Thor* is one of the first heroes added to Marvel Champions, and he’s a really interesting hero to come back to. In this quick review we’re going to take a look at what he’s good at, bad at, and which packs we’d recommend to take him to the next level.
Thor’s Strengths
- Scales heavily with your collection
- Fantastic minion control
- Heavy resource generation
- Huge hit point pool
Thor is a minion-clearing powerhouse, with the ability to keep the board on lockdown, especially during multiplayer games. His two title cards (somewhat strangely both named God of Thunder) act as resource generators that can let him make some extremely powerful plays once they’re down, allowing him to occasionally slam down a massive Lightning Strike to wipe the board. With his helmet, Thor can also go up to a whopping 19 maximum health before any other upgrades, which means he almost never needs to go into alter ego form, though he may want to to recall his hammer. Drawing 2 cards every time a minion engages him can make Thor have some extremely explosive turns, really allowing you to feel like a god.
In multiplayer, Thor is a minion-killing machine who can keep the table safe. In solo and lower player-count games, Thor can dispense a huge amount of damage in just a few turns, potentially allowing you to rush the villain down.
Thor’s Weakness
- Tiny starting hand size
- Mjolnir combos feel quite clunky
- Poor thwarting options
- Erratic card draw
- Extremely dangerous playstyle
What brings Thor down to the ranks of mere mortals, however, is some fundamental issues with his kit. His starting hand size is extremely small at 4 in hero form and 5 in alter ego, requiring Asgard, a 3-cost upgrade, just to bring him up to the usual baseline for most heroes of 5 or 6 cards. This is somewhat offset by his resource generation, but it makes getting that resource generation a problem that can completely ruin his game.
Thor is also almost entirely reliant on minions engaging him to function, which in some scenarios makes him an unstoppable killing machine, but in others it makes him a massive liability. Defender of the Nine Realms can very easily discard the entire villain deck if you’re not keeping careful track of your minions in play or in discard, which can make you accelerate wildly out of control.
The other issue Thor has is that his hammer not only does not enter play during setup (which you’d really expect), but it also costs 1 resource to play. This can cause some extremely awkward turns due to Hammer Throw, Thor’s biggest source of damage, costing 3 resources. This means that the effective cost actually becomes 4, which is steep.

Aspect Pairings for Thor
Aggression is Thor’s obvious, number 1 pick. With cards like Hall of Heroes rewarding him for doing what he does best, Aggression Thor is a killing machine. A classic example of this is this older deck by Team Covenant, which isn’t the strongest deck today, but is a perfect example of how Aggression Thor can shine without tons of extra packs.
Protection Thor takes advantage of his massive hit point pool to tank safely and keep on swinging. Thor’s damage doesn’t strictly need the increases from Aggression, so Protection can let you do what Thor does in safety. Here’s a great example deck for this from Neothechosen with some of Thor’s new toys that we’ll talk about shortly.
Justice Thor is another way to let Thor do what he does without being a liability, as it compensates nicely for his lack of consistent thwarting ability. Rather than playing into his strengths, it compensates for his weaknesses. Here’s KingofRohan’s take on this, which I’m definitely into.
Leadership Thor isn’t the most natural fit, but Leadership is such a strong aspect that you could absolutely play it without much trouble. There are some fun aerial synergies that other packs enable, so that’s certainly a route you could take with this, just like in this leadership deck from Schmendrix over on MarvelCDB.
My own personal deck for Thor leans into the Aggression angle for multiplayer. It wants all the minions so that Thor can kill them in order to get more minions so that he can kill them. Pure, simple damage, with a few neat little tricks along the way.
On the other hand, if you’ve not got a large collection and want to pick up Thor as your first non-core hero, here’s a core set only deck!
Best Packs for Thor Decks
If you’re looking for some powerful cards to add to your collection to improve your Thor Decks, then we suggest checking out the following packs:
- SP//DR* contributes the powerful Unshakable and Limitless Stamina cards, allowing Thor to keep swinging even through conditions and exhaustion.
- X-23* gives Thor access to Shatterstar, who is his absolute BFF. No other ally compares for Thor, allowing him to engage minions from the other heroes on demand. We ship it.
- Valkyrie* gives Thor some more friends from Asgard, with Throg helping him to save his powers for offence instead of defence, Angela helping him to pull in yet more minions for free, and Godlike Stamina allowing you to keep on healing and removing conditions that would try to stop you from being Thor.
Overall, Thor is a hero who fell a bit flat on release and has some pretty crippling weaknesses, but once augmented with some powerful cards from later packs, he can really start to shine! Thor is one of those heroes who you’re happy to see at a multiplayer table, because minions will cease to be an issue in relatively short order.
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