Spectrum - Not My Tempo

Not Quite My Tempo

Tempo is a term used in gaming to (generally) refer to how much input is needed to achieve a desired result. In Marvel Champions, that can be interpreted to how many effective resources we need to accomplish actions. Enter our deck today.

I'll start by saying this deck shines primarily in multiplayer, but there it shines quite bright. In a 2-Player Expert Hela game with Galactic Artifacts and State of Emergency Mods it almost singlehandedly dealt with threat, even with 6 affective acceleration on the main scheme by the end of the game. It's also taken on Expert Loki and Red Skull with their default mods in two-handed games, again leaving threat a non-issue.

If you're familiar with Spectrums kit, then you already know she has easy access to several great tempo tools. Today we're gonna focus on what she brings to the table in the Justice Aspect.

Flying High

Starting with the justice cards, innate Aerial on our hero side gives us access to new card Yaw and Roll which removes 3 threat for 2ER. Are fluid form changing also let's us use Lay Down the Law to great affect and super efficiently, at 4 threat for 2 ER. Clear the area is another effective mainstay, when you get the kicker from it it's 2 threat removal for 1 ER and has the added benefit of card cycling.

One Way or Another becomes an obvious addition, as after we've made even minimal set up we can clear the side scheme it brings out for 1ER from our hand, making a clear profit in economy and added card cycling. Sense of Justice makes our events more efficient, and Skilled Investigator is a reward we get for doing our job so well. Heroic intuition is especially valuable as our THW gets up to 4 now if in photon form, which scales off readying our Hero. It also works great with another new card Overwatch, which can topple threat easily with multiple schemes out.

Wiccan helps with damage, is a cheap chump blocker, can help set up Clear the Area with his 1-THW, and has the avenger tag to help us ready. Speaking of allies, Blade also serves as a cheap target for Earth's Mightiest Heroes, while also being good as a chump blocker and indirect damage funnel. Vivian keeps Patrol from hampering us and can stave off many harmful affects till you have better tools to work with, the more I play with her the more useful I find her to be (that being said, if you're someone that doesn't know how to/feel comfortable playing a deck without a copy of Ironheart, you can replace her here).

Deft Focus works off a large portion of Spectrum's kit and is cheap in itself. We elected to keep the double resources despite the low cost curve, as Spectrum has a lot of good 2+ cost cards in kit that we want to play whenever possible, and they help with our allies and Sense of Justice as well.

You Have to Keep Up

Some notable exclusions include Multitasking, which probably came to many people's minds after seeing the words Tempo and Justice together. In testing it was one of the hardest events to get full value out of. You burst down side schemes quick enough that you don't always have that many total schemes on board, so something to still bring full value when handling the main is preferred (Overwatch gets around this by being able to set up for later turns). I would definitely sub it in for four player games or Encounters that inherently have multiple schemes out like Red Skull, Venom Goblin, Tower Defense, etc.

Agile Flight didn't make the cut despite the innate Aerial as it is a lower tempo option, high resource cost, and the granularity is not needed as much thanks to our response in Photon form.

Adjusting Speeds

To adjust the deck for solo, I think Justice Served is a good replacement to Overwatch. It's less efficient but it works better to pivot to other forms after a big basic Thwart, though Ready to Rumble might also be better still if you sub out more thwart cards then not. Swift Retribution and Turn the Tide are good damage sources to sub in for your One Way or Another or excess Thwart cards, probably depends on the matchup which you bring, but villians with Higher SCH or low threat Thresholds on the main I'd suggest turn the tide. Higher Threat Thresholds makes Swift Retribution more attractive since it is "always on" compared to Turn the Tide and you're going to have the excess threat management

I felt like Justice outside of the Shield kit has been forgotten a lot this past wave, not really helped by Spider-Ham's pack not bringing a whole to the table for it, leaving the feeling there wasn't a "go-to" hero for the aspect. Spectrum also is often forgotten about with her "Vanilla" kit, but I think that lends her to being built well when really leaning into certain directions. Anyway, here's some fun stuff to visit before Mutant Genesis debuts. Take care everyone.