Multiplayer Perspective: I’ve been stuck debating how good this card is since its release. The most common arguments for it are Hero synergies (Spiderman, Spiderham, Drax) and enabling the usage of defense cards on your own turn. These are good reasons to use the card but I think this card’s true strength lies in accelerating build-out.

The perfect defense strategy revolves around flooding your board with lots of key upgrades that trigger effects on the villain’s turn (Electrostatic armor, Dauntless, Hard to Ignore). These upgrades are incredibly cheap and efficient but it can take a full deck cycle to get them all out on board. Taunt helps you hit them faster via drawing 3 cards and giving you a reason to flip down. Flipping down will give you access to even more resources accelerating build-out further. Using this play style I’d argue Taunt’s synergy extends beyond the select few hero abilities, to any hero with impactful Upgrades, Supports, and Alter-Ego abilities.

I often find myself struggling to play this card amidst all the flashier moves I could make. That being said there definitely is a consistent value that this card offers. The most ideal usage of this card is preventing a complete miss with Hex Bolt. If you land a “Remove 2 Threat” while there is no threat you can modify that effect to suit your needs. Really the ability to modify which effects go off at all is great, but preventing a miss is the best. On turns where you know you won’t have a Hex Bolt to play the next best application is damage mitigation. If you are playing multiplayer (and if solo-play will allow) Scarlet Witch likes to flip down. Her ability allows you to discard 2 to draw 2 which is super useful for optimizing turns and hitting your priority cards. Having access to damage mitigation that doesn’t require exhausting to defend encourages you to face tank hits and flip more frequently. All in all Scarlet Witch’s Crest is a solid card that you should feel good about getting out.

This is one of the few cards in the game that has real game-breaking potential. This is due to the fact that from a value perspective allies as a card type outclass every other card type in the game, and this card allows you to cheat in allies ignoring their cost. Due to this you are going to want to deck-build around high cost or high impact allies such as: Giant Man, Beta Ray Bill, Nick Fury to name a few.

Let’s evaluate those allies based on the best things they can do, ignoring their ability to block (except for Nick). If Summoning Spell hits Giant Man you’ve spent 2 for 8 damage and 4 thwart. If you hit Nick you’ve spent 2 to draw 3, thwart 2, and block. If you hit Beta Ray Bill you’ve spent 2 for 12 damage and 8 potential threat removal. Swinging Web Kick is considered to be a standard for damage comparison at 3-cost 8 damage. Not particularly impressive compared to what allies can do.

This card is trait-locked and limited to 1 copy as an attempt to gate some of its power, but 3 out of the 4 Mystic Heroes all have methods of fishing this card back out of the discard pile: Sanctum, Quantum Magic, and Magik’s alter ego ability.

During deck piloting you will want to be actively tracking what allies are left in your deck, but that’s a small chore for the results this card yields. Assuming you’ve deck built correctly, playing this card will be the best thing you can do almost every turn.

There are a few ways to view/use this card depending on play style. One option is to treat this like Plan B and use it only when stuck with a dead card in hand. In those instances the resource cost is negligible and this can be viewed as 3 free damage (aside from the set-up cost). In this instance playing one gun makes sense for longer games, but not two. The other use is for straight rush strategies. The final notable use is Repurpose fodder. Star Lord is one of the few heroes that can reliably pay for and keep multiple 3 cost tech upgrades on board. With enough set-up there is a chance that you could do 50 plus damage via Repurpose/Leading blow.

For having to have a specific trait to play this card, I wish it did something less plain than just damage - and not very efficient damage at that. Avengers are kind of in a weird place because they have a lot of different themes within them, but no one single theme that has enough cards that you would be able to build an entire deck around. You can tell that after the Guardians came out, they started to make trait-locked cards matter more and they made building around traits much more worth it.

In that regard, if you've played the Lord of the Rings LCG, the Avengers in Marvel Champions kind of feel like the Rohan cards from LOTR. They both came out early on in their respective game's lifetime, they got a few design focuses that never really came together into one cohesive deck, and a lot of the trait-based restrictions on their cards are primarily based on theme reasons rather than gameplay mechanics reasons.