Quicksilver/Protection [PzvlRPO]

Quicksilver/Protection - Catch Me If You Can

LOCAL MAN LITERALLY TOO FAST TO DIE Much has been made of Quicksilver’s strength, of his one-turn-kills and his Jarnbjorn combo craziness. He’s fired up deckbuilding all across the community as we all search desperately for new ways to break him. Dozens of damage in a turn, 7 readies at a time- it’s all possible with Quicksilver, and he’s one of those characters where a passing glance is all it takes to realize that you can build some absolutely crazy decks with him.

He is all those things and more, but there’s more going on than meets the eye with the silver speedster.

See, unlike previous top-tier heroes in Champions, like Captain America, Black Widow, and Dr. Strange, Quicksilver doesn’t often have games where he’s on near-autopilot with little fear of losing, and that first look at his 15 doesn’t really tell the whole story. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear lots of reports in the coming months of new players hearing wild tales about how strong Pietro can be, going home to sleeve him up, and then finding themselves careening into a wall at max speed.

I know I did.

This isn’t, then, one of those insane combo decks that has the potential to trivialize the game and render it fairly boring for the other players at the table. Those decks are already all over this website, crafted by some very fine (and maybe luckier than me?) people. Much has been written of Quicksilver’s insanely high ceiling.

No, this is about raising his floor. It’s a treatise on how to lose as little as possible with Quicksilver. And played correctly…this deck is very good at not losing.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM, MR. GERMAN Ah yes, the problem. If you expected me to say “It’s the 9 HP”, you’re not wrong, exactly? But it’s also a bit of an oversimplification.

(Also, as an aside, I’m about to talk for an, uh, extended length of time about modes of play and the finer details about Quicksilver’s weaknesses. I wouldn’t spend so much time on this section if I didn’t find it important. I want to talk at length about what can go wrong with Quicksilver so that you can have a really solid sense of where the pitfalls are. Here’s what I’ve found…)

With a huge portion of the player base considering true solo their primary mode of playing Champions, I have a hard time publishing any deck without feeling good about it’s ability to handle being alone. I would hate for a solo player to give one of my builds a spin and come away unsuccessful because I didn’t do my homework.

So yeah, make no mistake that true solo mode was the entire reason that this deck took me two months of off and on testing to finalize, with me trying out every single aspect along the way.

In two handed solo or with a buddy, the issues are greatly minimized. If Quicksilver has even a moderately competent partner, he is pretty much at Dr. Strange levels of “slot whatever cards you want, you’re going to be fine.” In solo, however, there’s an interesting problem going on that’s hard to pin down, and it might cause many players to lose and never really understand what they could have done differently.

It’s less a squishiness problem and more an issue of, ironically, tempo.

To really keep pace with the game’s ever-toughening rogue’s gallery, Quicksilver basically has to hard-prioritize anything that upgrades his stats. Sure, he can zip two threat or drop two damage from turn one, but Always Be Running makes up a tenth of his deck, and only getting single digit efficiency off of it feels abysmal. Cards that boost stats can't be missed, which means that Friction Resistance is critical. Even assuming the essential cards get distributed well throughout the deck- not stuck at the bottom, not all grouped together- you still have to pay for them, and they’re just expensive enough that Quicksilver often can’t do very much else on his turn when he drops one, especially play something that could handle an immediate threat. I guess it’s thematic that this all can be summarized with “You gotta go fast”.

This huge pressure to set up makes your first pass through the deck very fragile, and this is where that 9 HP starts looking less like a stat and more like a clock. While Quicksilver builds up, he is exceptionally vulnerable to losing the board, often winding up dead or so drowned in side schemes and baddies that there’s no hope of recovering.

Testing against Expert Klaw, Kang, and Mutagen Formula, I was just losing in solo way too much with most of my early builds to really feel good about a list. In fact, I was bound and determined to publish an Aggression build for Quicksilver and just couldn’t find a way to make it sturdy enough in true solo. These villains were outpacing the guy with super speed. It felt bad.

So for this deck I decided to sacrifice a little bit of the crazy combo potential, and truthfully, while it makes the final turns less ridiculous, it doesn’t make the feel of playing Quicksilver any less fantastic. The fantasy we’re going for here- zooming around the battlefield as a nigh-invincible blur- feels authentic to the character in a way that I really love.

It’s become…my favorite deck in Marvel Champions.

MY 5-DAY GREEN JUICE FAST EXPERIENCE The above sentence is one of the things that comes up when you google “green fast”. Nobody said my jokes were good.

Anyway, there’s a couple of synergies that are informing this particular build.

