Grand Arena
Choose your Champion!
A new run of the limited time game mode Champions Arena is coming and instead of a small handful of new Champions to go along with existing ones, we're getting a whole new set of retro-inspired champions with mode-specific skills! Our dataminers have uncovered all 8 along with their skills as well as all 8 pre-constructed decks!
(Note: everything here is based on data mines and subject to change. We'll update the Annihilus image with all of its layers as soon as they're added to the game files)
Weapon X - Can spiral out of control
Iron Man - A bit at odds with itself
Sentinel - A board wide boost
Annihilus - A massive enabler
Black Panther - Tricky timing
Captain America - A powerful tutor
Rocket Raccoon - rapid fire for a huge, but vulnerable card
Thanos - Huge payoff, but expensive investment
Upon first glance, the most obviously good skill belongs to Captain America. Adding an Ongoing straight to the board for 3-Energy sounds great given the way Ongoing decks tend to want to swarm. I'm really looking forward to the Sentinel skill given the type of gameplay it enables. I expect the new Weapon X to work really well too. A few of the others feel a bit expensive or awkward, but Grand Arena’s extra starting Energy can paper over some of those flaws.
Pre-constructed Decks
Here are the pre-con lists! Which decks do you think look the strongest? Which ones feel the most dynamic and fun?
Weapon X Champion
Iron Man Champion
Sentinel Champion
Annihilus Champion
Panther Champion
Cap Champion
Rocket Champion
Thanos Champion
These decks all strike me as built in ways that really lean into the strengths of their Champions and Champion Skills as well as taking full advantage of the synergy of even the weaker cards in the lists. As an example, I feel like the Iron Man skill feels a little awkward with a 0-Power Champion, but the rest of the deck is really built with an eye to mitigating that. Chamber seems like a relatively weak card, but the Thanos list is built on a way to take maximum advantage of that card.
The Destroy deck will play in a smooth and familiar way and, once again, I want to get my hands on the Sentinel/Victoria Hand package. The Black Panther deck would probably be one of my contenders for weakest deck, but it will also be able to just win some games on raw power.
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Grand Arena is coming soon! Check back often for strategy and discussion of this and all other new game modes! Hit the comments and let me know which pre-con deck you think looks the strongest!