Initial Brews for Marvel Super Heroes!: Fun & Jank Episode 82

Welcome back to Fun & Jank! The Marvel Superheroes (MSH) set is officially dropping on Arena next week on Tuesday the 23rd, and I am incredibly excited to get my hands on these new cards.

Now, if I’m being honest for a second, is this set as universally high-powered as Historic powerhouses like Strixhaven? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean I’m sitting this one out. There is still a massive chunk of cards that I I’m looking forward to playing in Historic!

This whole week we’ll be brewing on stream. I’ve been trying to build, update, and brew as many decks as possible so that I’ll be 100% prepared to get testing as soon as the update drops. The lists I’m showing you today are rough ideas, some are fleshed out more than others, but they are going to be the perfect jumping-off point for when the MSH releases.

Some of these are direct upgrades to old favorite shells we’ve previously broken down right here on Fun & Jank, while others are entirely new brews built from scratch. These we be quick little showcases, and we’ll be fleshing them out more as we paly with ’em.

Let’s dive in!

Deck #1: Moonmist Humans

Let’s start by revisiting a list an old favorite of mine that we have yet to make work in Historic. If you’ve been hanging around the stream, you know we’ve tried to break Moonmist in Historic before. The dream has always been to use the 2-mana fog to instantly flip a board of underwhelming Humans into game-ending monsters.

At its core, this is a hyper-aggressive 5-Color Human shell that uses Mox Amber and Noble Hierarch to explode out of the gate. Because almost all of our key threats are legendary, turning on Mox Amber on turn one or two is incredibly trivial. We play a high-tempo creature game, utilizing Collected Company to flash in blockers or reload our board.

The main problem with our previous shells is the fact that there’s just not that many impactful humans that have a front face that are good enough to play by themselves. Our creatures need to be able to hold their own if we don’t have Moonmist in hand. The shell lacked another solid 1-drop besides Cecil, and much of the rest of the curve lacked any synergy, or had synergy in an entirely different archetype in general.

But that’s where our new Gamma irradiated monster friends come in!

Bruce and Jennifer feel like fantastic additions to this idea, and Bruce in particular feels like he plugs a hole the deck had.

Right off the bat, a 1-mana legendary Human is exactly what this deck wants to turn on turn-one Mox Amber. If the game goes long, his ability lets him act as a sorcery-speed mana sink to refill our hand.

As early as Turn 2, we can cast Moonmist to transform him into The Incredible Hulk, a colossal 8/8 with reach and trample. His Enrage trigger is completely absurd for an aggro deck: whenever he is dealt damage while attacking, he untaps and creates an additional combat phase making blocking quite hard.

I think the main power of this card is just how fast we can power it out. an 8/8 on turn is nothing to scoff at. Although he doesn’t have a form of protection, it dodges, Push, Chain Lightning, and spins us into another creature if it get Fragment Reality’d.

Jennifer isn’t quite as impressive as Bruce, but stealing the “Your opponents can’t cast spells during your turn.” text from Voice of Victory is fantastic. Flip her with Moonmist, and you get a 6/6 with reach, trample, and the continuous Grand Abolisher effect. Even better, she gains a damage-reflection trigger: whenever a creature you control takes damage, she can deal that much damage to any target once per turn.

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I think these two cards will add a lot of power to the shell that it was otherwise lacking. Most of our other creatures have powerful back-sides, but these two feel like a bit of a cut above the rest, while also having useful abilities on the front. Very excited to give this deck another shot.

Deck #2: Ironheart Improvise

The next deck is what I’m calling Ironheart Improvise. An alternative build to classic artifact ramp strategies.

Ironheart herself is very reminiscent of Urza, Lord High Artificer in my opinion. A chuky body that can use your artifacts to help power out bigger things. She has Improvise herself which means she’s very easy to get out quickly, and then she gives all your other noncreature spells Improvise as well. Obviously a 3/4 flyer that can be cast for cheap is pretty good, but she’s really just here for her combo with Tamiyo Meets the Story Circle.

After discarding cards in hand to generate a massive amount of clues, cards like The One Ring, Kozilek’s Command, and both Ugins can be played for free via Improvise.

If we don’t find Ironheart right away, the deck runs a beautiful secondary mana engine that keeps us fueled and accelerating: Tamiyo Meets the Story Circle paired with Archway of Innovation.

In the same way we use Ironheart + Clues to improvise out a big spells, Archway of Innovation can do the same with the added bonus of being a land so it’s much harder to interaction.

The rest of the shell is rather basic with Mana Rocks, Ugin’s Labyrinth to help power out an early Chalice, and Kozilek’s Command to help bridge the early and late games. I’m still a little weary of not having enough early interaction or artifacts to speed things up more, but we’ll have to wait and see how it performs in testing before making any other changes.

Outside of this shell there’s other obvious homes for Ironheart that we’ll be testing as well. A bigger affinity shell powered by Weapons Manufacturing and Pinnacle Emissary seems like the best place to start. Although I think we’ll want a different top-end to make sure we can take full advantage of the Improvise ability.

Deck #3: Wasp Shadow

For our third list, we have a fun Dimir Shadow variant trying to take advantage of The Wondrous Wasp.

