Watch and Learn

“I absorb an arsenal of actions, so when I need to, I can perform them with the same precision.” – Echo

Just a few weeks ago, we provided a first look at Fear No Evil, the latest campaign expansion for Marvel Champions: The Card Game. Today, we’re taking a look at the first of the two new heroes included in that expansion: the martial artist with photographic reflexes, Echo! Read on to learn about her playstyle and how she can copy events for a level of versatility that is entirely her own.

Born deaf and raised by Kingpin after she was orphaned as a little girl, Maya Lopez (Fear No Evil, 37B) has the extraordinary ability to perfectly duplicate any physical movement or action she sees. This lets her “record” the actions of other highly-skilled individuals so she can use their abilities at the right time as Echo (Fear No Evil, 37A), which is represented by her innate ability, Watch and Learn. Whenever you or another player plays an aspect or basic event, you can tuck that event under Echo’s identity card. Then, you can later replay that event at a discount through the use of Echo’s own signature event, Photographic Reflexes (Fear No Evil, 40A-40C)!

This play-record-replay loop is crucial to Echo’s entire game plan, as shown by the fact that she has six copies of Photographic Reflexes among her signature cards. With such a heavy emphasis on aspect and basic events, it’s only natural that the rest of Echo’s kit would help support this approach. For example, her other signature event, Study the Tape (Fear No Evil, 41), helps Echo find the exact event she needs for the situation, even if that event was used as a resource to pay for another card earlier. While the discount from Photographic Reflexes can help when paying for an event a second time, Echo’s proficiency in American Sign Language (Fear No Evil, 43) and her fellow Defender Daredevil (Fear No Evil, 39) can improve your efficiency even further. Finally, her Improvisation (Fear No Evil, 46) upgrade adds additional value to every Attack, Defense, and Thwart event you play, giving Echo some extra flexibility with her actions. Since Improvisation doesn’t exhaust when it triggers, its extra effects can stack up pretty quickly when you play multiple events in a turn, something that Echo excels at.

With her kit being so focused on aspect and basic events, Echo will want her deck to be chock full of them. Thankfully, her pre-built Protection deck comes with plenty of tools that help build off her versatility. For starters, Army of One (Fear No Evil, 48) is a great card to tuck under Echo with Watch and Learn, giving you a nearly on-demand ready for the moment you need it most. Events like Get Their Attention (Fear No Evil, 49) have fantastic synergy with Improvisation due to having multiple traits, and they get even better when you use Photographic Reflexes to play them again. In similar fashion, In Harm’s Way (Fear No Evil, 50) also has multiple traits, along with an effect that scales to your current DEF stat. Since you can boost your DEF with cards like Ronin (Fear No Evil, 53), you’re already getting a solid amount of value from a single card play, and that’s without taking Photographic Reflexes into account!

Don’t forget that you can also use Echo’s abilities with basic events, and one of the best basic events she can use (and reuse) is her team-up event with Daredevil, See No Evil, Hear No Evil (Fear No Evil, 55). With Improvisation in play, this one card can heal 1 damage from Echo, deal up to 7 damage to enemies (6 from the event plus 1 from Improvisation), and/or remove up to 6 threat from schemes. Tuck it under Echo with Watch and Learn, then use Photographic Reflexes to do it all again!

With her unique play pattern letting her get multiple uses out of everyone’s events, Echo is a versatile and flexible hero and a fantastic addition to any team. Keep an eye out for a preview of the other hero in this expansion, Daredevil, in the coming weeks, and look forward to the release of Fear No Evil in July!

Written by Peter Schumacher