5th turn Defenders: Same Idea, Different Formats & Execution

One of the teams that I have enjoyed building decks with the most has been the Marvel Defenders. It’s a team that I never really got to experience in the comic book world, but absolutely fell in love with in Vs. This team has a bit of everything including the character that has been made fun of the most in the world of Vs. the Mystical Manservant, Wong. Now I can make a few jokes about Wong, and I have (those of you who remember Group Therapy Battles probably know what I am talking about), but his ability is a very useful one so I will refrain from making further funny comments at his expense. For now.

Some of the abilities and effects that the Defenders bring to the table are: burn, out of combat stuns, stall/control, beats, multiple attacks, and quite possibly anything else you can think of. I will discuss my five favorite Defender cards briefly as I think most of you are familiar with them.

First on the plate is Samantha Parrington <> Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain; one of the best characters, if not the best character in the team’s roster. This little lady has the ability to allow for a character to attack twice per turn while her identity and version are quite possibly joke free. Her ability has allowed for her to be seen in almost every Defenders build out there, and in a few decks that aren’t Defenders oriented, the most recent of those that I know of is based on Wolverine, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. – HYDRA. The other perks she enjoys is that she has an above natural defense for a four drop, which makes up for her low attack, and substitute.


Second character that earned some love from me was Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian, Cold Warrior. I have often called her a walking Mega-Blast simply because her ability grants +4 ATK and range for the turn when activated on a character you control. The truth is she is much better than a Mega-Blast because her effect is granted not only while attacking but for the whole turn, so she is also 1 ATK short of becoming a Nasty Surprise. Can’t really argue with a card like that. Just like Samantha our walking Mega-Blast also enjoys from a larger than normal defense value for a 2 drop and substitute.

Third card that I really like is the Defender search card, The “B” Team. Now the reason I really like this search card and I actually consider it to be one of the best search cards out there is because it searches for an affiliated character rather than a character with the Defender affiliation as is the case with most team stamped tutors like: Signal Flare, The Underworld Star, Mountain Stronghold, and Bat-Signal to name a few. This really makes the Defenders a prime candidate for team-up decks as a team-up is not really necessary to search for what you need.

Forth card is Hawkeye, Loud Mouth. I really like this character but not as a main drop, he is usually my alternate drop for the simple reason that he likes to take care of rush and winnie decks. His ability works via a discard but the nice thing is the discard simply asks for a character that shares an affiliation with him, and that makes him a fine choice for any team-up deck. His defense value is smaller than usual for a third turn drop, but if he can take out a 2 drop with his ability chances are the opposing 3 drop won’t dare attack to avoid losing 1 character and if he does it is still a win, win situation for us.

Last card out of my top five is, Hellcat, Patsy Walker. Now her ability is not a bad one, but you have to look beyond exhausting your 3 drop to make a 2 drop bigger. The reason why I really like her is because she is the only Defender that is naturally concealed.

Now that you know my favorite pics I will post a few lists of decks based on the Defenders, and since I am one of the many fans of Samantha Parrington they will all have her in them. Basically these decks are going to be built for different formats, yet they will all have the same goal: to win by the 5th turn. The deck lists presented can be improved upon and changed to different formats so keep that in mind, also they were designed mostly for the kitchen counter arena so don’t expect to be winning every match you play with them against competitive decks. So strap on and take a journey with me in breaking the Defenders apart.

First deck I will like to discuss is actually the first deck I built with the team, a team-up with Spider-Friends. This deck was a very famous when Marvel Team-Up came out, but I wont present a deck list for either Modern or Silver, instead I am going to present a deck list for the Bring Your Own Set (BYOS) format:

Characters (29):
2 Aunt May, Golden Oldie
3 Wong, Mystical Manservant
4 Black Cat, Nine Lives
1 Night Thrasher, Dwayne Michael Taylor
2 Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian, Cold Warrior
4 Hellcat, Patsy Walker
1 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
3 Spider-Man, The Sensational Spider-Man
3 Samantha Parrington <> Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain
4 Moon Knight, Fist of Khonshu
2 Wolverine, Canucklehead

Plot Twists (25):
4 Gift Wrapped
3 Trial by Fire
3 Banished to the Abyss
3 Rabbit Fire
4 The “B” Team
3 The Order
2 Indebted
3 Secret Defenders, Team-Up

Locations (6):
4 Empire State University
2 Stark Tower, Team-Up


This deck can be greatly improved upon if you decide to play Silver Age or Golden Age, but for the Bring Your Own Set format is as good as I can possibly make it. The goal of the deck is to get odds and cycle through your deck with the use of Black Cat and Empire State University. Then on the 4th turn you stall your opponent with Spider-Man and Gift Wrapped. When the 5th turn comes along you substitute Samantha in (after Spidey pays his 7ATK to exhaust someone) and recruit Moon Knight. If Black Cat is still in play you substitute her for Tania. Once that is done our dear old Moon Knight starts getting targeted by the backup abilities of Tania, Hellcat and Samantha. Play a copy of The Order to retarget Moon Knight with Tania and Hellcat. If you have another copy of Spidey and a Gift Wrapped now is the time to play them so you can cut all visible options for reinforcement.

