Table of Contents
During the weekend, there is now one more set of Missions for players to complete: The Bonus Challenge! These involve additional rewards for winning games related to the week’s new card and the Season Pass card. These missions provide extra Collector’s Tokens, Gold and Credits!
You need to win games with the card starting in your deck, and it does not count if the card was generated by cards such as Cable, Loki, and Maria Hill. Each of these reward amounts will vary depending on the difficulty of the mission.
There will be Bonus Challenge Missions available for each new card release to allow players to earn back Collector’s Tokens and subsidize their cost. Players can also expect the rewards to be stabilized at 200 Tokens to help them plan their token budget for the month.
Young Avengers: Bonus Challenge – August 16, 2024
The distribution for the Bonus Challenge this season appears to be similar to the April 2024 Thunderbolts Season and it has been confirmed by the developers that this month will be backloaded for the final two weeks. This week’s Bonus Challenge Missions are:
| Mission | # | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Play On Reveal Cards | 15 | 150 Credits |
| Win with Wiccan starting in your Deck | 4 | 300 Collector’s Tokens |
| Win with Hawkeye | 8 | 150 Gold |
Decks with Wiccan
Most players will want to be efficient with these missions, so today we will give you a few different decks that incorporate all the cards featured each weekend.
We’ll also give you a short guide on how to get the most out of the decks and finish the missions quickly. First, let’s take a quick look at the new card’s performance this week.
For more information about the new card, make sure to check out our latest strategy guide on Wiccan as well:
Wiccan Performance
The Young Avengers season continues with the latest energy ramp card, Wiccan. This activates with an all-new condition: if you have spent all your energy in the previous turns, you get +2 energy for the rest of the game. This rewards you for playing “on curve” with extra energy, but was the extra energy worth getting, and what type of deck wants extra energy for playing on curve?
The way you guarantee this effect (or at least make it consistent) is unfortunately its biggest weakness. Quicksilver and Domino have long been debated, but the release of Wiccan provided explicit support for playing these two cards… and neither of these cards improving much at all may finally put this argument to rest. The issue is if you’re drawing Quicksilver on Turn 1, you miss a draw at the most critical part of the game—the starting hand. The first hand you’re dealt is what informs the rest of your game plan, and you’re doing this with 1/3rd of the information while also ensuring you don’t draw another card in your deck with Quicksilver.
Domino is the lesser evil because you draw her after seeing two other cards, but she also guarantees that you won’t draw another card in your deck. Even with the advantage of potentially accessing extra energy, playing both of these cards still hurts your deck. On top of this, you become less likely to actually draw Wiccan. You can activate the card with other decks, but this is the only way to consistently build for Wiccan. If you insist on using Quicksilver and Domino, your plan should be to build around 3-drops (which I will discuss later on).
Before Wiccan‘s release, there was some hope surrounding Zabu and Psylocke. They do allow you to play Wiccan on Turn 3, but in order to be comfortable with this plan you also generally have to run Quicksilver. As I discussed above, this means you’re less likely to actually get Wiccan, but the real problem is that when you do hit Wiccan on Turn 3, what follow up plays actually win you the game? The extra energy is an awkward amount for really strong combinations, which often leaves you with lots of extra energy and not much that’s worthwhile to do with it.
Decks with Nico Minoru
Decks with Kitty Pryde
Which leaves me with how you should actually build for Wiccan. It turns out the best direction is to just play lots of 1- and 2-drop cards to fill the curve leading up to Turn 4. This gives you a sort of “Sera“-like effect for Turns 5 and 6. You ensure that you get a lot more of your cards down onto the board and therefore more power out. This direction has the most potential, but even here there is an often overlooked part: playing Wiccan on Turn 4. The true opportunity cost you have to consider for this card isn’t whether you have any other play on Turn 4 that can set up the final turns with less cost; in practice, what happens is you play Wiccan on Turn 4 and then have leftover energy on Turns 5 and 6. So the question is, why are you running Wiccan instead of something that synergizes with your game plan?
