A Deck Builder's Guide to Breaking Befuddle

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Welcome to the beginning of a deck building series trying to make bad cards good. Why would you want to do that? Keep reading, my friend.

One of the things I love most about Marvel Champions is that the competitive level of the game can be set by those playing. In my Magic the Gathering days, I often lamented that if I played the goofy or thematic deck I wanted to play then it would just get trashed by the decks playing the "good cards." But Marvel Champions' co-op experience and difficulty variability makes it possible to change the deck building focus.

As a person who loves the intricacies and challenges of deck building, it feels like a whole horizon has opened up!

The most often deck building focus is building decks to compete at the maximum difficulty level. Inherently fun, I agree. But there is another option: using your deck building skills to create synergies with bad cards that make them playable, and even good.

Today's question: Can anything good come from Befuddle? Actually, for that matter, can anything good come from Civic Duty and Brains Over Brawn?

Here are three underplayed cards that often get cut or not even considered. Can we overcome the challenge of making them good?

THE CHALLENGES:

Befuddle is pretty narrow in what it does. It only works for minions, and it doesn't add any bonus to the attack. Your THW has to be higher than your attack, and even then you are just using it instead of attacking. Usually that means it is 1 ER for 1 extra damage.

Brains Over Brawn really needs a 4+ THW before it becomes worth the cost. Otherwise it is just Haymaker that requires you to have thwarted first...

Civic Duty increases your THW +1 for 2 ER, so you need to be able to use that THW at least twice just to break even, and 3+ times to make it good.

THE SOLUTION:

These three actually synergize quite well together. Civic Duty gives you some extra THW to boost Brains Over Brawn's power, and Brains Over Brawn allows you to get one more use out of Civic Duty's pump. Civic Duty also makes Befuddle more desirable, and since both of them benefit from readying your hero and getting more use out of that higher thwart. Also, since Civic Duty and Befuddle are both upgrades, this allows you to set things up a little more so that you don't just have to draw the perfect hand for these cards to work together.

What we need from there is extra readying abilities, extra THW boosts, and a little bit of card draw to speed along set up.

HERO of CHOICE?

Heroes that have 3+ THW from the cards in their kit are Captain America, Wasp (Giant) Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Spider-Ham, Phoenix, Rogue, Cable, and Psylocke.

VillainTheory has an excellent Rocket Raccoon Befuddle Deck, but I think there are other synergies that can make use of Brains Over Brawn and Civic Duty as well.

Of that list, Captain America, Rocket Raccoon, Star-Lord, Spider-Ham, and Cable have ways to ready themselves in their kit. This makes Civic Duty better and allows you to do more than just an alternate action on your turn when you Befuddle a minion.

Of this list I chose Spider-Ham because I think the additional ways to ready him that web-warrior allies afford are the most effective. Additionally, Symbiote Suit and the art in Brains Over Brawn is most flavorful within the web-warrior theme. For a second option, see below.

NOTABLE SYNERGIES:

• Organic Webbing is probably the best card for what we want to be doing here. You are gonna want to save tune counters for this.
• Petulant Pig helps you get tune counters, and both it and One Way or Another will help with a more efficient set up.
• Spider-Man and Justice Served help you ready more frequently, and Spider-Man readies Organic Webbing.
• Symbiote Suit, Heroic Intuition, and Surveillance Specialist off of Specialized Training give you the THW boost necessary to make things happen.
• With this deck naturally wanting to be swingy with high THW, it is more efficient in multiplayer. However, it can still do well solo.

Some may say that since the web-warrior theme is considered one of the most powerful strategies that I am only making bad cards good by playing good cards. This is why I chose not to play all of the good web-warrior cards (Ghost-Spider, Spider-Man, Web of Life and Destiny especially). If you are still not convinced, try this alternate hero below:

Alternate Hero Choice:

If you don't care for Spider-Ham's goofy play style or want to prove that this package can still be good apart from the web-warrior theme, Captain America with the same list except allies works great as well. If you want a little more versatility, switch x3 Justice Served with x3 Earth's Mightiest Heroes and use Quake, Blade, Wiccan, and Speed as your allies.