Marvel Champions: Captain America Hero Pack Strategies and Breakdown

Fantasy Flight Games and Asmodee‘s Marvel Champions came out of the box strong with 5 powerful heroes, but it recently added two new heroes to take on the forces of evil. We’re here to tackle the first of those new packs, which is themed around the star-spangled Avenger himself Captain America. The deck comes with a set of 15 Captain America specific cards, including upgrades to his armor, a location support card, and of course his trademark shield, which as you might imagine is rather important when playing as the Avengers leader. If you’re curious about how Cap plays and what to expect from his new Hero deck, you’ve come to the right place.

First up is Cap’s identity card, and the hero side is as well rounded as you get, with a Thwart, Attack, and Defense of 2 across the board. Cap is also rather resilient and allows you to discard a card from your hand to ready Cap if you’ve already used him, which definitely comes in handy.

Cap’s Alter-Ego side also comes in handy, though the health recovery is a bit low at 3. Still, the Living Legend ability is extremely handy, which allows you to search the deck and discard pile for Cap’s shield upgrade card and add it directly to your hand.

You’ll want to take advantage of that too, as with his Shield upgrade Cap gets a +1 to defense and gains the retaliate 1 sill, which allows him to counterattack someone that hits him. That couples well with Cap’s Helmet Upgrade, which lets you grasp at life when you are about to die and sets your hit points to 1 instead of 0. Last but not least you’ll want to have at least 1 of Cap’s Super Soldier Serum in your hand, which allows you to exhaust it and generate a fist resource, which will give you a sweet bonus if you can play the Heroic Strike Event Card afterward.

Other helpful cards are Steve’s Apartment, which allows you to exhaust it and draw a card and heal 1 damage (especially useful with Steve’s low recovery) and the Shield Block Event Card, which lets you interrupt on defense. When you are about to take any amount of damage, you can just get ride of Cap’s Shield and avoid all of it, and then on your next turn just switch to your Alter-Ego and use that ability to get your Shield back.

Cap’s Hero Pack comes with several new allies to work with, which include Falcon, Hawkeye, Wonder Man, Agent 13, and the amazing Squirrel Girl. Out of those the best value for cost are Squirrel Girl, who costs 2 and deals 1 damage to every enemy upon entering play) and Hawkeye, who costs 3 and comes with four arrow counters that will deal 2 damage to new minions in play.

As we spoke about before, Cap uses the Leadership Deck, which allows quite a bit of boosting of allies and your fellow players. One particular combo is quite effective if you have all the pieces, and it starts with the Honorary Avenger Card, which allows you to attach the Avengers keyword to a friendly character. It’s cheap too at 0 points, though depending on who your allies are you’ll need several of them.

Next, you should try and grab the Quinjet card, which only costs 1 point and has you place 1 Time Counter on it after your turn begins. The card allows you to put an Avenger Ally from your hand into play with a cost equal to or less than the number of Time Counters, which means you can just pay using the Counters instead of using your own Resource Cards.

All of this is so you can add more allies, and once you are comfortable with the crew you’ve got you can use your Strength in Numbers Card. This card allows you to exhaust any number of allies you have and draw a card for each of them, so if you have 3 Allies you can exhaust them and get 3 cards for your hand. Then you can finish things off by using the Avengers Assemble! Card, which allows you to ready each Avenger character you control, and until the end of the phase they get a +1 to both Thwart and Attack. Since all of yours will have the Avengers trait, you will ready all of them.

Alright, that’s the breakdown on Captain America, but you can check out more of our Marvel Champions coverage right here, and feel free to hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Marvel and tabletop!