Precon Upgrade Guide
Avengers Assemble Upgrade Guide
What to cut, what to add, and how to play the Jeskai Hero precon from Marvel Super Heroes, commanded by Captain America, Team Leader.
Picking this precon up?
Shown here is the commander's card art, not the box.
Buy Avengers Assemble on TCGplayer →Quick verdict
Avengers Assemble is for a player who wants straightforward, proactive tribal aggro: cast Heroes, watch Captain America and the rest of the team pile up +1/+1 counters, and swing with a board that keeps getting vigilance and haste handed to it for free. It's good out of the box against an average casual pod and does not need surgery to be fun on turn one out of the box. Its ceiling is capped by two real gaps: no repeatable card draw beyond one commander's combat trigger, and no hard finisher once the board stalls against bigger blockers.
TurnZero's own precon read rates Avengers Assemble a 3 out of 5 on strength and a 3 out of 5 on difficulty, which is a fair summary: it performs fine as printed and asks for straightforward, low-fuss piloting. See it alongside every other precon we cover on the precon directory.
How the precon plays
The first two turns are about mana: Sol Ring , Arcane Signet and the deck's three Talismans get you ahead of the curve fast. From there the plan is simple sequencing rather than a combo: get a cheap Hero down, then Captain America, Team Leader if you can protect him, then keep casting Heroes so his triggered ability keeps handing out vigilance, haste, and counters. Every Hero that enters after Cap grows both itself and him, so the deck wants width more than it wants any single huge threat.
Typal payoffs like Door of Destinies , Metallic Mimic and Kindred Discovery reward naming Hero and keep paying off every Hero cast for the rest of the game, so they're worth prioritizing over the deck's handful of off-plan value cards. Once the board is wide and counted-up, Hulkbuster Armor is the deck's actual finisher: a Hero equipped with it becomes a 9/9 flier, which is the one card in the 99 built to close a game outright rather than grind toward one.
Captain America vs. Director Nick Fury
Avengers Assemble does ship with a genuine alternate commander. Wizards of the Coast's own decklist names Director Nick Fury as the deck's second, swappable commander alongside Captain America, and the two share the same Jeskai color identity, so nothing about the manabase has to change to run either one.
Neither is objectively better. Captain America is the higher-variance, higher-ceiling pick for a straightforward go-wide plan, since every Hero cast afterward compounds. Nick Fury is the steadier build for a table that punishes overextending, trading some of that snowball for consistency and a cheaper curve on the deck's own Heroes.
What works out of the box
The precon's typal payoffs are genuinely well chosen for how many Heroes it runs, and its mana base of check lands and signets is well above the precon average for a three-color deck.
Captain America, Team Leader ↗
The engine. Every Hero after it compounds vigilance, haste, and counters across the board.
Door of Destinies ↗
Choose Hero and every Hero spell you cast makes the whole team bigger, permanently.
Kindred Discovery ↗
Choose Hero and draw a card every time one enters or attacks. The deck's best answer to running out of gas.
Metallic Mimic ↗
A cheap Hero that hands every later Hero a free counter on arrival.
Swords to Plowshares ↗
One mana, unconditional exile. The best piece of real interaction in the box.
Hulkbuster Armor ↗
Turns any Hero into a 9/9 flier for a Hero-discounted equip cost. The deck's actual finisher.
What needs improvement
The curve is fine at the bottom and gets awkward at the top: Austere Command at six mana is the one card that actively works against a board full of buffed Heroes, since two of its four modes wipe your own team along with the opponents'. For a fuller framework on reading and trimming a curve like this, see What Makes a Curve and Why It Matters →.
The manabase itself is one of the stronger precon manabases in recent memory (a full cycle of check lands plus Command Tower and a Triome), so it needs the least work of the four things this deck could improve. Where it's worth a look anyway is basics ratio once a couple of nonbasics get swapped for upgrades; see the Land & Mana Base Guide → for how to keep that balance right as you add real duals.
Card draw is the real hole. Outside Nick Fury's attack trigger, the deck has almost no way to refill an empty hand, which matters once the early Heroes are spent. See the Counters archetype guide → and the Tribal archetype guide → for how other decks in this shape solve the same problem.
