Adam Warlock - Chaotic Summoning

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
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TrueHiddenMist · 72

TLDR: Build Key Upgrades, Draw/Mill Cards, Recur Summoning Spell

Intro The intent behind this deck is to abuse the 2nd strongest card that Mystic Heroes have access to: Summoning Spell. Unlike the Wild Tutor deck this deck doesn't revolve around status spamming and thus performs better into steady/stalwart scenarios as well as higher player counts. The damage potential is much higher/more consistent and the deck is all around easier to pilot since you aren't dependent on specific resources for this gameplay loop.

Priority Cards I think it's best to view Adam like Iron Man. He is a build-out Hero that really needs all of his pieces in place to feel good. Those priority cards are: Teir 1 - The Sorcerer Supreme, Mystic Senses, and Summoning Spell Tier 2 - Karmic Staff and Armored Vest Tier 3 - Heroic Intuition and Warlock's Cape

Note: Armored Vest is considered a priority card here due to Adam's pathetic stat-line coupled with the fact that this in an ally centric strategy. Your allies/events should be able to handle your thwarting/damage needs so you should count on defending almost every turn. Due to the high value most of these allies offer in most instances you won't be chump blocking with them outside of Pip/Nick.

Mulligan Starting the game you will mulligan hard to see some combo of these cards. If you see tier 1, 2, or draw cards (Nick/Spiritual Meditation) you will hold those. If you open with tier 3 cards you will mulligan them with the hopes of seeing the others.

Quantum Magic At later stages of the game the main purpose of this card is to recur Summoning Spell. In the early stages it doubles as an insurance policy. Mystic Heroes get access to several powerful cards that are incredibly cheap but come with the cost of milling your deck. Quantum Magic allows you to trigger those effects while limiting the risk of losing key cards since you can always fish them back out. Before choosing to mill always pay attention to how many cards are left in your deck, which priority cards are left in there, and how many copies of Quantum Magic are left in there.

Summoning Spell Other than the Sorcerer Supreme this is the most broken tool that Mystic Heroes get access to. For 2-Cost you mill until you hit an ally and then you play it ignoring its cost. This is good for any Mystic, but Adam gets to cherry pick the best allies from every aspect and then gets to play with 3-effective copies of this card due to Quantum Magic. A short google search regarding Allies will lead you to a list of forums and videos regarding how strong they are as a card type. Why bother with a 3-Cost 8 Damage Swinging Web Kick when you can get 12 damage for 2-cost via cheating Giant Man or Goldballs into play? And that's just the baseline value without investment. Adam can heal his allies using his Hero Action or Med Team. He can also give additional activations via Honorary Guardian or Reinforced Suit. Worst case scenario the ally you hit is Pip in which case you've spent the same resources it would take to play him normally and you get 2 blocks and a ping of DGM/THW. The other allies have all been chosen based on DMG/THW averages of 3 or higher per activation.

7 comments

Oct 19, 2024 underthewronghat · 14

Thanks for the effort on Adam. He is one of my favorite heroes, but absolutely my least favorite deck to build / play. I've been chided for "defending every round." I'd been thinking of doing something like this (hybrid leadership deck), as my low budget tutor (search) deck does not feel good.

I completely agree about the Iron Man comparison, but I'd say he's even worse. Iron Man gets going by round two or three. Adam is such a pain. Opening hand: Quantum Magic --hard mulligan. Mulligan: Quantum Magic. Both of those are gone, and then Summoning Spell pops up and discards half his upgrades. His deck NEVER works.

I build out out all my decks for game night, so we pick a hero, pick a villain, and play. As such, all my decks are ally poor: 7 allies is a tall order for me. My Adam deck has 5 right now. Maybe I can pull one from my Vision Leadership deck (he can recur Vivian). Boot Camp is easy to throw around, but I can only get a few of the high damage allies you have.

Oct 22, 2024 TrueHiddenMist · 72

@underthewronghat Thanks for the feedback! I came on here to make an edit to this deck list that I’m hoping will address some of the problems you’ve listed. I have not play tested this yet but I’m cutting The Power of Protection and adding Taunt. It has some inherent synergy with Shake it Off and Shield Spell allowing you to utilize them on your own turn. But most importantly it’s a draw 3 (ultimately a plus 1), which will help find key cards faster. Power of Protection only had one target anyways. I’m also experimenting with cutting Beta Ray Bill and replacing him with Command Team. I hit a situation in a recent game where I had more healing than my allies could soak so I thought more activations would be nice (and it ensures Nick Fury gets full value). I added Gamora to bring the Ally count up to 7 again and she can help mill/reset the deck when needed. If you are struggling to get the current ally list in the deck I think splashing in Basic Guardians is a decent idea. Groot, Drax, Rocket, and Gamora all have some fairly high value for 3 cost.

Oct 22, 2024 underthewronghat · 14

Thanks for reply! I have many allies, but it's tricky because I'm not building one deck, I'm building the whole box for game night. So if I add an ally to Adam, I have to take an ally from someone else. It's a very economical puzzle. So far all my heroes are playing great on "budget" decks. Adam is not. I can't figure a good way to build him. I even did a 50 card deck to maximize aspect cards, but it takes too long to find his upgrades, and the double-resources are further between.

Oct 22, 2024 underthewronghat · 14

Adam has been so frustrating that we actually wrote some house-rules for him:

  1. Whenever Adam discards more than 3 cards, he can shuffle one back into his deck.
  2. Quantum Magic is a discardable Upgrade. Play it now, use it later.
  3. All Cosmic Entities scale with player count (activate once for each player).

Oct 22, 2024 TrueHiddenMist · 72

@underthewronghat Circling back to your comment regarding Iron Man building out around turn 3. I have similar results but in order to achieve those I typically stay down the first turn of every game. With Adam you can do something similar: Flip up turn one and play all of your cards. Face tank the villains first attack. Flip down turn 2 after playing all your hero cards to get the extra hand size/heal. Now Tony Stark has futurist which certainly helps his build out more, but I do think there are piloting decisions that can help some. I’ll be play-testing my addition of Taunt tonight, but I am optimistic that the extra card cycling will help a lot. As for budget options: Obviously the premise of this deck is cheating in high value allies but as long as you are cheating something in above cost it should feel decent. Cards like Tigra, Hawkeye, Ronin, Mockingbird etc could be budget swaps since you are still pulling them at a discount. If going this route I would suggest cutting one leadership ally and adding Inspired so that your smaller allies can pull more weight (especially if you add Ronin).

Oct 22, 2024 TheStarLordOfThunder · 1

Really cool deck! I'm not a big Warlock fan but I had an idea to do an Across the Mystic-verse mini campaign with Warlock and Strange. I'm going to try a variation of this deck where the allies are mostly custom Guardians I designed a while back (and Strange will have no allies).

One question: did you consider using Black Panther to help fish for Summoning Spell? I added him to my deck to give it a try.

Oct 22, 2024 TrueHiddenMist · 72

@TheStarLordOfThunder I have used Black Panther as a recursion tool in other deck lists and it works fairly well. My only problem is hitting him before having Team Training out due to the double consequential damage (although even then 2 cost for 4 thwart and recursion is nice). I also veered away from too many avengers in this particular list just due to the fact that 99 percent of my Ally decks are avengers based. Great combo though.