“This is Basic magic, Wanda”

“And that makes you the Silver Witch”

So at long last, it has finally come to be that my absolute all-time favourite superhero (alongside the good Doc, anyways) is finally released in the game. I’ve had her for a few weeks now as we got her in the UK a tad early and boy...Wanda does not disappoint!

I have to say, Scarlet Witch is strong. Incredibly strong. Not quite Doctor Strange levels, thankfully! She’s up there though, and she’s definitely a lot more interactive. I really like her suite of hero cards, and Hex Bolt is possibly my favourite of the lot. I love the sheer randomness of it (occasionally it can whiff, but more often than not it’s good). I’ve tried her out with various combinations of cards amongst the aspects and I’ve played her almost as much as I have Wasp and Captain Marvel already. One thing I found everytime though was that I didn’t really care too much about what I was playing aspect wise because I was trying to play as many of her own cards as possible. To that end I decided to make a deck using just basic cards. Admittedly after some playing, mind, I decided that until there’s just a few more good Basic cards, I should limit myself to a small handful of aspect cards to boost the deck.

With that said, thanks to The Power in All of Us the newly dubbed ‘Basic package’ is now a thing so I could load up the majority of my deck with this. Those two wild resources work wonders so I started with Allies; there are only a handful of them at present but the majority are great. Nick Fury is fantastic, generally always go card draw. Ironheart is possibly one of my favourite cards. A cheap 2-coster with card draw (you’ll find the deck loved this) and can chump block in a pinch. Mockingbird can Stun the villain, which can help what with Wanda’s relatively fragile 10 Hwalth and 3 REC, and provide more cannon fodder for attacks. Lastly, I've gone for War Machine. It's a faff having to go a turn not doing anything so as not to lose his Tough status, but being able to soak up an attack as well as being able to ignore Retaliate is pretty darn good.

For the rest of the basic package, I’ve added Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier and Quincarrier to help smooth out the resources. Endurance is in as well to boost Wanda’s rather low health.

I’ve found from my playing that Scarlet Witch is incredibly event heavy. I’ve also never played a hero up till this point, Leadership Captain Marvel and Iron Man aside, that has the ability to cycle their draw deck quite so much as Wanda can. To this end, I was pretty much cycling my hero deck to play 3 specific cards; Chaos Magic, Hex Bolt and Molecular Decay.

To aid in the card draw, the deck has 3 copies each of Assess the Situation (which I have to confess was a card I had sat on recently but now...it’s definitely made it’s way into more decks than I thought I’d use) and Spiritual Meditation. The later is, without doubt, absolutely bananas; losing two cards to effectively draw two cards and get your hand set up to the utmost optimum is so good (did Doctor Strange really need access to this?!). Throw in a copy of The Sorcerer Supreme seeing as we have another Mystic that can use it and also one of our few aspect cards, Maria Hill; everyone’s favourite 2 coster ally. Whether I’m playing Solo or MP, she brings fantastic value. An argument could be made the Assess the Situation really isn’t necessary for Wanda but the objective here was to maximise the number of basic cards used, and it fits the theme.

Between the above, Agatha Harkness and Wanda’s Alter Ego ability, with the right hand it’s actually easy to draw half your deck in a single turn! I’m something of a Blue player in Magic so it always makes me giddy when this happens.

By this point, it’s just a few cards left to fill out the deck. The last Ally slot is taken by Hawkeye, as Wanda can occasionally come unstuck with minion heavy encounter decks. This is a scenario dependant slot though so you could just as easily use any of the other Leadership/Basic allies depending on your needs. 3 copies of Make the Call are in there, mostly to recur Maria Hill or Ironheart for that little extra card draw and a cheap chumper.

I’ve pretty much waffled on at this point so to then go onto how the deck plays, and to answer that? Very fast, and very loose. For your opening hand, I’d try to mulligan for at least a little Resource smoothing and also Scarlet Witch's Crest; as we’re trying to play as many copies of Hex Bolt and Molecular Decay as possible, it’s important to help control the number of boost icons we’re revealing, one way or the other.

After that, really the deck wants to just get rolling and keep slamming those copies of Hex Bolt down, as well as Chaos Magic. This is a fantastic card, alongside TPiAoU, to help get the expensive Basic cards into play. Make sure to use the Crest and Chaos Control ability to control the boost icons and get some more favourable choices on the Bolt. I did at one point run Heimdall, who was AMAZING in this deck. However, due to timing, his Scry response happens before you discard the encounter cards to pay for him. Sure, I could eventually recur him using Rapid Response to make use of his ability, but it just seemed a bit too much to achieve when Wanda really wants to play fast.

I’ve generally tried to steer clear of Leadership as an aspect, but I’m happy to use it here as I’m doing so sparsely. provides some extra card drawe, but also helps provide a little minion control, something both the Mystic characters can struggle a little with. Really though any aspect works well with Scarlet Witch and it’s definitely one of my favourite things about the last few heroes, just how versatile they are. I’m thinking about going into something of a more support role with her too next, maybe in Protection; the Magic Shield is amazing and, more importantly, doesn’t contain the dreaded (Defence) keyword.

Either way, if you want a little randomness in your deck with a very fun and thematic hero, I can’t recommend Wanda enough. She can pile on the Acceleration tokens and with how often I’m cycling my Deck, more often not I’ve gone through my deck twice before some heroes have even done so once, so watch out for those extra encounter cards. Otherwise, keep playing those events, and making your team mates sweat when you’re on 6 Acceleration tokens and counting haha.