Self-Improvement

Man's Search for Meaning

Black Panther is struggling to compete with modern heroes. Let's be honest here, when's the last time you played him? Maybe with some focus on self-improvement, he just might be able to be viable once again.

^ He could certainly improve his status

Let's hit the books.

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Special thanks to SC0E for some suggestions around Drop Kick that helped make this deck work!

Skip to Deck Strategy to get past the kit analysis

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Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Black Panther has aged the worst out of the core set heroes.

Don't believe me? Here's what other heroes got:

• Captain Marvel got S.H.I.E.L.D. support, more options and somehow even a card that benefits from being a Soldier
• Spider-Man got Genius support and so many aspect cards that work well with Spider-Sense
• She-Hulk got RRG 1.5 to keep attack buffs on the board and tools to encourage her flip-heavy playstyle. Self-Promo
• Iron Man got a million Tech upgrades, Genius buffs, and Aerial support

In contrast, Black Panther got:

• A single Wakanda ally
• The same Avenger benefits every core set hero got over time

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He's just not that strong of a hero using today's standards. Why?

• No status in kit
• A mediocre upgrade in Tactical Genius that gives you 2 threat removed from a scheme and costs at least 5ER! to trigger
• No alter-ego ability and a very lackluster hero ability
  • The Golden City partially compensates for the lack of an alter-ego ability, but thwart is so bad you'll be struggling to go to alter-ego
• Traits that haven't gotten support since we moved on from Avengers
  • Yes, I know that Atlas Bear exists, I'm talking about hero traits
• A kit that is so unique that essentially nothing can alter Wakanda Forever! or Black Panther upgrades to boost them

Every game plays out more or less the same.

1. Get out all of your Black Panther upgrades as fast as possible
2. Trigger Wakanda Forever!
3. Repeat until game is won

I find it grows stale pretty quickly. Sure, triggering Wakanda Forever! multiple times is fun and unique but that same loop every game ends up feeling repetitive fast.

Similarly, deckbuilding for him is tough because he is so in-kit focused (maybe more than Hawkeye even). The best way forward seems to be turbo-draw decks to increase your likelihood of drawing into Wakanda Forever!.

If he was designed today, we'd see all sort of differences.

• His basic attack would probably have piercing
• Tactical Genius would thwart for at least 2, and maybe up to 4
• Wakanda Forever! might have a different trait than Tactic
• Energy Daggers would probably be replaced with something that let you put a status card on a character
  • This would actually be pretty neat ngl

Some people argue that he's actually still really solid. He's a "money hero" - his superpower is all about Vibranium. While having extra doubles is certainly helpful, even this has become less unique over time.

• We've got heroes from Rocket Raccoon to Gambit with double resources
• We have heroes like Ant-Man and Ironheart with resources (Pym Particles and Stroke of Genius that let you draw a card after using them.

At least Vibranium is double wild, which is still helpful.

The biggest reason to play him now is actually Shuri, who can pull any upgrade into your hand. She's fantastic and her versatility grows with each upgrade that releases.

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No More Mr. Nice Guy (Deck Strategy)

I've been trying to make a Black Panther deck focused on Honed Technique for a while but it just hasn't clicked, as some of the aggression events just weren't up to the task. With Full-Body Charge out, this is finally in a place where this is viable enough for solo play (though is better in multiplayer).

This deck was built to boost strong aggression attack events with Honed Technique that can spill over on the villain through overkill. There's a focus here on minion farming to both compensate for the lack of thwart options and provide minion targets for our overkill. We've also included just about every Busted Basic Ally ® to let us stay in hero form for longer so you don't have to flip regularly, though can make very impactful turns when you do. Finally we've got a lot of options for resource dumps here so we can make the most out of every turn and aren't throwing away cards.

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How to Win Friends and Influence People (Deck Setup)

Mulligan targets are pretty straightforward here because the plan here relies on only a few cards getting in play.

• The Golden City pretty much pays for itself. For turns where you do flip down, you'll be glad you put it out
• Honed Technique will boost all of your aggression events. Fundamental to the build
• Shuri will let you grab Honed Technique at best and at worst you can grab an upgrade to use as a resource
• Hall of Heroes is great to get out fast, especially for scenarios where a minion starts in play
• Professor X/Nick Fury. Busted ®

For your Black Panther upgrade from your setup, I'd prioritize what you need depending on the scenario.

