Marvel Duel - The Best Subdecks (And How to Use Them)
Like with many other CCGs, Marvel Duel has many, many different cards that the player can collect. In fact, at the moment of launch, it has a little over 200 different cards, all of which fall into different categories and types. Moreover, some cards have awesome synergies with others, while some are more independent and simply require more building up in order to become useful.
However, while variety is often great when it comes to these card games, having more options generally results in many different mediocre alternatives, with only a few builds being actually meta. Luckily, this only matters if you’re serious about going competitive, which is an entirely different beast. But if you’re interested in casual playing to pass the time, well, then you’re going to find lots to enjoy in Marvel Duel.
In this guide, we’re going to talk about the different subdecks in the game, as well as some interesting cards that you should definitely take a look at when building your decks.
The Different Subdecks
As we mentioned in our beginner’s guide, your deck consists of at least 40 cards, which are divided into 4 subdecks: 3 of these subdecks can be different factions, with up to 10 cards of each, while the other can be a neutral subdeck. However, you can have up to 4 copies of the same card without this affecting the limit of cards in each subdeck.
Some subdecks work better alongside others, which is why you’ll want to start experimenting with different synergies. At the very least, your deck will likely have a few neutral cards to supplement your other subdecks since these usually pair well with anything.
Here’s a summary of what each subdeck can do:
Stark Industries
A self-contained subdeck with many ways to upgrade their own cards, while offering little in the way of interaction with other subdecks. These cards offer a balance of power, armor, and Guard cards that can go well in any deck as fillers.
One shortcoming about this subdeck is that, while their characters are focused more around defensive applications, they’re a bit lacking in power. However, they also have many interesting interactions with the shop; many Stark Industries characters actually receive a boost to their stats whenever you upgrade the shop, so they’re fairly easy to upgrade early on if you manage your gems correctly. In other words, this deck is all about managing your cards and interacting with the shop in order to upgrade your units on the field.
Spider-Verse
A subdeck with lots of self-interaction, allowing you to either power up other Spider-Verse cards, or even summon a few of them when certain conditions are met. This subdeck is ideal for aggro builds since they rely on numbers to overwhelm their enemies early on. However, they can also significantly power up each other in time, which helps them to scale well into the late game.
While most of the Spidey characters can interact with each other, this subdeck also features some villain cards that can stand on their own. For Instance, the Mysterio card is great for dealing with powerful enemies due to his Last Words skill, through which he can transform a random unit into a weak 2-power Black Symbiote. Similarly, other villain characters can be used to round out your frontline while you power up your main Attackers such as Doppelganger Miles or Symbiote Spider-Man.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Like with Spider-Verse, GotG is all about powering up the cards of this subdeck via several different interactions. However, while the former has several mechanics for summoning new units, or turning fallen characters into different weaker character cards when they fall in battle, GotG is more centered around permanently boosting stats via Triumph conditions and by defeating other enemies in combat.
For instance, the Star Lord card can give +3 Power to all characters whenever a GotG unit defeats an enemy. Meanwhile, Mantis features a similar effect, but only benefits the unit who defeated the enemy. Another important card here is Ego, who permanently absorbs the base Power and Armor of any unit that he defeats and can snowball into becoming one of the strongest cards if used correctly.
Intergalactic War
A subdeck revolving around skill usage, allowing players to deal massive amounts of damage, or even to power up their cards by using skills. In fact, a lot of the utility from this subdeck comes actually from the cards’ additional effects rather than their base stats. For obvious reasons, this deck is ideal when used in conjunction with many different skill cards, and is a bit more technical than others because of it. Nevertheless, this same complexity makes it a very versatile subdeck, offering the tools to deal with most situations.
Avengers
This is more of a utilitarian subdeck since their cards don’t have interactions with each other, but can benefit characters from any other subdeck. Avengers cards make for great deck fillers as they have no subdeck restrictions on who they can help.
Ragnarok
One of the only subdecks that (unofficially) revolves around powering up one specific card, Hela. This is due to her Maverick skill which triggers whenever she’s the last card left on the field, dealing her full Power as damage to all enemy cards. Whenever she’s powered up, she can easily destroy an entire formation by herself if left unchecked. Aside from that, this subdeck features lots of cards that benefit from illusions, as well as characters that can power up others when certain conditions are met.
Overall, Ragnarok is a great subdeck for those who enjoy playing the long game.
Asgardian
A subdeck that focuses on defensive bonuses as a way to increase their overall damage. They offer various ways to increase units’ armor stats, while some of them can actually draw power from this same armor. However, this means that these characters are usually vulnerable to the Puncture skill, which bypasses armor and directly deals damage to their Power. Luckily, these Puncture cards are not very common yet.
If you want to go defensive and build for turtling strats, then this subdeck is the way to go. They’re ideal for when you want to stall the enemy for enough to build up a powerful character or two.
Marvel Knights
Last but no least, this subdeck focuses heavily on completing special quests to power up their characters. These quests are mostly self-contained, and involve things like spending a number of gems, collecting a number of gems, or avoiding losing health for a number of turns, among others. The vast majority of these cards benefit from the number of completed quests in many different ways, either by dealing damage directly to the enemies, or by increasing their stats or activating different skills.
As of the game’s launch, these are all the different subdecks available. As you can see, some of them can synergize with others, while a few are more self-contained and rely less on collaboration. Which are your favorite subdecks in the game? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
