Hello Champions! I hope you are all feeling mighty today. It is I, BananaCrapshoot yet again, for another Marvel Champions article. Today’s edition I will be talking about a topic that has to deal with deckbuilding and general play, centered around the concept of Deck Thinning and how that pertains to Marvel Champions. This, I feel, is a more expert/heroic themed topic as it’s not as important in Standard but definitely still applies in standard.
First I will start it by giving a brief explanation on what deck thinning is. It is simply the idea of playing out as many permanent cards on the table (supports, upgrades, allies) that you can so your draw deck has the least amount of cards possible. The reason for this is so that you can cycle and play what I’ll call power cards, as much as possible over the course of a game.
Now a power card is any card, generally hero cards, that are above curve or have awesome abilities and effects. Wakanda forever, Hammer Throw, Repulsor Blast, etc. There’s also some aspect cards that fit into this. Like Thor Aggression and Mean Swing, or any Leadership deck and Goliath.
Now deckbuilding for deck thinning is fairly easy. You start of course with the 15 from your hero cards, and these are generally the cards you are looking to cycle. Then most people have an average of 5 basic cards, that leaves 20 card spots left in deck. Now you choose the aspect cards you want. Add cards that stick on the table when played and fill in from there.
I’ll use Thor aggression as an example. My 5 basic’s are endurance, strength, energy, genius, and helicarrier. Then I’m adding for Allies, spider-girl, brawn, Valkyrie, and Tigra, and lockjaw. (6 basics now). Then supports I’m adding hall of heroes. Now Upgrades I’m looking at 2x Battle Fury, combat training, jarnbjorn, and martial prowess. That leaves us with events, so I’m going 2x Mean Swing, 2x relentless assault, 2x get over here, 2x chase them down, and 2x piercing strike. I’m building this with multiplayer in mind. Also piercing strike is good for the new Rise of Red Skull scenarios but could be dropped to make Relendless assault and Mean Swing 3x’s. After all that I can have 14 cards on the table at one time. Making my effective deck size 26 cards. In this deck I’d consider my power cards relentless assault, hammer throw, mean swing, and lightning strike. So that’s 9/26 power cards in my deck when it’s fully thinned. That means I should have roughly 2 power cards in hand per turn. And with 2x god of thunder and Thor’s draw potential I should have no issues playing out those 2 power cards each turn.
Now when playing the game and deck thinning, you won’t get all those cards down on the first pass through. Even if you are just thinning 2-3 cards off your deck each pass, it’s worth it. If you play 3 cards per deck pass that sits on the table the rest of the game you are thinning you deck by 8 % the first pass. 15% the second pass, 23% third pass, and it goes on from there. In a standard 40 card deck with 3x hammer throw let’s say, and a 5 hand size and I want to find one hammer throw, I have a 34% chance to draw one. But on a card that’s 1 of like brawn I have a 13% chance to draw him. After I thin my deck that chance of drawing a hammer throw goes to 49% and drawing that brawn goes to 20%. What about a 2x card? Say Hawkeye wants to find Cable Arrow, with a 40 card deck I have a 24% chance of drawing one, when my deck is thinned that jumps to 35%. These numbers aren’t that important but what I want you to take away from this is that deck thinning is impactful, and it makes a difference for.
I‘m using all of this based on a 40 card deck, using a 50 card deck you lower your chances of finding that card by 3% roughly, and you have to work harder to get to that 22-26 card deck size.
I’m just breaking this down so you can see that thinning your deck has an impact, and the drawback for decking out is very minimal. One encounter card for thinning your deck and getting to your good cards more often is with the trade off. I firmly believe and will stand by 100% that the single biggest way for people to up their winning percentages against scenarios is by implementing more deck thinning. You have to know your deck’s path to victory. For Thor it’s Overkilling minions and swinging away for big chunks on the villain. How do I do that? Relentless Assault, Hammer Throw, Mean Swing. How do I see those cards faster/ more often? deck thinning to cycle my power cards more often.
Now looking at the other side, when can deck thinning be bad? It can’t. The only hero right now that Deck Thinning does not help as much as other heroes is Doctor Strange, since most of his power comes from the invocation deck.
So in summary, deck thinning is good and ups your chances significantly of seeing good cards more often, leading to more triumphant successes on the table. Im not trying to pull any Counter Punches, I’m just putting it out there, what you do with it is up to you. Overall this is a casual co-op game so the efficiencies don’t always matter, but they do to some people, so here ya go.
A great example of a good deck thinning deck is Wakanda Forever and Ever published by dr00 on the db. You can find it here with a good write up for the deck. https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/449/wakanda-forever-and-ever-and-ever-and-ever-an-1.0
Thanks for stopping by, please tell me what you think. If I’m wrong go tell critical encounters. Please check out the rest of our articles and podcast! I’m BananaCrapshoot, stay Scheming Champions!