Marvel Champions: Dr. Strange Review

So it's not been much of a secret that Dr. Strange is incredibly strong. Everyone outside the US has been raving about this character for awhile. So, being in the US and all, I finally got my copy! As always, this review is about whether or not I think the deck is viable out of the box and my initial impressions of the character. I'm certainly not good enough at this game to provide any real in-depth analysis. But I can certainly talk about playing the deck out of the box!

The actual character cards for Doctor Strange are... crazy. Just nuts. He covers practically every base, even allowing you to grab cards out of your discard pile, as well as covering a lot bases. Playing the deck I felt like I usually had an answer for anything that was coming at me. Strange's actual deck lacks any and all forms of damage dealing. In fact, his actual deck, while it's good, isn't anything earth-shattering.

It's that freaking Invocation deck that makes Strange just bonkers.

See, there's a side deck that Dr. Strange has with him, of five cards. You flip the top card over. It can be cast by paying the resource cost on it, effectively giving you an additional card in your hand that you can use while you're in Hero form. Most of the time you just discard the card and then flip over the next top one, but it's not terribly hard to figure out how to manipulate the spell deck. And they're all incredible. There's literally a card that lets you swap out a condition on a target for any condition you want. Any. The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak does -and I quote, keep in mind this costs you two resources to do it - "Stun an enemy and deal 7 damage to it. Place this card in the Invocation deck discard pile"

7 damage. With a Stun. For two resources.

And before anyone says "Yeah, but it circulates back to the Invocation Deck discard pile!" there are cards in Dr. Strange's deck which allow him to keep this deck on top of the Invocation deck and keep using it. Dr. Strange can hit with this sucker a good two or three times if he's lucky.

And that's exactly what I did.

Ultron never saw me coming.

So much scrap.

So if you know what you're doing Dr. Strange is probably the strongest hero we have right now. But how does the rest of the deck play? I'm really not a fan of pairing Dr. Strange with Protection, which is what the default deck does. I personally ground against it the whole way. Don't get me wrong, the cards in this deck are the absolute friggin' bomb, and I immediately cannibalized most of the Protection cards in here for my Spider-Man Protection (making it a thousand times better!). There are may be people who would enjoy Dr. Strange as an entry into the hobby, but I know I sure wouldn't.

That being said the Protection cards are just amazing.