Red Sidekick

Deck concept

My first Sidekick deck used She-Hulk (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/39248/how-the-she-hulk-got-her-sidekick-1.0) and playing that deck made me really conscious of how well Sidekick works with any hero that makes a lot of basic recoveries as part of their default play style. When I use She-Hulk I aim to take the villain's full hit every turn, and then flip and recover. When I play Ms Marvel I aim to do the same thing. With Sidekick that makes your signature ally essentially immortal, which is pretty powerful.

Card choices

She-Hulk is a great fit for Leadership. Ms Marvel, alas, rather less so: she needs lots of attack and thwart events which Leadership just can't offer. There's All for One but that has no synergy with keeping Red Dagger in play permanently. Push Ahead is probably the least Ms Marvel-friendly card ever written. So we're going to be using Ms Marvel's own Big Hands and Sneak By.

Our card choices do a couple of things to help make that work:

• Firstly, maximise the supports and upgrades to thin the deck, so we see the 6 events we want as often as possible.
• Secondly, use Ghost-Spider, Kaluu, and Gamora to increase the supply of events (which means Make the Call so we can get all those allies into play).
• Thirdly, you can't go wrong with Champions Mobile Bunker as a way to see more cards and find the event you need when you need it.

While the supports and upgrades are mostly about deck-thinning, there are some of them that play a more significant role in their own right:

• The Triskelion makes it much easier to find room for White Fox when we discard her, or to use Nakia Bahadir to play an ally on turns we start in Hero form (turns we start in alter-ego you can always find a way to use Nakia).
• Down Time and Endurance are a classic combo for any hero who is taking and recovering a lot of damage during the game.
• Clarity of Purpose brings endless value given that we aim to take and recover a ton of damage anyway.
• Inspired adds a ton of value to Red Dagger (Reinforced Suit offers a lot less, but it can still be useful when Teen Spirit discards Sidekick...)
• And of course the three Personas are essential to any Ms Marvel deck. It is a good idea to stuff a Big Hand or a Sneak By under Bruno Carrelli every chance you get because it adds a lot to the consistency of the deck to have them ready there.

You'll notice I have no double-resource cards here. They went out in play testing after too many hands with 3 or 4 resource cards in them. Teen Spirit and Gamora left no doubt in my mind that Digging Deep were the ones to keep.

Playing the deck

Ms Marvel has an effective card size of 7 in alter ego, increasing to 8 once Aamir Khan is in play, so she can set up her key pieces blisteringly fast. Aamir Khan can also recycle any Ms Marvel card that you can't afford to play when you first see it, so you should be able to get all her key cards into play on the first deck pass, except possibly Sidekick itself. That isn't a disaster if it happens because there's Reinforced Suit as a back-up, and Red Dagger's own when defeated interrupt as a back-up to the back-up.

Once those are in place, continue to play as many supports, allies, and upgrades as you can afford. It depends on the scenario, of course, but the thinner the deck gets the more consistent it is so in general a phase of building is worthwhile before you let the villain get to their final phase. As the game advances you will then naturally find more events coming to hand, and more resources available to play them.

Of course having Red Dagger available to thwart or attack for 3 every turn adds a ton of consistency whatever you have in your hand.

I generally take the villain's first hit every time without much thought about it, and only consider defending with an ally if the villain attacks a second time in the phase. The obvious exception is with Professor X or if I have a Wiggle Room in hand, since Wiggle Room is such a great card. With this deck I actively want to recover every other turn, so there's no great benefit to taking lower amounts of damage.

How to lose with this deck

The best way to lose with this deck, no question, is to Teen Spirit past Endurance a few times and then draw Mob Mentality.

The second best way is to prioritise early damage on the villain over playing supports and upgrades. Of course you need to clear out minions as they come in, but that early damage on the villain doesn't help with the consistency of the deck and leaves you at greater risk of drawing something from the encounter deck that you have nothing in hand to deal with.

Conclusion

I don't think this is the most effective Ms Marvel deck ever, but it is definitely viable in true solo expert so I feel like the Red Dagger/Sidekick combo is proven. Hopefully someone better at this game can come up with an even better way to make it work.