The Verdict
Wiccan unfortunately released lower than expected. The ramp and Quicksilver/Domino strategies went as expected and were not impressive. The main issue is finding something meaningful to do with the energy after playing the new card. In the long term, something may appear that is worth making these concessions, but at the moment there are just simpler ways to activate these synergies. Fun can be found with these game plans, though, and that shouldn’t be discounted.
The disappointing part for Wiccan is just how little value I saw when playing on curve for a boost in the final turns. I often just played Wiccan and then did the same thing I could have done without the extra energy. The amount of energy just doesn’t seem to do enough for the cost of playing the card and restricting your game plan for Turns 1 to 3. When Speed releases, he might improve this situation since he will be a strong Turn 3 play that synergizes with the same plan and continues to scale, but it’s hard to predict if this will be the final piece needed or not.
Although the score below is indicative of where Wiccan currently seems to sit, the positive is that this score has the potential to change. Even if you’re not interested, read on through the decks. If nothing else it was an interesting week to work through the options.
Post-Release Score:
Quicksilver and Domino
SafetyBlade
Large parts of the week since Wiccan‘s release have been spent trying to come up with the true “Wiccan” shell. Although I would caution that the game plan as a whole is where this falls down, I was able to learn some things that may inform future decks using this card.
If you are playing Quicksilver and Domino on curve, you REALLY don’t want to miss on Turn 3. This was the dilemma I struggled with during the week, as the 3-drop spot takes up space for your big ramp finishers. I would often end up missing on Turn 3 or missing on the finishers. Nick Fury briefly looked promising, but he also clashes with many other plays you need to make to set up your Wave.
When working on Ramp strategies, it’s very important to know what your payoff is. What do you get to do because of playing Wiccan that actually wins the game? This was the main problem I had to solve. Wave allows the eight energy on the final turn to be used to play two big cards, but what combination of cards gives you enough consistency and with powerful enough effects? Alioth and Leader is a combination of two cards that can be played together with Wave that may achieve this. Here you can invalidate one play while copying another play. However, as I mentioned above, Quicksilver and Domino keep the cards in your deck, so Iron Lad and Blink help you reach the key cards more often. This way you can play multiple 3-drops and never miss on Turn 3.
This one took a lot of experiments to get to, and I think the basic idea of a 1-drop, a 2-drop, and several 3-drops could support Wiccan going forward (and I think Speed should improve this angle as well). However, I have to warn you: the total output from the deck is still below the current average power level, but it’s the closest to something new we have had in some time.
SafetyBlade
If you were interested in the deck that is most likely to improve with the next card, it’s this. The basic idea of this list is what informed the first deck. Just know that this is a clearly worse version of regular Silver Surfer. Why? Because Quicksilver and Domino do not synergize with the game plan outside of Wiccan, and as such you’re running three cards that are only there to provide four extra energy. If you must play those three cards, this is one of the easier ways to complete the quests this weekend, and it will almost certainly be better with Speed.
SafetyBlade
This deck aims to take the Ironheart and Wong core and use Wiccan to allow for big Wong plays. Ravonna Renslayer came in and out during my testing, but she just enables too many potential final plays to cut for another 3-drop.
Loki
SafetyBlade
This Darkhawk and Loki deck seemed to perform better than those above. It has a clear game plan for the extra energy if you don’t get Loki, and when you do get Loki into Wiccan you just have tons of energy and extra cards. Taking some lessons from the all-in Loki versions, Maria Hill and Agent Coulson give you extra cards to fill gaps with your extra energy, which means you’re hopefully less likely to whiff on the bigger plays.
Beast
SafetyBlade
Here you want to use Wiccan for extra energy in your final turn explosion. You have combinations of cards to fill Turns 1 to 3, and the dream is this: Bishop into Wiccan followed by lots of cards, then bounce on Turn 5 and drop everything with
Kate Bishop
Decks coming soon! In the meantime, check out our deck database or our previous week’s Bonus Challenge guide:
Closing Thoughts
Wins with the new cards may seem a tall order some weeks depending what quality of card is released. Hopefully this guide helps you decide first if you want the card prior to the missions coming out, and what you can potentially play to complete the missions quickly!
Good Luck, Have Fun, and Stay Safe!
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