Maximum Velocity, our best card, is more than just a crazy combo closer- don’t sleep on that +2 DEF. Combined with our DEF upgrades and ways to draw into more damage mitigation, it gives you incredible breathing room. You’re going to be mostly untouchable anyway, but having Maximum Velocity in hand means you’re virtually guaranteed to come out of the Villain phase without a scratch. Take advantage of that to get a critical upgrade down, and never ever flip down to Alter-Ego on a turn where you’ve played Maximum Velocity. Use that DEF. Stuns and damage reduction are easy to come by in this deck, and often it can be overkill, but going overboard on survival skills is hugely beneficial to this character. Quicksilver needs guaranteed time to get his critical pieces down. It turns out cards that benefit from the player exhausting to DEF become really good when you’re guaranteed to do that every turn. That’s right- in case you missed it, Quicksilver does indeed get a free ready every Villain phase, which is insane no matter what, but reaches it’s full potential when that DEF exhaust is being milked for tons of extra value. So this is the gameplan- use our insane survivability to guarantee the unbeatable Quicksilver late game comes to pass. As you gain speed, one of the interesting things that you’ll find is that with Friction Resistance and Quincarrier down, plus steady drips of draw with Unflappable, you won’t often feel very pressed about how to pay for those inevitable huge turns. Your player turns often don’t require all that much in the way of cards, and that’s why Protection is so amazing for us.

See, one of the usual downsides to playing green is that you usually start your player turns with fewer cards. Here, the benefits we get from our resource generators and readying often means we don’t need a full hand to let our basic stats do their job. Quicksilver is able to run really lean once he’s set up.

And remember that literally the only thing Quicksilver needs to do to get set up, and therefore to win, is to stay alive. Once there, he will eventually build up so much speed that the victory is inevitable. After all, the sheer number of things you can do in both the Player and Villain phases means you’re playing almost twice as much game as someone else would.

Be aware that you’re going to have hands packed full of “useless” defense cards from time to time. In multiplayer it’s less bad, because all these options let you easily defend for the entire table. In solo, if you’re frustrated because you have too many survival cards in your hand and the Villain already can’t hit you, allow me to tell you that you’d MUCH RATHER it be like this than the alternative.

Be patient. You will win the long game.

BULLET TIME Now you know the roadmap. Time to start running down the road.

We’ll talk about mulligans below, but suffice to say that knowing your priorities is important- it might surprise you to learn Armored Vest is more essential early than Friction Resistance. Once you have both Vest and Accelerated Reflex down your game really begins. Pitching your other important 1x cards to get your DEF up is okay if it has to happen- but having those cards in the discard does mean that Serval Industries has to be played when you see it. Quicksilver’s Hero cards are our most important ones, so let Serval save you from your rough draws. Never Back Down is a fantastic card made even better on turns where you played Maximum Velocity. If you draw them both at once, consider prioritizing saving Never Back Down for the next Villain turn. “If the Villain does less than 7 damage to me, they’re going to be stunned” is a pretty dope spot to be in. We’re in green, so even with Quicksilver's inherent flexibility THW can still be a problem. I find that I usually Double Time for straight up 4 threat and try to prioritize threat control with my Maximum Velocity plays as well. Allies should be controlling threat almost exclusively- especially our secret weapon, Brother Voodoo. A Brother Voodoo appearance! We’ve got 17 events, so his chances of missing are pretty slim. He’s also got 2 THW, and you shouldn’t let the double consequential damage scare you. You won’t often need blockers, so if Jericho draws you a solid event, thwarts for 2, and then kills himself next turn getting another 2 threat off the board, you can safely call that a win. He’s fantastic for us. As for dear sister...do you leave Scarlet Witch on the board for Superpowered Siblings? Probably not. We want to use her to get the most out of her THW, and we’re also going to try our best in general to spend as little time in Alter-Ego as possible. Superpowered Siblings, our Alter-Ego ability, is mostly a setup ability in this deck with a great filtering bonus when we need to flip down for a Down Time boosted REC. Adrenaline Rush and Civic Duty get the slots here because they cost 1 (our favorite number thanks to Friction Resistance), they boost our stats (no comment), and they give us access to stat burst to either close the game or keep threat under control. Learning when to actually put them down is a little tough, but don’t underestimate them. Also worth noting that in general, as the game goes on Civic Duty gets less valuable and Adrenaline Rush gains value. Your mulligans are very important. Here’s a rough priority order of what should be kept.

Armored Vest Friction Resistance Accelerated Reflex Hyper Perception Serval Industries Finally, the elephant in the room- 3 whole copies of Counter-Punch, a card I’ve gone to bat for several times (to questionable results) but which is absolutely unimpeachable here. For a character built around basic stats, a cheap card that utilizes two stats at once is drop-dead amazing. Once you too have tasted the glory of Counter-Punching (for 0!) to prevent 5 damage and deal 4 back on a Maximum Velocity turn, you’ll never consider taking it out. It’s one of our strongest game-closers.

GONE IN 60 SECONDS I was excited about playing Quicksilver from the moment he was spoiled, and despite the pains it took me to feel confident with this build, I wasn’t let down.

His aspect flexibility is going to be amazing in multiplayer, and I’m sure better deck scientists than I will find lots of great decks for him in true solo. For me, this is the first deck that let me truly start enjoying the extent of what he can do, and as challenging as it’s been to feel like it’s done, I’m very happy with where it’s ended up.

Whether you’re a Quicksilver pro, or are trying him for the first time, I hope you enjoy playing this deck too. It’s not every day you get to feel like nothing can slow you down or even touch you with just some cardboard on a table.

And that, among other things, is why we play Champions.