10 cards to cut
Each of these has a real job on paper. None of them is the best card for that job in this specific 99.
Speed, Young Avenger taxes mana every combat for an unblockable trigger the deck doesn't need. Cap's Heroes already get free evasion-adjacent keywords without paying for them twice.
Love on the Battlefield only rewards attacking with exactly two creatures, which fights a plan that wants the whole board attacking at once.
Patriot, Shield Wielder is a slow, mana-intensive protection ability stapled to a body that doesn't advance the counters plan on its own.
Vision, Synthezoid Avenger only triggers off spells cast on someone else's turn, which is unreliable in a multiplayer pod and does nothing during your own attacks.
Reconnaissance Mission only draws after combat damage has already landed. The cycling mode is the only part of the card worth having.
Austere Command is a symmetrical board wipe in a deck that wants its own board full of buffed Heroes; two of its four modes destroy the team it just took four turns to build.
Dismantling Wave only answers artifacts and enchantments, and the precon mostly faces creatures. A flexible removal spell does more work from the same slot.
West Coast Expansion only does anything extra at X=5, which is ten total mana to hit. Too far outside the deck's actual curve to plan around.
Tome of Legends is slow, incremental card advantage gated behind commander combat damage, doing the same job Nick Fury already does, worse.
Rescue is a fine trick but a replaceable one. The deck's real protection need, saving Captain America from removal, is better served by dedicated protection.
First upgrades
Budget, first
Agent Phil Coulson ↗
Two mana, taps to put a +1/+1 counter on every other Hero you control. A direct hit on the deck's own plan.
Skullclamp ↗
A cheap Hero that trades into a card is now a two-card swing. The single best draw engine this deck can run.
Wayfarer's Bauble ↗
Fixing and ramp in one slot, which this three-color deck always wants more of.
Next
Vanquisher's Banner ↗
Choose Hero: every Hero creature is bigger, and every Hero spell replaces itself. A second Kindred Discovery-style payoff.
Shared Animosity ↗
Every attacking Hero gets bigger for each other attacking Hero, turning a wide board directly into lethal.
Dockside Extortionist ↗
Explosive ramp that also fixes, and it only gets better against a table running its own artifacts and enchantments.
Higher-investment
Coat of Arms ↗
With this many Heroes on one board, this is a second finisher-grade anthem sitting right next to Shared Animosity.
Cyclonic Rift ↗
A one-sided board bounce at overload cost clears the way for exactly the kind of alpha strike this deck wants to throw.
Esper Sentinel ↗
A one-mana tax engine that keeps the hand full for the rest of the game, the deck's biggest missing piece.
Win conditions
The upgraded deck closes the same way the precon already wants to: a wide board of counter-laden Heroes, swinging behind free vigilance and haste, turned lethal in one turn by Shared Animosity or Coat of Arms . Hulkbuster Armor stays in as the deck's answer to a stalled board that just needs one evasive attacker to end the game outright, and Cyclonic Rift 's overload mode clears blockers the turn you're ready to swing for it all.
The upgraded 99, in shape
The finished list keeps the precon's ramp package intact ( Sol Ring , Arcane Signet , the three Talismans) and adds fixing rather than replacing it. The typal payoff suite grows from three cards to six or seven, stacking Door of Destinies , Metallic Mimic , Kindred Discovery , Vanquisher's Banner and Agent Phil Coulson on top of the Heroes that stayed. Removal gets more flexible once Austere Command and Dismantling Wave are gone, and the finisher slot goes from one card (Hulkbuster Armor) to three (adding Shared Animosity and Coat of Arms). The shape of the deck doesn't change: it's still Cap, a wide Hero board, and a big attack. It just gets there more reliably and ends the game once it does.
Who should buy this precon
A good fit for a newer Commander player who wants a deck that plays straightforwardly, and for anyone who likes the Avengers cast and wants a tribal shell built around it without the added rules overhead of a combo deck or a stax deck. It's a weaker fit for a player who specifically wants a control deck or one built around card advantage engines rather than a wide board, since that's the part of the 99 this guide spends the most effort patching.
Track how the upgrades actually perform.
TurnZero HQ keeps a win rate per deck version, so you can change ten cards, play ten games, and see the difference instead of guessing.
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