Snow White and the 7 Allies

Ally swarm decks are nothing new, but NeXt Evolution did add some new toys to expand it a bit. And by expand, I mean put a whole seventh ally down on the table!

Is it that much more effective than 6 allies? No. Do you have the table space for it. Also no. Is it fun anyway? YES!

So we start with 3 allies, Stinger gets us a 4th for free, and The Triskelion a 5th. Now there are 3 basic cards that extend the ally limit further, Avengers Tower, Utopia, and Knowhere. Where the first two only increase the ally limit if all our allies are Avengers or X-men respectively, Knowhere works for any allies, but is only playable by Guardians.

So let's not play it.

Instead, we'll cheat it in with Build Support, which lets us bypass the Guardian restriction. With that and Avengers Tower we have ourselves a full table of 7 Avengers allies. We've got a mix here of smaller allies with helpful enter play effects like Kaluu, White Tiger, and Squirrel Girl, as well as some heavier hitters like Captain America and our biggest offensive weapon, Giant-Man.

But after working so hard to get all of these allies played, we don't want them to just go away due to some pesky consequential damage. So let's go ahead and turn it off! Our other new toy is Mission Planning which lets our allies swing away without fear of hurting themselves. Mighty Avengers gives all our allies +1 damage or thwart, then Avengers Assemble! lets them all ready and adds another +1 for some big turns. Once the allies are out, Captain Marvel's great card draw and economy will let you play Mission Planning and Avengers Assemble! turn after turn.

Other considerations:

The allies selected are a mix of cheap and expensive, but Stinger is the only necessary one, so you can swap out a few as long as they're Avengers. Black Panther could grab Mission Planning or Avengers Assemble! until you're ready, or Vision could do some damage with an extra resource.

Band Together is always worth considering in swarm decks. It's not as necessary with Captain Marvel because of her great economy, but other heroes might find it useful.

Speaking of, the concept will work for any Avenger hero you want to try it with, as long as they're beefy enough to take some hits and have the resources to pay for some of the expensive allies. Captain America, Black Panther, or Spider-Man could also work, but their signature allies aren't Avengers, so watch out for that.

The Build Support + Knowhere concept would also work with an X-Men hero by swapping out Avengers Tower and Utopia. Cyclops in particular would allow him to select from a wide variety of allies and Uncanny X-Men will make them easier to play. However using Stinger is much more work, meaning he's probably better sticking with 6 allies. But once you've had 7 allies, are you really going to be able to go back again?

Thanks for reading. Have fun!