Deck Building: Beginners Guide

Deck Building: Beginners Guide

Building a proper attack and defense deck is one of the fundamental elements of Marvel: War of Heroes.  I see a lot of poorly constructed decks from beginners and veterans alike, and it always makes me cringe to see a powerful card paired with the wrong cards. 

There are 5 things to think about when building your deck.  They are as follows (in random order):

• Deck Center Card
• Card Alignment
• Card Ability 
• Card Faction (Hero or Villain)
• Special Combinations

I'll start out with some basic information that may be helpful.  The center card (or top card) of your deck should be your most powerful card.  The center spot is the only position in your deck that is given an increased chance to proc so you want to start with your best card in the center and build out from there.  I'm going to use my own attack deck as an example:

Photo 1: Rex's Attack Deck

Photo 1 is a screen shot of my attack deck.  I have a Legendary Red Skull placed as my center card.  Next to my center card I have two UR+ Chaos Kings.  My "wing cards" (outer most cards) are two UR+ Carnages.  In the deck edit screen it displays the cards from top to bottom rather than left to right. From top to bottom my cards are listed in the following order; Red Skull, Chaos King, Chaos King, Carnage, Carnage.  I chose my five cards based upon the five deck building items listed above.  I'll explain below how each card effects my deck relative to these items:

Deck Center Card:

As I said above, the only position in my deck where the card you select really matters is the center card.  I put the Legendary Red Skull in the center of my deck because he is my strongest card and I want him to proc as often as possible, and the center card has an increased chance to proc.  The other 4 cards can really be put into your deck in any order.  The game will choose them randomly and they will proc based off of their individual proc rates.  

Card Alignment:

Most proper decks are constructed with five cards of the same alignment.  However, you may have noticed that mine is made up of two alignments.  This is because I do not have any alignment specific boosts, but I'll explain that further below.  For now just know that you have to consider your card(s) alignment when building your deck and that most decks will be constructed of five cards of the same alignment.

Card Ability:

Your card(s) ability is the single most import factor to consider when building your deck.  There are all sorts of abilities.  Examples of abilities are; boosts to self, boosts to all, boosts to single alignment, boosts to single attack alignment, boosts to single defense alignment, boosts to attack faction, degrades to defense, degrades to attack, and degrades to alignment defenses.  That is a lot of information to take in, but if you have been playing the game for a while you should be comfortable with all the terms used.

It is very important to chose your cards based upon their abilities.  A card that boosts all Tactics Defense clashes with any card that is not of the Tactics alignment.  If you are going to use one of these cards you have to make sure that all five cards in your deck are of the Tactics alignment.

My deck does not contain any single alignment boosts.  Therefore, I'm able to have cards of two different alignments.  My Legendary Red Skull and two Carnages degrades the defense of my opponent.  My two Chaos Kings boosts the attack of my "villain" cards.  Since all of my cards are of the villain faction there is no conflict (I'll address card faction in more detail below).  Lets say that I wanted to get rid of one of my Chaos Kings.  Cards that I would want to consider as replacements would have to be of the Villain faction (because I still have a Chaos King that boosts attack of Villains) and either boost attack of all Villains, boost attack of all cards, or degrade opponents defense.  I would not put a Legendary (Friendly Neighbor) Spider Man in my deck because that card boosts attack of all Speed cards in my deck.  The Chaos King (bruiser) conflicts with the Spidey.  Similarly, I wouldn't want to add Legendary Thanos to my deck because he boosts attack of all Bruiser cards in my deck and that would conflict with the three Speed cards that I have.  I can consider adding the new Legendary Magneto though.  This version of Magneto boosts the attack of all cards.

I hope that you understand the logic in the paragraph above.  It really is important that you pair your cards with abilities that do not conflict with each other.

Card Faction:

Your card's faction is either hero, villain, or neutral.  Up until last month a card's faction was used only in special combinations.  With the release of new abilities (boosts to all Heroes and boosts to all Villains) card factions have now become more important.  I built my deck with card faction in mind.  My two Chaos Kings each boost the attack of all my Villain cards.  This is a powerful new boost and it is exciting because it gives me the option to have a proper built mixed alignment deck that isn't made up of all degrade ability cards.  

Special Combinations:

Certain combinations of cards can also give you special abilities.  Therefore, the potential of having a special combination should be considered when building your deck.  You don't necessarily need a special combination to have a strong proper built deck, but every little bit of extra boost counts in battle.  Figure 1 above shows that my deck has a special combo.  Because I have a deck made up of five Villains I qualify for the "Wild Villains" special combo.  This combo gives me a small boost to my attack deck.

The items listed above are the most critical factors to think about when building your decks.  Do yourself a favor and build yourself a proper attack and defense deck.  Also, using the "suggested attack/defense deck" option is a bad idea.  It does not build properly constructed decks.