Your whole gaming experience on Marvel Puzzle Quest is completely defined by your roster. The game dishes out enemies based on your current roster, so it makes it very important to have the best of the best.
Look at yourself as a coach for your own professional sports team. Gone are the days where everyone gets a chance to be a part of the team, you will need to leave that thinking back in Elementary school. If you are going to go far, you are going to have to shape up.
This guide will help detail a handy process of picking and choosing who you keep and who will be sold for much-needed ISO-8.
Step One: Acknowledge that it will suck at first
Unless you plan on actually putting money into this free app, you will have to go through the seven layers of Marvel hell before anything good happens. Even when you pay for those special tokens, it might not give you anything good.
You start out with 1-star Iron Man given to you and after playing for a while you will have a decent 1-star team. But it is still one star.
At this stage, the Versus matches are your best friend. It may be difficult but do not pay attention to your score. You will get attacked and you will lose. It is the nature of the beast.
There is always someone better than you. If you happen to be always at the top tier with maxed 5-star characters then you probably are not worried about bringing your A-game.
You will suck, but here it is not your fault. Playing the matches that you can reasonable win will get you ISO as well as the possibility of getting more cards. Versus matches are great for accumulating your 2-star team, as well as random 3 or 4-star cards. It can happen.
That brings us to the next step.
Step Two: You are going to have to let go
The 1-star team you have been cultivating is going to teach you your next important lesson: selling your team for ISO.
You can expand your roster through Hero Points (gold coins). Know that it will be easier to expand your roster earlier on. Personally, I would recommend only using Hero Points on expanding your roster. While at first you may think that you have plenty of slots, it will quickly fill up and you will be ruing the day that Marvel has made you choose (but more about choosing later).
Now that you have started getting 2-star cards, things will become easier. Saving up ISO might become a problem. Try focusing on only three of the 2-stars you get. There are a lot of 2-stars and after a while they will become a dime a dozen. You will not have enough ISO to max level all of them. So focus on some.
With your 1-star cards that have gotten you this far, as soon as you get a viable 2-star team you should sell all but one of them. Why? Because Deadpool’s Daily has one match that is specifically for 1-star cards only. The only way that you will be able to max out Deadpool’s Daily and get extra ISO, is if you can win that match. I recommend keeping the Iron Man 1-star for this purpose.
Now you might have some breathing room. This is when a problem might start.
You can randomly get 3-star and 4-star cards from tokens you win in the Versus and Events. This brings us to step 3.
Step 3: *Slap* Get those stars out of your eyes
You may be hating life trying to get your 2-star team the cards it needs. You try every Versus and Event while crossing your fingers. You may even be thinking about shelling out for a Legendary Token.
But suddenly, there across the way, like Cinderella at the ball you are finally tossed a bone.
You open a token and the usually silver rectangle of a 1-star or 2-star card is replaced with a golden one. Excitement fills your veins and you click repeatedly to see what you won.
It’s a 4-star card.
You may be thinking: “Yes! Now all those people who beat me in the Versus will quiver in fear” or “Events will be easier now. Maybe they are boosted this event!”.
However, I am going to deliver some rough news. It is not always a good idea to keep them.
Getting a character with the base level of 70 will greatly affect who you will be playing and how difficult this game will be from here on out. It will always be difficult to get more cards on them. A maxed out 2-star card will always be more useful on your team then this 4-star card with one power on them.
Not all 4-star characters are going to be worth it.
Sometimes it may be really difficult to sell this 4-star card. Especially since they all are really nice looking. I like just looking at the Elektra one sometimes.
If you have the roster space and nothing of worth in rewards then go ahead and add them if you want, just know that things might not go as planned in the future.
3-stars are where it is at. There is a reason that the most available cards are 3-stars. It is a nice medium that also can be a resourceful powerhouse.
Why don’t we do a comparison? Lets take one of my favorite cards: Thor. However, Thor 4-star will have only the one card to show what you are in store for.
2-star Thor vs. 3-star Thor vs. 4-star Thor
Red: 1115 max vs. 2132 max vs. 630 + 137 for each Charged tile (If you don’t have her power that creates charged tiles, or Ragnarok’s, then that is useless.
Yellow: 796 plus 9 green tiles vs. 2486 plus 9 green tiles vs. 356 team damage
Green/Blue: 2206 to target + 1103 to others vs. 4518 to target + 2259 to others vs. Makes 3 Charged Tiles
That green power for 3-star Thor packs quite the punch.
So now lets get to the point that we have all been waiting for. When you get all the characters fates in your hands as you assemble the A-Team of Marvel Puzzle Quest.
Step 4: Gather your party and venture forth
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Your team needs to reflect how you want to play and if you can get your A-Team to cover all the power colors, even better.
Your 2-star team will not be that difficult to decide on. But do decide on 3 to 4 2-star characters and keep them. Sell all the rest.
The dynamic duo of the 2-star team that most anyone would recommend is Black Widow and Thor. That does leave a third character to fill your team. Personally, I fill that space with Ms. Marvel.
Ms. Marvel not only has a black power that attacks (taking advantage of Black Widow’s passive black power that steals AP from the other team) but her red power can destroy enemy shields. This is incredibly useful against Bullseye, Falcon, and 3-star Magneto.
BAM. You have your 2-star team. You spend time maxing them out. On the way you will find higher level cards.
What to pick?
This is when you should start taking notice of all those people you play against in the Events and Versus. Even more so when you get to play as them. Take notice of their powers, which hurt the most, which keep the other team alive for as long as possible, who you generally curse at showing up against you.
When you win 3-star and up cards you will have to make a choice. Is the precious space in your roster going to be taken up by this card?
So here is a checklist you should go through:
- What is the power for the card you won? Is it good?
- Are the other powers good as well?
- Who could they team up with?
- How often will their cards show up?
- Is it needed in a current event?
- How many cards do you have for them in your rewards?
For example, let’s talk about why I decided to delete my 3-star Bullseye in exchange for 3-star Captain America.
I had won my 3-star Bullseye early on, back when my roster was still in the single digits. I had thought at the time that Bullseye would be useful. And at the time he was, he was boosted in the event and made it easier to win more.
However, soon enough Bullseye got pushed down in my roster as he was inundated by better characters.
Now fast forward to when my roster is 27 cards. I have over 20 cards in my rewards and I am nowhere near close to getting enough Hero Points for an expansion.
What do I do?
Looking through the cards, I narrow it down to the characters that have at least two cards already in my rewards. They will get priority. There was: two cards on Elektra, two cards for 3-star Human Torch, two cards on Sentry, and two cards for 3-star Captain America.
The two cards for Elektra were not ideal: both were Double-Double Cross (purple) that creates three enemy strike tiles. I keep 4-stars with useless powers for as long as I can before they expire. If I get more of their cards or happen to get an open space that has no one ready to fill it, then I recruit them.
That leaves only the 2-stars left to decide through. Sentry is pretty useless for my style of play. That only leaves Human Torch and Captain America.
The deciding factor?
This was during the Unstable ISO-8 event where 3-star Captain America was boosted and a required character. I could easily pick up at least one more of his cards before the week was done. And with this boosted character added to my team, it would be a lot easier to reach the points required in the even to receive him.
And thus, Captain America took the place of my 3-star Bullseye, who had only one card on him and had been completely useless.
And as luck would have it, using Captain America helped me get enough Hero Points to expand on my roster and add Elektra.
And that is how you decide your team.
Your roster may seem huge, but it will get pretty crowded as Marvel adds more and more cards to be had.
If you need more help on how to choose your team, check out my Top Ten Cards You Must Have In Marvel Puzzle Quest.
