Captain Wonder Man (Legacy)

I wasn't expecting Wonder Man Justice to work quite as well as it did at the Marvel Champions UK event I built it for, but here we are. Let's get into the game plan. When I was looking at how to build him as Justice, I realised that he struck me weirdly the same way as Captain Marvel.

• Trickle healing every turn for resilience
• Huge energy resource generation
• Cares about having energy resources

And so, now we have Captain Wonder Man. And a captain's job is simple:

1. Find a Crew

There are 5 allies in this deck, and they are all specifically chosen for extremely simple reasons:

1. Banshee – Printed energy resource, Aerial, Minion control.
2. Firebird – Printed energy resource, Aerial.
3. Hawkeye – Printed energy resource, Avenger, Minion control.
4. Quasar – Printed energy resource, Aerial.
5. Sentry – Printed energy resource, Aerial.
6. Snowguard – Printed energy resource, Aerial (on 2 counters).

Notice the pattern? Yeah. Chance Encounter can come in clutch to make sure you always keep an Aerial ally in play so that you're almost never caught in a situation where you have nobody in play Stronger Together.

Fundamentally, this is the only part of the deck that requires it to be Justice. But it turns out this is a heck of an upside.

2. Find a Job

This deck is justice, and its job is to thwart, and Wonder Man has some interesting tools available to him to do that.

1. Even the Odds is surprisingly good in 4-player games, depending on the scenario. It's one of the only cards where the thwart scales up, but the cost doesn't, making it insanely efficient. I likely would replace the card with something like Yaw and Roll in player counts lower than 3, but at a 3+ player table, it's incredible value.
2. Everywhere All at Once – Once again, at higher player counts this grows ever more effective as you can end up with a lot more side schemes in play with more players in the game and more encounter cards revealed. Especially thanks to Sentry.

3. Keep Flying

The Power of Flight allows you to play 4 of your allies, Bombs Away, and Everywhere All at Once, so I could easily accept an argument for playing a third copy over something else in the deck. But it's tricky to find the space for it, as Wonder Man can do so many things so cheaply and effectively at once.

Wonder Man's core deck is very, very good defensively. He almost never needs to return to his alter ego form, so long as he can keep tucking energy events to keep healing. Unified Strike lets you use his ATK to boost the ATK of your allies without losing it, so you really only need to Defend and Thwart, and he has enough tools to thwart that you can afford to defend a bunch to use your allies to thwart instead of throwing them under the bus, rather than needing his basic hero powers often.

This means you can keep playing powerful allies, keep them in play, let them thwart, and potentially even hand out your Heroic Conditioning and Heroic Intuition to someone else who readies more than you if you're feeling extra charitable, because basic thwarting with Wonder Man himself is basically a luxury.

I debated leaving Quincarrier for someone else at the table, but this deck has one big weakness – paying anything other than energy. There's one universal truth: if an attachment can be paid for, you need to pay for it as soon as humanly possible. Getting trapped with only the ability to pay energy is... rough.

But generally, that's the entire deck.

1. Get an aerial ally in play
2. Keep plugging away with that ally using Stronger Together, and Unified Strike
3. Be Wonder Man. His cards are extremely powerful.
4. Use his AoE Thwarting events to keep the side schemes under control.
5. Do some aerial shenanigans.

Justice isn't Wonder Man's strongest aspect, but does it work? Absolutely. Justice has so much inherent energy that you can keep his powerful hero cards rolling in the resources they need, and the allies in justice have a lot to offer.

Here are some potential inclusions I considered if you want to tinker with your own version:

1. Captain Britain – Who cares about consequential damage? Just he's not got an Energy resource.
2. Cannonball – Again, no energy but if tinkered with enough, you could potentially ensure he never takes consequential damage.
3. Agile Flight – I actually genuinely love Agile Flight in 2-player, and you're always Aerial, but again, no printed Energy.
4. Dazzler – The iteration of this deck that was at the event actually had Dazzler because confuse is so good, but Banshee has taken her place on reflection to make the Aerial more consistent.
5. Storm – Could be so, so powerful in play. But 5 resources is steep.