• Vibranium Suit for scenarios where flipping down is risky
• Panther Claws for scenarios where you need to a lot of damage/ will get minion swarmed
• Tactical Genius and Energy Daggers if you don't want to focus on these upgrades and just want a resource to get other cards on the board

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The Art of War

Black Panther historically focuses on chip damage through Wakanda Forever!. While that's nice, sometimes you need a lot of burst damage and don't want to spend the 12 ER to populate the board to make the most out of Wakanda Forever!.

With Honed Technique, we've got options for a lot of damage at once. There are 3 main targets here for strong burst attacks.

• Full-Body Charge can boost us up to a 12 ATK with overkill.
  • Great for guard minions!
  • Also great as a standalone event with no minion in play
• Relentless Assault can boost up to a 7 ATK with overkill, limited to minions
• Drop Kick can get us up to a 7 ATK

For Honed Technique to buff our numbers for these events, you have to pay with a resource but two of these events specify resources being spent for extra benefits.

For Relentless Assault, we can trigger both at once with any of the doubles (including The Power of Aggression) to pick both and resources (one of each, to be clear)

For Drop Kick, all resources must be resources in order to trigger its extra ability. With that, you have a choice:

• Pay with all resources to stun the villain and get a card
• Pay with a resource for 7 ATK with no extra effects

Both can be helpful depending on scenario!

If we look at the resource split here we're even with 15 resources and 15 resources alongside 10 resources so you'll have no trouble grabbing either or resources to meet those extra conditions. It's also very easy to meet the requirement to play Honed Technique.

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With 2 out of the 3 events also benefiting from minions, we've got a couple of minion farming tools...

• Angela for a free ally in the process
• Looking for Trouble for 3 threat off of the main scheme

and ways to capitalize off of those minions.

• Chase Them Down for 2 threat off of any scheme
• Hall of Heroes to grab cards during our inevitable flip to alter-ego

We also have a new unlikely way to tutor minions: Standard 3

I've been testing this deck exclusively with Standard 3 and almost every game I'm seeing Killmonger. While this can be a big downside to some, he's actually pretty easy to deal with here. Despite having a solid HP of 5, his only downside is not taking damage from Black Panther upgrades. Thankfully, that's not where most of our damage is coming from anyways!

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Thinking, Fast and Slow

While I wouldn't say this deck is slow, I'd say it gets a lot faster when Black Panther get a chance to go to alter-ego every few turns.

Hero turns:

• Playing one to two cards, mostly maintaining the board, chipping away at the villain
• Spending extra resources to bring out Lockjaw, buff Machine Man or trigger Plan B to ping off a tough

Alter-Ego turns:

• Having more cards in both of your hands than fingers.
• Making bad decisions because it's hard to comprehend the best play with so many options

The momentum is key and to set us up, we need occasional safe access to alter-ego.

We have a few tools to help us get to alter-ego - no real surprises here because we don't have any other confuse in aggression!

• Professor X's enter play ability
• Psylocke's interrupt

Once we get there:

• Heal if you need to
• Trigger The Golden City
• Spend resources to get out Lockjaw or buff Machine Man
• Keep any high cost cards you'd like to play like Full-Body Charge or Nick Fury.

After the villain phase, you're going to have way too many decisions to make because of the absurd amount of cards you're going to draw.

• 6 hand size in alter-ego
• The Golden City's two cards
• Hall of Heroes's 3 cards

11 cards. Just close out the game already!

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Can't Hurt Me

Despite having retaliate, Black Panther doesn't want to get hit all that much. He's great for pinging tough off of minions or Ultron Drones but doesn't have enough healing in hero form to consistently take villain hits (and minion ones).

We've complicated things even further with Full-Body Charge where we almost want to stay in that risky sweet spot of 5 health and under to get overkill benefits at times.

We've got a bunch of blockers here that help him do that, all while getting and going .

