The Posse (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Domino)

Get in loser, we're goin' gambling

Get by With a Little Help From Your Friends

Domino is probably the most intense brain-burn hero in Marvel Champions. Not only playing her, but also building a deck. There are just so many great cards you can include that have interactions with every other card in your deck, so you just have to shift and refocus a lot. This deck is the culmination of several testing attempts also with the help of some fellow players, man-is-obsolete, Schmendrix, Journeyman2, and VJakson, all of whom provided some great recommendations here. And that's really the goal of the deck: we're focused on one thing--getting the most value we can out of our Posse.

The Posse

The main posse members are: Domino herself, Atlas Bear, Diamondback, Outlaw, and White Fox. There are a couple honorary members: Lockjaw, Pip the Pug, and White Tiger, and they're all here to help Domino live her best life.

• Atlas Bear: remember that you can exhaust her to look at the top card of a player deck any time for no cost. If it's an event, you can choose to deal her 1 damage to draw it, but it's not mandatory even then. You can also put an event on top of your deck with things like her Hero ability and Pip the Pug and draw it right away.
• Diamondback: such a great minion-clearing ally. When you get lucky with things like a or even Jackpot!, the bullets start flying.
• Outlaw: comes in with toughness, so you can activate her extra times or even chump block. She can hit really hard as well, just like Diamondback, but against one target at a time.
• White Fox: doesn't thwart or attack for much, but she's basically FREE, which is just the best kind of price I love to pay for cards to be honest.
• Lockjaw is great for a resource dump, cos Domino just has so much money, and Pip always appreciates another doggo friend.
• White Tiger: not a Fox, but this Tiger has some real claws. She's great for just drawing cards (which help this deck so much), and also helps you from just completely resetting every time you play Call for Aid.

Well, do ya?

To complement all of this, you have a few support card: The Posse, Call for Aid, Make the Call, Med Lab, Pip the Pug, The Painted Lady, and Weapon X. Phew. So many! Oh, and Innovation too. Helps keep people healthy (mainly Atlas Bear and Diamondback, but sometimes Outlaw, and it's really fun healing Lockjaw for exactly 1 cos it means he can activate another time.

• The Posse: this is the card that truly ties everything together. Heal 1 damage from all Posse members and ready them.
• Call for Aid does a lot of work here. First of all, it finds White Tiger (if she's in your deck). If not, you can just use it to reset. While you're doing that, draw and Digging Deeps you find, oh and White Fox too. What's more, if you have The Painted Lady in play, you can basically use it as a tutor and just bank some important pieces to grab for next turn. You can do very similar things with Weapon X. Remember that if you discard Jackpot! this way, you have a lot of options, adding it to your hand, shuffling into your deck, or attaching it to The Painted Lady. They're all responses, so just choose the one that makes the most sense for you at the time.
• Make the Call lets you dig through your discard for allies to play. Doesn't combo with Lockjaw or White Tiger, unfortunately, but well, Lockjaw doesn't need it anyway, and White Tiger still has Call for Aid and Med Lab.
• Strength In Numbers: I waffled about including this card or not. It's such a no-brainer for so many decks, but it does get a lot of special value here. Atlas Bear and Diamondback don't always get used every round, Outlaw comes in play with a tough, Lockjaw has double consequential. Just the list goes on, but you can also do a pseudo-Avengers Assemble with The Posse by drawing 4 with all of them and readying (and healing!) them. And Domino usually has so many resources to spend, the card draw really helps a lot.
• Med Lab may seem a bit odd at first. It doesn't help with Atlas Bear or Diamondback if they are defeated from their abilities. However, it's really great for Outlaw and White Tiger. Outlaw definitely gets much more value when you just attack or thwart with her. Coming into play exhausted isn't great, but thankfully The Posse has you covered.
• One final note about Leadership Training, which has a few uses. If the top card of your discard happens to be Call for Aid, Make the Call, or Strength In Numbers, you can shuffle it away into your deck and pick something else for Neena's Alter-Ego ability. Additionally, you can use Pip the Pug and then shuffle it away if you don't want to immediately flip up and discard it to your Pistols or something. It takes a little bit of nuance to know the best time to use it, but I promise it's a great card here. At the very least, it gets to put those powerful Leadership events back into your deck.

Feelin' Lucky

Domino's main thing is about flipping the top card of your deck and seeing if it's wild or not (it's a little more complicated than that, but you'll get the hang of it). Thankfully, this deck is 50% , but Domino definitely has lots of ways to make that seem like 100%. Plus, you still get double value with the doubles Energy, Genius, and Strength, and triple word scores with Jackpot!

Her events A Good Workout (5-7 damage is great no matter what resource you hit), Luck Be a Lady (remember it counts every resource, so let you pick 2, Energy heals 4, and Jackpot! gets the full monty), Right Place, Right Time (removes 4-6 threat) all let you spin the wheel. She also has a few upgrades you can use every round.

First of all are Domino's Pistols and Sharpshooter. Sharpshooter is basically an extra version of either Pistol, but it doesn't have much value on its own. If you get one Pistol, Sharpshooter basically counts as your other Pistol. If you get all 3 down though, you're shooting with double barrels, and just do so much damage. Did I mention how they're FREE and how much I love paying FREE for stuff?

