Domino is one of the two stars of the NeXt Evolution*, and man, she packs a punch. In this article we’ll take a look at what Domino is good at, what she’s bad at, and quickly show you our favourite decks for 2-player expert difficulty.
Domino’s Strengths
- Great all-round aspect-independent powerset
- Doesn’t require a great deal of setup
- Consistent damage output
- Huge amounts of skill expression
Domino is the hero for you if you enjoy showing off that you’re good at card games. She allows you to stack your deck, discard it, bring it back into play, trigger effects, and generally express your skill as a player. Domino doesn’t need much in the way of setup – she likes having her cards in play, but it’s honestly not a requirement, making her a great support for a setup-heavy character like Cable (and oh look, they even came together in the expansion box!).
Domino’s core kit is so strong that she honestly doesn’t need much from her aspect, making her a great candidate for basic-focused decks, which we’ll show you an example of later when we go over her aspects.
Domino’s Weaknesses
- Her ability only working once per turn limits her ability to stack the deck (which means you can accidentally discard cards vital to your strategy when you’re not in control)
- Few card draw and resource generation options
- Her deck runs out quickly
- She’s quite complex and not new-player friendly
Domino’s biggest weakness is honestly that she’s a very well-balanced character! Her weaknesses are all generally the inverse of her strengths – she can stack her deck, but only once, she discards cards from her deck for value, but the cost of that is that she’s discarded her deck. Her high skill-cap nature means that if you struggle with complex decks, Domino isn’t going to shine, and it’s not a hero that I would want to put in the hands of newer players. There’s a strong argument for Domino being the most complex character in the game at the time of writing.
All that being said, Domino is far from bad, and all that really keeps her from being S-Tier is that she’s fairly balanced – she doesn’t stunlock the villain or burst them down in a single turn, she doesn’t draw infinite cards, she just plugs away and has reasonable drawbacks to her power.
Aspect Parings for Domino
Leadership works well with any hero who has a strong core kit, and Domino is no exception. Her ability to put cards into the discard sets her up for complex turns and combos using Make the Call and Call for Backup, which allows you to really double down on her combo-heavy nature.
Protection is another aspect that works well with heroes who don’t really care about their aspects all that much, as it allows you to stay alive while doing your thing. Domino caring about her basic powers makes her a great fit with cards like What Doesn’t Kill Me, allowing you to ready up and go again.
Aggression has a surprising amount of cards that care about buffing your allies, and a Posse-focused Domino cares a lot about getting her Posse trait allies in play. This makes for a potent combination!
Justice Domino is absolutely a thing, because Domino everything is a thing, but it’s probably her weakest aspect, despite being the one she ships as. Domino’s thwarting ability isn’t terrible, but it’s generally at the cost of her high damage output, so it’s nice to have other alternatives.
We don’t normally look at Basic as an aspect here (because it’s a classification), but there’s a wave lately of heroes who work great with decks focused on basic class cards above their aspects, and it’s an important one to note here, because Domino can really do great things with a grey deck. Her deck is solid and provides a lot of all-round power, so it’s far from a bad choice, and her Posse allies can really shine.
Our Domino's Deck
For our example deck, this time I actually decided to grab two example lists to emphasise Domino’s flexibility!
Our first deck is a Protection Posse-focused deck. I say Protection, but honestly it’s just there to let Domino play What Doesn’t Kill Me and keep on plugging.
The deck’s basic strategy is to use Domino’s kit to its maximum potential. Wild resource cards allow you to make the most of her abilities, while enabling you to keep plugging away.
Our second list is actually not by me, it’s by the well-respected deckbuilder Dr00 over on MarvelCDB. I’m not going to try and reinvent the wheel here, it’s a complex Leadership deck that uses Make the Call to its maximum potential, once again to work with her Posse. If you want to see just how fancy you can get with Domino, I highly recommend checking this deck out.
Best Packs for Domino Decks
If you’re looking for some powerful cards to add to your collection to improve your Domino Decks, then we suggest checking out the following packs:
- For Leadership decks, it’s hard to beat Strength in Numbers from the Captain America Hero Pack*, allowing you build around keeping the Posse in play while drawing tons of cards
- What Doesn’t Kill Me is the star of many of our Protection decks, including the one above, and it’s from the Sinister Motives Expansion* – which is absolutely worth buying and playing. Great cards, great villains, and generally just tons of value.
Domino is a powerful all-rounder, who has a little bit of a luck element to her kit, constantly discarding from the top of her own deck for fun and profit, but one that can be mitigated by using her abilities to stack your deck. She can put out a surprising amount of damage, and her core kit runs very low to the ground, allowing you to cut loose right out of the gate without requiring a huge amount of expensive setup time. If you enjoy the semi-random aspect of Scarlet Witch, you’ll probably enjoy Domino too.
» If you need any help with Domino’s cards, check out our Domino rule clarification. «
If you found this article helpful,
please consider donating to support us.
Or you can use any of our affiliate Zatu links.
