Unpacking the Draft Archetypes of Marvel Super Heroes

In games of Magic: the Gathering, drawing cards always matters, but that's especially true in Marvel Super Heroes if you're playing a blue and black deck. Cards like Kang, Temporal Tyrant, and Madame Masque reward you with beneficial effects for drawing two or more cards in a turn.

This kind of card draw becomes incredibly easy to achieve by taking advantage of the Connive mechanic, which appears most frequently in these colours. Connive allows you to draw and discard a card and then place a +1/+1 counter on a creature that you control if you toss a nonland card this way. Blue and Black decks can outmaneuver the opposition through the power of raw card advantage.

The two creature types that matter most in Marvel Superheroes are Heroes and Villains. Black and Red feature the highest concentration of Super Villains and cards that support them, enabling you to put together a diabolical deck full of Marvel's biggest baddies.

When you're putting a villainous plan together, you'll want Madame Hydra in your deck, since she generates a 2/1 Villain token with menace whenever you cast a villain spell, enabling you to quickly assemble a crew to stop those pesky Avengers in their tracks.

Power-up is a new ability debuting in Marvel Super Heroes (although, if you remember Exhaust from Aetherdrift , it may seem familiar). Power-up abilities can only be activated once per game. When a creature "powers up", it gains +1/+1 counters and sometimes activates another effect as well. She-Hulk, Jade Defender destroys an artifact or enchantment when her power-up hits, and Quicksilver, Brash Blur gains a double strike counter.

Unlike in the Comics, though, it's best to power-up straight away rather than waiting for a suitably dramatic moment in the middle of battle. The cost to activate a Power-up ability is reduced by the mana cost of the creature it is printed on if you activate it on the turn that they come into play. Take advantage of this, and smash your opponents down with creatures loaded with +1/+1 counters.

Heroes appear all across the colour pie in Marvel Super Heroes, they're the creature type listed in the set's name after all. If you're looking to put together a deck all about assembling as many Super Heroes as you can, your best bet is to play in green and white.

These two colours have access to the largest selection of heroes out of any colour pair in the set, as well as a variety of tools to support them. Avengers Assemble! grants an impactful +2/+2 bonus to each of your heroes, and enables you to draw a card on any turn when a hero attacks or enters the battlefield under your control. Black Panther, Vanguard has effects that build your board up whenever you play heroes. If you're looking to play with some of your favorite comic book characters, then give green/white a go.

While you have the option to build a deck that utilises the Teamwork mechanic, some heroes work best alone.

In this set, white and black contain a suite of cards that power up creatures attacking by themselves, as well as a selection of auras and equipment to attach to those creatures to keep them safe and to ensure that they're as strong as possible. This is the colour pair to aim for if you're a lone wolf.

Blue/red artifacts is a tried and true theme that has popped up in a massive selection of Magic: the Gathering sets over the years. In Marvel Super Heroes, you aren't just assembling artifacts, you're using Stark Industries tech to summon a squadron of super heroes in mech suits.

Of course, there's Tony Stark himself, alongside Ironheart, Clever Champion, and Iron Lad Diverging Destiny. If you're looking to start generating artifacts incredibly quickly, Ultron, Artificial Malevolence can rapidly duplicate every artifact that you cast.

When Super heroes battles there's often a lot of collateral damage. Green and black decks can take advantage of that fact by incorporating cards that become stronger the more creatures there are in your graveyard.

Cards like HYDRA Troopers and Undercover Skrull become stronger when you have two or more creatures in your graveyard. Getting across this threshold isn't tricky, particularly when you slot a few cards that connive into your deck, or use creatures like Roxxon Brutes or Savage Land Dinosaur that can send themselves to the graveyard. Green and black decks can provide power from beyond the grave.

Normally, spellslinger decks are centered in red and blue, but Marvel Super Heroes shakes up that formula by incorporating an aggressive strategy focussed on rapidly casting noncreature spells into white and red.

Many cards in this colour pair have the ability "prowess" (some of them, like Thor Odinson, even have it twice). Cards with prowess gain +1/+1 every time their controller casts a spell that isn't a creature. That provides a lot of freedom. You can power Thor and pals up using combat tricks like Blazing Crescendo, enchanting them with auras like Super-Soldier Serum, or even by playing equipment like Mjolnir, Hammer of Thor. You can easily put together an aggressive deck in red and white, but the form that aggression takes is up to you.

Blue/Green +1/+1 counters ties together a variety of different themes, and can be used as the baseline for a three colour deck. When cards Connive or Power-Up, they gain +1/+1 counters, enabling them to benefit from cards like Kid Loki and Training Regimen, which grant abilities to creatures kitted out with counters.

You can also use blue's wide suite of card draw effects, alongside green ramp spells like Restorative Technique, to quickly gain access to your other colours and ensure that you have a diverse deck capable of responding to any kind of threat.

Which of these archetypes appeals to you the most? Do you want to craft some artifacts with Iron Man, power up with the Hulk, or build a sinister red and black villain deck? Once Marvel Super Heroes is released on the 26th June, you'll get your chance.

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