If you’ve played standard Dimir Tempo or Death’s Shadow before, the core loop here will feel very natural. You use hyper-efficient interaction like Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, and Counterspell to dismantle your opponent’s game plan while actively managing your own life total down into the danger zone to grow your Death’s Shadow.

To back that up, we run Psychic Frog to draw an astronomical amount of cards, filter through land drops, and grow into a massive flying threat. The addition of Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student gives us early clue generation and flips into a powerful planeswalker engine that can recur our cheap interaction straight from the graveyard.

Our new addition is The Wondrous Wasp. On its face, a 2/1 flash flyer for two mana is already a totally acceptable, evasive threat to chip away with. Her Wasp’s Sting trigger is fantastic utility for tapping down a blocker or stripping a crucial keyword (like lifelink or indestructible) off an opposing creature.

The cool part is that you can point that ability at your own Death’s Shadow to turn off its abilities, making it a 13/13 as long as Wasp sticks around.

The duality that Wasp offers seems to be perfect for this tempo list, and since we had success with Orzhov Shadow from a previously article, I’m super excited to see how we do with this on the ladder.

I think the main deck will change a lot as we test on stream, but should be coherent enough with our current mix of counters, draw, and removal that we won’t need to do much tuning outside of fixing some numbers.

Deck #4: Political Convoke

Next up in our rough draft showcase is fun take on Convoke!

The goal here is simple: flood the board with zero- and one-drop creatures, tap them to cheat massive threats into play, and use a brand-new 1-mana enchantment to draw cards and pump the entire squad simultaneously.

This card does everything a deck like this wants to, all for just one mana. Because we run cards like Ornithopter, Clarion Spirit, and Resolute Reinforcements, hitting four creature enters-the-battlefield triggers should be trivial. Every single creature that enters lets you scry 1, allowing you to aggressively filter your draws, look for your land drops, or line up your Convoke payoffs at the top of your library.

Once we hit that fourth trigger we get to draw a card and pump our whole board. You can then use those newly pumped creatures to Convoke out the Loxodon, pumping the entire board again. By turn two or three, your opponent is facing down a massive wall of creatures.

Sentinel and Knight-Errant pair well with Political Triumph to provide additional card advantage as the game goes on and refueling our hand after we dump our creatures onto the board.

There’s another version of this shell that I’d like to try out utilizing some additional artifact synergies, but I think this will be a good place to start. Boros Convoke had a little time in the spotlight not too long ago and I’m not sure dropping the second color will be beneficial. But it does let us play some good utility lands and creatures so we’ll see.

Deck #5: Updated Greenie Weenie

To round out our article, we are taking a look at a deck that is incredibly near and dear to my heart. If you have been following the stream or reading my articles for a while, you know I am a total sucker for low-to-the-ground, hyper-aggressive mono-green and Selesnya Stompy strategies.

The archetype has always been on the cusp of competitive viability, but it lacked the resilience to beat modern board wipes and efficient spot removal. Thanks to Marvel Superheroes, we are getting two massive upgrades that inject pure speed and stickiness into the shell. Plus, because our permanent curve stops hard at 2 mana, we get to run Lurrus of the Dream-Den as a companion to buy back our threats late-game.

This deck is built to maximize the power-to-mana ratio of every single card. Your goal is to drop aggressive, high-devotion threats like Experiment One, Dryad Militant, and Werewolf Pack Leader early, and then threaten lethal out of absolutely nowhere using explosive pump spells.

The absolute core loop of our standard wins relies on Syr Faren, the Hengehammer. Whenever Syr Faren attacks, he gives another attacking creature power and toughness equal to his own. If you put an aura or a pump spell on him before damage, that power effectively doubles across your board, turning a tiny attack into a 15+ damage swing.

We are finally ditching Audacity. While Audacity was a fine substitute, Rancor is the king of aggressive green auras for a reason. For just a single green mana, it gives $+2/+0$ and crucial trample. But its true power lies in its recursion text: “When Rancor is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, return Rancor to its owner’s hand.” Allowing us to save it for another creature if our first one gets removed.

The real showstopper is Hellcat, Undying Vigilante

For two green mana, a 2/2 with haste that provides two green devotion pips for Aspect of Hydra is already fantastic. But she is exactly the Strangleroot Geist variant I’ve been begging for.

Her pseudo-undying ability means that when she dies, she returns to the battlefield as a 3/3 with haste. Throw a Rancor on her and you actually go up on card advantage because she returns the field and Rancor returns to your hand.

Having access to eight explosive, hasty two-drops between Frenzied Baloth and Hellcat gives this deck a level of recovery speed it never had before. If a control opponent taps out for a board wipe on turn three or four, they aren’t safe. You can immediately untap, drop a hasty Hellcat or Baloth, suit it up with a recurring Rancor, and smash them again.

I think Aspect of Hydra and the other recent of Berserk is going to make this deck strong, or at least playable!

Closing Thoughts

Like I’ve said with the other UB sets, while the raw power of the set might not completely upend the foundational pillars of the Historic format overnight, it does give me new cards to brew with, which is good enough!

I know today’s article was rather quick, but hopefully it gave ya some new ideas to explore. We’ll definitely be taking a deep dive and explore each of these decks more in-depth in future articles, but I have to test them first!

Thanks for reading!

As always, feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below. And make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to help me brew, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together.

Happy Brewin’!