After all this has been done you get to attack 3 times with Moon Knight provided he doesn’t get stunned which will be kind of hard to accomplish with the defensive boost he gets from Secret Defenders, Hellcat, and Banished to the Abyss. I have never been a big fan of Banished to the Abyss, but the card has grown on me. There are very few pumps that last for the turn available for us in BYOS so she had to go in. While the card isn’t a great ATK pump the defense benefits the card brings to the table can’t be denied, and when you are basically putting all your eggs in a 5 drop basket that attacks 3 times you better make sure that he survives the first attack and the second. Please don’t forget to pay the ATK for Moon Knight to ready after the second attack but before it concludes, as the ability is only available while he attacks.

As you can see the deck has a few pumps that last for the turn like Banished to the Abyss, Rabbit Fire and Tania’s backup ability. These really help Moon Knight in making it possible to get the win on turn 5.

If you get stuck on evens the deck doesn’t mind that much provided you can effectively control your opponents characters with Spidey and Gift Wrapped for the 4th and 5th turn, with the 5th turn being the most critical. Once turn 6 comes along, if you did manage to keep Spidey and Moon Knight then you are OK. Wolvie comes in to play and with some fancy plays you can end up with a Wolverine that doesn’t stun while attacking, plus he can attack twice while next to him you have a Moon Knight that even though can be stunned while attacking can also attack twice. This can happen more often than not. All you have to remember are the free Aunt May recruits an that since you have no drops bigger than Wolverine you can easily flip a second or third copy of Empire State University to help you get what you need.


Second deck in the agenda I want to discuss with you is a deck that I talked about a two years ago not long after Marvel Legends was released. The deck had a crappy name and I will not say what it was cause all jokes in this article must be Wong related. Wong even his name sounds funny. In any case this deck was the predecessor of the Wolverine direct attack deck that I mentioned earlier as the character to get the win with was the original direct attacker Elektra, Masterless Assassin. I really can’t understand why UDE made an uncommon Wolvie that puts to shame a rare Elektra, but what can you do? Here is the deck I ran at the time MVL came out. It is now considered a very outdated Silver Age deck, but at the time the deck was created it was Modern Age.

Characters (32):
2 Frank Drake, Nightstalker
4 Wong, Mystical Manservant
4 Tania Belinskya <> Red
Guardian, Cold Warrior
2 Beast, New Defender
4 Hellcat, Patsy Walker
4 Morbius, Biochemichal Bloodsucker
4 Elektra, Masterless Assassin
4 Samantha Parrington <>
Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain
2 Dr. Strange, Founding Father
1 Captain America, Loyal Patriot
1 Wendell Vaughn <> Quasar,
Protector of the Universe

Plot Twists (25):
4 The “B” Team
1 Wild Ride
4 Star-Crossed
4 Pathetic Attempt
4 Defenders Defend
4 Flying Kick
4 Crackshot

Equipment (3):
3 Ego Gem


This version of the Defenders sees them teaming up with Marvel Knights, well actually the deck doesn’t use a team-up but you know what I mean. That’s one of the beauties of working with Defenders, most of the effects you want to have available when teaming up don’t actually require a team up. In the previous deck we saw team-ups for the sole purpose of making it easier on ourselves when recruiting Moon Knight but other than that there is really no real reason to team-up. Tania, Samantha, and even the “B” Team as mentioned earlier can be effectively played without need of a team-up, while getting all the good effects from them that we want. It really is a thing of beauty to play Defenders.

In this deck we are also looking for the odd initiative, as far as I know every Defender deck based on multiple attacks wants the odd initiative with the reason being Samantha. This really is a disadvantage as most of the plays become highly predictable.

Unlike the previous version of the deck we have two different ways we can act and play to diminish some of the predictability the deck. The first four turns should be recruited in the following order: Wong, Tania, Hellcat, Elektra. Now there are a few changes that can be done specially when you need to recruit certain character cards that help in certain matchups. The real changes come on the 5th turn. One of the things you can do on the 5th turn is to activate Tania for Elektra, then recruit Dr. Strange to ready Tania and activate her yet again for Elektra. After that has been done you substitute in Samantha for Dr. Strange so that Elektra can attack twice.

The other 5th turn sequence is to recruit Samantha and use the last remaining resource point to recruit Drake so that he grants +3ATK for the turn on one of your characters. This while less effective than double activations of Tania is still a very viable option, specially since the deck needs to run a healthy number of Marvel Knights characters in order to be able to do the discard that recruiting Elektra requires since we don’t run team-ups. I recall having lots of fun with this deck, and I know in my heart that if it wasn’t for MUN’s 3 drop Wolverine some sort of variation from this deck would be seeing some heavy play.

This deck also has the potential to hold the fort on the 5th turn in case we get stuck with the even initiative. Captain America is one of the cards we can use for this as he can potentially absorb one attack. Then we also have the choice of playing Wendell as our 6th turn drop. While he isn’t quite as impressive as some of the other characters the ability to give Elektra an additional +4ATK is very much welcomed. We could play a copy of Tania and under drop further characters but having a big character that can benefit from Defenders Defend and a possible extra DEF boost from Beast is a nice option I like having around just in case I need it.

