider-Man or Ms. Marvel fan, which are currently the two heroes that I have paired with Protection. Secondly, the cards that we’ve seen so far with Protection have not really appealed to me and my preferred gameplay style. I have a feeling that may change with Doctor Strange, however. The Protection cards that they showed on the streamed seemed like a lot of fun to play. 

Unflappable is one of those “play on any hero” to give them a buff, like how Armored Vest gives a hero +1 DEF. The best part about unflappable is that if you manage to defend and not take any damage (like maybe defending against a minion), you can exhaust the card to draw a new card. When they revealed this card on stream and mentioned it, my immediate thought was that I could see people putting this card in a Spider-Man deck, where you could potentially draw up to 2 cards if you defend and take no damage. Desperate Defense pairs with this well: you get a bonus to defense, and get to ready a hero if you didn’t take any damage. In the article, they also revealed Iron Fist, a Protection ally. Eh. Of all the 4 cost allies, this one seems like one of the weakest. Of course stunning enemies and dealing extra damage is nice, it’s just that this card seems like all the other Protection cards that kept me from really being interested in the aspect.

Before we talk about the Nemesis cards, on the FFG stream they showed off the new Iron Man Leadership ally that is coming in the Doctor Strange pack. In all the games that I’ve played of Marvel Champions, I have rarely ever put upgrades on allies. To me, allies seem like they aren’t in play long enough to be worth putting the upgrade on them. It’s possible that with future cards this will change, but right now I don’t see the value of this Iron Man ally. Am I wrong though? Let me know if there’s a good reason I should be equipping upgrades to allies.

Time for the bad guy! In Doctor Strange’s deck, we meet Baron Mordo, whom I’m not really familiar with the comic book lore but it sounds like he was in the running for Sorcerer Supreme and lost to Stephen Strange. Regardless, FFG did a good job of making a nemesis that will make you cringe when it hits the table. Baron’s ability of discarding a card from your deck and having an effect based on what resource is revealed reminds me a lot of the Hulk ally. For Hulk, however, there’s like a 50/50 split on whether the effect is going to be good or bad, whereas for Baron Mordo, it’s 100% bad for you. Same can be said for Counterspell, one of Baron’s associated cards. This one attaches to the hero that draws it (not Doctor Strange) and cancels the next event card. It has that same “aw man” effect that you get when your hero gets Stunned or Confused. Yet Doctor Strange’s obligation, Physical Toll, seems like one of the weaker obligations that we’ve seen in the game so far. While it sucks that you have to pay additional resources, we’ve already seen that Doctor Strange has several cards that will let him get back some of those lost cards.

As I mentioned before, I am really excited to try out this deck. I really haven’t played Protection up to this point, but the stand alone Protection deck that comes with Doctor Strange seems like a lot of fun to play. Out of the pack, the hero might not be the strongest attacker or the best person to manage threat, but in 3-4 player games I think he’ll be great for changing the board state and getting other heroes back on their feet. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below, or follow me on Twitter and Facebook and let me know of your thoughts there!