Enter the Busted Basic Allies ®:

• Ironheart, card draw
• Mockingbird, stun
• Nick Fury, card draw
• Professor X, confuse
• Spider-Man, burst damage/thwart

These are the overpowered allies that somehow find your way into every deck. Most will enter play, trigger an overpowered ability and then immediately chump. Don't blame me here, blame the lack of decent status and card draw that aggression has. What, did you expect me to put in Critical Hit?

We've also got other allies that round us out.

• Angela to grab minions
• Lockjaw to be discarded
• Machine Man to dump resources
• Psylocke for even more confuse

I'm really trying not to include some of the Busted Basic Allies ® in every one of my builds. I'd love for this deck to have closer to 6 allies, utilize more stun tools and have better options for thwarting. Unfortunately because aspect design refuses to give us new thwart tools or stun in aggression, I have to rely on the basic allies to do both.

With that said, I don't mind putting in overpowered allies in heroes that are struggling to stay on par with the power creep that has happened over time. Hey, at least it's not a recursion deck!

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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

So uh, what about all of Black Panther's signature kit?

Ignore it.

Really.

Okay maybe play Vibranium Suit to help you stay alive and Panther Claws is alright.

You can ignore the rest of the upgrades and be absolutely fine.

I treat the other Black Panther upgrades as resource dumps. If one is in my hand and I can play it, I will, though mainly just to thin the deck.

By the end of most games, I find that I have Panther Claws and Vibranium Suit out but nothing else. There's almost never a reason to play Energy Daggers and Tactical Genius is extremely scenario dependent.

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Atomic Habits

You can really change the number of each aggression event based on the scenario. In scenarios with a lot of built in minions maybe you want no copies of Looking for Trouble and want more Relentless Assault. In scenarios where more stun may be required you can add more Drop Kick. I keep them at the current numbers and find this works pretty well but did a lot of experimentation as I tested this.

• Avengers Mansion stalls the game. I'd rather focus on alter-ego access to trigger The Golden City
• Clobber is a good event and can be boosted to 5 with Honed Technique but was outclassed by other events here that could overkill onto the villain
• Crew Quarters ended up getting cut as it wasn't an upgrade. Could be justified easily
• Critical Hit is overcosted and has no traits. Pass
• Fusillade isn't bad here though I do tend to focus on Vibranium Suit first which isn't a Weapon. The lack of overkill potential means that Relentless Assault has a slight edge over this. You could swap if you like!
• Into the Fray is a good thwart event and can be boosted with Honed Technique but all that excess damage isn't going to the villain. I could see this making an appearance if you needed to help out with thwart in a multiplayer game
• Jarnbjorn is a nice alternative for Plan B and has the benefit of being able to be triggered multiple times in a turn.
  • With the focus on high cost attack events instead of Wakanda Forever! I was only triggering it once a turn so it wasn't offering more value
  • It is slightly less consistent with the focus on resources.
• Lock and Load was in here for a while as a Chase Them Down target. Ultimately thwart is so limited and the amount of doubles is so high that it's easier to just pay the cost to play the Black Panther Weapon upgrades than thwarting a side scheme to get them out
• Marked is a 0 cost upgrade for Shuri to grab but so much overkill already made me feel like this was redundant. Could find a spot in certain scenarios!
• Moment of Triumph could be justified. I found using Vibranium Suit and basic recovering to be more consistent. In addition this had the potential to heal too much and we want to hit that sweet spot where we can trigger overkill off of Full-Body Charge!
• No Quarter and Follow Through are interesting ideas, though I rely so much on basic allies that I end up just skipping past them. If aggression gets some better allies, maybe I'll reconsider
• Quincarrier is helpful for the resource to trigger Honed Technique or Drop Kick but with all of the focus on and resources already I rarely struggled to get the correct type of resource
• Spider-Girl, Throg, Vivian and War Machine are all good with this build to help chump if needed and trigger some good enter play events. I ended up scrapping them for the Busted Basic Allies ® and focusing more on stun

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Meditations

Being able to take down Magneto with Black Panther is good enough for me. Hitting 12 ATK in a turn feels really solid!

I wish aggression had some better access to status for heroes like this so there I wouldn't have to choose between and resources for the only decent stun, Drop Kick. I don't love including all of the basic allies but for a hero/aspect pairing like this, it ends up feeling necessary. Might revisit in the future if aggression gets better cards!