Probability Field is similar, but works on basic activations. It's important to note that it's every kind of basic activation. So you have 4-6 REC, 2-4 THW, 3-5 ATK, and 4-6 DEF. Remember again how all of that is FREE? Playing The Posse just lets you pop off even more.

Behind the scenes at FFG when designing Domino

Throw the Dice

The last really important thing to know about Domino is how absolutely rich she is. You'll notice a total lack of some common staples like Deft Focus or X-Gene. In spite of the large number of basic cards with high costs (that you can play quite often), you simply don't need The Power in All of Us. Additionally, most economy options are extra card draw because resource discounts don't help if you have lots of resources in hand.

Strength In Numbers, Avengers Mansion, The Painted Lady, and Weapon X all let you draw extra cards. You need them. Helicarrier is too expensive for 'sometimes I can't even use this', but Avengers Mansion is great value since it gives you a card. If you find it too expensive, try replacing with Moira MacTaggert, but she's perfectly capable of affording it, and the card draw every turn (and when you want) is very helpful. The Painted Lady is Alter-Ego only card draw, but with Call for Aid and Weapon X discarding through your deck, you get to choose the best cards to draw as they hit the discard.

There are a whopping 8 resources in the deck. Innovation helps keep your allies healthy (best targets again are Atlas Bear, Lockjaw, and Outlaw). Digging Deep is the star of the show though. Every time you roll the dice with one of Domino's events, or Probability Field, or her Pistols (or Sharpshooter), you can swap it with the top card of your deck if it's already in your hand. That basically acts as a card draw since you just redraw it anyway, but also doubles the effect on your cards. And Jackpot? Yeah, there's a lot you can do with that.

Play it for a non-event card, then swap it with the top card of your deck with Pip or draw it again with her Alter-Ego ability. If you don't need to spend it, put it on top of your deck with your Hero ability and shuffle it away. Every time you Call for Aid, Jackpot will still remain in your deck (whether you deck out or not), so there's a great chance you get it next turn. Or now! Try to see how many times in a row you can hit Jackpot off the top of your deck from Probability Field, her Pistols, and Sharpshooter. Once your deck is pretty thin, you've got a pretty good chance. Just remember that if you discard Jackpot, and it's the very last card in your deck, you still have to reset your whole deck. You don't get to just have a single card deck with Jackpot over and over (but it can still feel like that sometimes!). And remember if you draw it with Weapon X or if The Painted Lady is in play, you can choose where Jackpot ends up since they're all responses (and all optional). You can even leave in the discard! That might not seem like a great idea, but man-is-obsolete explains why that's a good idea here.

The best Jackpot play is using it to play something in Alter-Ego (like a Make the Call for one of your many Posse members), using Pip to put it on top of your deck, using Weapon X or Avengers Mansion to draw it, spending it on something else (that's not an event), then using Neena's Alter-Ego ability to to swap it with a card in hand. And remember that when you flip up to hero, you can swap it with a card in hand, and any of her discard effects will keep it back in the deck. Did I mention Domino is absolutely filthy stinking RICH?

Clarity of Purpose is also included because it's just so strong and is usable on anything. You have so much healing with Probability Field and that it is fairly inconsequential.

The Cutting Room Floor

Like I explained above. This deck went through a lot of testing and iterations. I tried many cards, so if you want to have a look at them, here are some in no particular order:

• Lead from the Front (her events kind of had the same effect)
• Team Training (I only wanted it to work on some allies, like Atlas Bear, Diamondback, or Lockjaw, but not White Fox or White Tiger. Maybe if you decide Med Lab isn't for you, this could be a good inclusion.
• Beast. Honestly he's so great here since he can always tutor for Jackpot!, but with the ally spaces so filled with Posse members, it's hard to find the room. I think if you go for a more good stuff Leadership build, definitely include him. I've also seen lots of success with a few other Leadership allies, but I'll let others discover and share their experiences with that.
• Symbiote Suit: Honestly not bad at all! Could be a good replacement for Avengers Mansion, but I did like the mid-turn card draw a lot. It's also got a resource, and now it's down to only 19 cards after I took it out (very sad indeed)
• Enhanced cards and Resourceful. They weren't bad. I think Enhanced Physique gets a lot of value in an Aggression Jarnbjorn build that I'll probably test at some point, but they didn't really get played. They're not always meant to, but Domino has so much control over the deck that it was never an issue.
• Stinger: honestly I didn't test this, but it does seem like it could be good if you want to lean even more into Strength In Numbers.
• Deft Focus and X-Gene. You just don't need them all the time. They both have upsides over the other: X-Gene has a resource, Deft Focus can be used on Lucky and Good and Probability Field to help set up. In the end, neither ended up being necessary. If you're scared about the damage from Clarity of Purpose, find the one you like best, or go to 41 cards and include both!
• Player Side Schemes. They just weren't necessary. They're great! Absolutely, but Build Support can't get Avengers Mansion. It's helpful for finding Pip the Pug or The Painted Lady though. Superpower Training wasn't necessary since there are so many ways to find all of your stuff. Get your Pistols and can't play them? Just spend them now on something and then put them back in your deck with Pip or into your hand with your Alter-Ego ability. It's easy-peasy lemon squeezie. There's probably some more I'm forgetting but please experiment as much as you can! Don't be afraid to go nuts. There's a lot to unlock with this hero. Enjoy