Next deck on the agenda is going to be a Devil-Slayer deck. Devil-Slayer is one of those characters that I simply love to play because of his ability to abuse for the turn pumps. While I played a Devil-Slayer deck for the better part of 4 months I have never really spoken or written about it. I stopped playing my Devil-Slayer deck when one of my play buddies decided he also wanted to build one. I really hated his deck because he would often play his Golden Age version of the deck against my Modern version and that really was an advantage. So I went on a built a Golden Age version of my Devil-Slayer deck and I never had the problem ever again.

So anyway this Devil-Slayer deck is going to be done in the Bring Your Own Team (BYOT) Golden format, taking advantage of every card I can. Lets take a look:

Characters (24):
4 Howard the Duck, Master of Quack-Fu
4 Tania Belinskya <> Red Guardian, Cold Warrior
4 Beast, New Defender
1 Hawkeye, Loud Mouth
4 Hellcat, Patsy Walker
4 Samantha Parrington <> Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain
3 Devil-Slayer, Eric Simon Payne

Plot Twists (33):
2 The "B" Team
4 Mobilize
4 Invasion Plans
4 Mega-Blast
4 Flying Kick
4 Crackshot
2 Against All Odds
3 Reset
2 Press The Attack
1 Blind Sided
3 Astral Projection

Equipment (3):
3 Mind Gem

This version of the Samantha abuse for multiple attacks takes full advantage of the “for the turn” attack pumps. We carry 3 for the turn ATK pumps in Flying Kick, Crackshot, and Mega-Blast, and that’s in addition to the boost that Tania brings to the table yet again.

In order to fully abuse and take full advantage of Devil-Slayer we run 3 copies of Reset and 2 copies of Press the Attack. That means that we can get as many as 4 attacks with Devil-Slayer, and you have got to love that.

Since this deck doesn’t run any 6 drops or ways to stall your opponents the deck needed a way to help the engine get started. The answer was to run Astral Projection and hide the characters. While we don’t get to draw a card because we don’t control the dear old Dr. Strange that’s not the reason we are running the card.

You might be asking why we run Mind Gem over Ego Gem. The answer to this one is simple, we need to be able to use our Backups and Ego Gem does not allow for that. The other question you might have is why more copies of Mobilize rather than The “B” Team having more slots in the deck. While I consider The “B” Team to be one of the best searches out there, there is no better mono search card than Mobilize. Just to be able to discard any card for the ability to search for my characters is simply superior to having to discard a specific card. They also have the same threshold cost so when it comes down to it I simply went with utility.

I used to playe this deck a great deal and I usually got a Devil-Slayer ranging from 33 ATK to around 43 ATK constantly. Unfortunately this deck has a lot of tough competition in the format so keep it casual and you should be fine. Then again you can also make a few adjustments and go for it.

So with 3 decks down it’s pretty obvious that I must be running out of ideas on how to make turn 5 killers with the Defenders and the help of Samantha Parrington. I do however have yet another deck for you. This time the deck is a Silver Age Legend deck based on the Hulk. Yep you heard me right a Hulk Legend deck. While it was Dr. Strange who got the Legendary plot twists in Marvel Team-Up the Hulk got the treatment in Marvel Universe, and wouldn’t you know it the Defenders have a five drop Hulk in their roster. Grumpy Green Goliath has a very nice ability as he grows with every exhaustion that he has by gaining a +1/+1 counter, not bad at all considering we want to attack multiple times.

Lets take a look at the last deck we have for the day:

Characters (26):
1 Archangel, New Defender
4 Miek, The Unhived
1 Rick Jones, Monster’s Best Friend
4 Tania Belinskya <> Red
Guardian, Cold Warrior
2 Hellcat, Patsy Walker
4 Archangel, Champion
4 Samantha Parrington <> Valkyrie, Chooser of the Slain
2 Hulk, Green Scar
1 Hulk, Gladiator
4 Hulk, Grumpy Green Goliath

Plot Twist (33):
4 Warbound To The End
2 The “B” Team
4 Hulk Smash
4 Trouble with Dinosaurs
4 Righteous Anger
4 Flying Kick
4 Crackshot
3 Pathetic Attempt
4 Origin Story


The thing I really like about this deck is that just like a hybrid Warbound deck it can go for the Smash with just one character or keep a few around. Basically this deck works like most of the other decks I have presented but it does have a few differences. For the kill turn or earlier you can play Origin Story on Archangel to get extra “Flying Kicks” for Hulk, Miek eliminates reinforcement, and Samantha doesn’t even have to be played.

Now while you can do the usual Samantha on 4 and finisher on the fifth, but there is an alternate play. With Green Scar in play recruit Gladiator for the stun on the opposing 4 drop, then simply substitute Grumpy Green Goliath and go for the kill with all the crazy pumps you have.

I am sure that there are a few other Defender decks out there that I have never seen and that also go for the turn 5th turn kill, so if you have one let me know about it. I hope that you have enjoyed the decks and the journey down Defender’s Alley.

I’ll see you in a few when I discuss yet another topic or deck I have not even chosen.