Home » War Machine Review and Aspect Pairings – Marvel Champions

War Machine Review and Aspect Pairings – Marvel Champions

War Machine Review and Aspect Pairings – Marvel Champions
"Okay, Tony. Let's see what this new toy of yours can do..."

I’ll be honest and say up front – I’m not a fan of War Machine* as a character… but I absolutely love how he plays in Marvel Champions. Let’s check out how the Iron Patriot performs by reviewing his strengths, weaknesses, and aspect pairings. Lock and load.

War Machine’s Strengths

  • Extremely high damage output
  • Many combo deck enablers
  • Great minion control

War Machine is capable of throwing down a lot of damage while setting up, making him surprisingly unlike Iron Man to play. Rhodey doesn’t need his guns in play, they just give him more ways to spend his ammunition, meaning he’s one of those heroes that can absolutely help you lock down the board while other heroes with longer setup time get going. If needs be, War Machine can immediately flip to hero form and throw down a Full Auto or Scorched Earth on turn 1 and lock down the minion situation on villains like Zola that start with multiple minions or a single huge minion in play. Doing so will set him back, but buy you valuable breathing room.

War Machine’s other strength is that he’s actually got a lot of complex synergies you can build into if you wish. For example, his signature ally is an Avenger, so you can build around Call for Aid to discard your deck to bring Iron Man to your hand (and trigger all manner of other things in the process), which in turn can call up a tech upgrade such as Power Gloves or similar to kickstart a ‘Voltron’ strategy. Alternatively, Rhodey also has his own S.H.I.E.L.D. trait cards, which means he can play around cards like Agent 13, which can be used to ready up his Munitions Bunker for fun and profit. Shoulder Cannon is generally the combo payoff, allowing you to trigger effects like Float Like a Butterfly, Warrior Skill, or Jarnbjorn for massive damage.

Call for Aid, Iron Man, Agent 13, Munitions Bunker

War Machine’s Weaknesses

  • Surprisingly complex to play
  • Limited resource generation
  • No card draw or conditions
  • Limited ammunition counters

War Machine relies on careful management of his ammo counters, which is one of his biggest weaknesses. His Gauntlet Guns can be used to offset this somewhat by generating both ammo and resources, but these can only be used for his hero-specific events, which is disappointing. This means that you can run out of ammunition and need to resupply at the worst time, and either have to go into alter ego and potentially lose the game, or be stuck in hero form unable to play his strongest events. This complexity also makes him underperform in inexperienced hands, as ammo management can be tricky. It’s often tempting to dump everything and flip back into alter ego as much as possible, but it’s all about ammo efficiency and planning about 2 turns ahead to ensure that when you do flip to reload, it’s not going to end the game. You also have to play somewhat contrary to the playstyle of other suited heroes like Iron Man and SP//DR, who generally want to play their upgrades above all else, because they’re not actually mandatory in every situation, they simply give you more options to burn your ammunition.

Float Like a Butterfly, Warrior Skill, Jarnbjorn

Aspect Pairings for War Machine

Leadership is how Rhodey comes in his pack, and it’s a pretty good option for playing him with a small collection, as allies can function while he’s using his ammunition. You can also focus him into Avengers-focused combos with a wider collection, much as Brian-V did with his combo deck, making Leadership an extremely versatile aspect.

Justice allows you to lean into Rhodey’s S.H.I.E.L.D. allegiance, as this deck from VillainTheory shows off in its core form. Float Like a Butterfly gives you even more out of Justice builds, so while in his base form Justice isn’t the most impressive for War Machine, with a wider collection it absolutely slaps.

Aggression War Machine is a good option that’s probably tied with the other two aspects above this one that leans into his minion-killing ability. Journeyman2 leads the masterclass on this one, paired with his excellent Iron Man deck for tons of flavour.

Protection War Machine isn’t a terrible option given he can gain Tough every time he changes to hero form thanks to Upgraded Chassis, which also allows him to use the powerful Ever Vigilant event. But it’s not the most synergistic approach out there. That didn’t stop Shazbahty over on MarvelCDB from trying it, though, and I like the look of their deck anyway.

For my part, I landed on this insane S.H.I.E.L.D.-focused Justice combo build to get the best of both sides of War Machine – with a strong thwarting presence from his allies and S.H.I.E.L.D. synergies, leading to an insane combo finish thanks to Float Like a Butterfly.

For War Machine lovers who just want him and the core set, here’s our Core Set-only Leadership build for War Machine, which relies entirely on his pack and the cards in the core set.

Best Packs for War Machine Decks

War Machine’s combo options open up with more packs, so here’s what we’d recommend checking out:

  • Psylocke* is an undeniable boon to pretty much any Justice deck, providing Float Like a Butterfly, which can make War Machine into a monster
  • The Sinister Motives* expansion provides every War Machine deck with access to Agent 13, who is one of the best enablers he can ask for, as well as a ton of S.H.I.E.L.D. synergy cards like Field Agent.
  • Thor* provides access to Jarnbjorn, which is another combo enabler, this time in Aggression, as well as Hall of Heroes, which War Machine can fill and make use of incredibly quickly provided there are minions in play.
  • Ant-Man* gives you access to Call for Aid, which enables the whole Iron Man combo concept, but also some useful other cards, such as Assess the Situation, and Muster Courage (one of the most powerful cards in Expert difficulty!)

Overall, while I don’t believe War Machine is one of the most powerful cards in the game, he’s extremely fun to play and build around, and I absolutely rate him as one of my favourite heroes to play (even if I dislike him in the comics and movies). His ammo mechanic makes him require tactical decision-making without getting in the way more than it has to, making him both satisfying and fairly balanced. While I’ve spoken a lot about his combo enablers here, you can absolutely play him in a more “vanilla” style and still have fun. Laying down Full Autos to mow down minions while burning the villain to the ground is always fun, no matter what you’re doing alongside that.

We hope you found this useful! If you’d like to support us and help us to make more content like this in the future, please consider buying your packs and accessories through one of our affiliate links to Zatu and Etsy, or donating over on our Ko-Fi page! Alternatively, if you can’t spare the cash right now, we deeply appreciate sharing our content with anyone else that might need it.

Share This Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Thanks for submitting your comment!