Avengers Assemble Upgrade Guide: 5 Best Cards and 5 Budget Picks

Of the four Marvel Super Heroes precons, Avengers Assemble is the one you can sleeve up and win with on night one. It is a Jeskai (white, blue, red) hero deck led by Captain America, Team Leader, and it plays exactly how you want an Avengers deck to play: flood the board with legendary heroes, hand them haste and vigilance as they land, pile on +1/+1 counters, and swing.

The good news is that the stock list is already aggressive and focused. You do not need a dramatic rebuild. You need to sharpen the curve, protect your board, and add a few payoffs that turn a wide team into a finished game. Here is where to spend, what to grab on a budget, and what to cut.

Almost every creature in the deck is a legendary Hero, and Captain America rewards you for flooding the board with them. The plan is simple and fast: develop heroes, give the team counters and evasion, and attack before opponents stabilize. The best upgrades double down on that go-wide aggression rather than pulling the deck toward a slower control game.

These are the cards that move the needle most, price aside. Card prices move around, so treat the numbers as ballpark figures rather than gospel.

Roaming Throne (around $30). Name "Hero" and it doubles every hero trigger you have, including Captain America's counter and haste effects. It is the single highest impact card you can add.

The One Ring (around $50). Aggressive decks run out of gas, and this gives you a turn of protection plus a refilling draw engine. It keeps the heroes coming when the game goes long.

Shared Animosity (around $12). With a board full of heroes attacking together, this turns a normal swing into a one-shot kill out of nowhere.

Cathars' Crusade (around $15). Every creature you play drops a counter on your whole team. In a deck that is nearly all creatures, the math snowballs fast.

The Ozolith (around $8). It banks your counters when creatures die and lets you proliferate, so a board wipe stops being a disaster and your counter investment sticks around.

Strong adds that keep the cost down. Every pick here comes in under about $5.

Heroes' Podium (around $0.50). An anthem for your legendaries that also digs a hero out of your library each turn. Tremendous value for the price.

Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain (around $2). She draws a card whenever you cast a historic spell, and nearly every creature in the deck is legendary, so she becomes a steady card-advantage engine.

Cadric, Soul Kindler (around $2). For one mana he copies a legendary hero you cast, effectively doubling your best bodies and their enter-the-battlefield effects.

Honor-Worn Shaku (around $1.50). A three-mana rock that taps your legendaries for extra mana. In a deck stuffed with legends, it ramps hard.

Flowering of the White Tree (around $4, regular printing). A two-mana anthem that buffs your legendary creatures and gives them protection from nonlegendary, which covers both offense and defense. Buy the non-foil to stay on budget, since foils run closer to $10.

A few cards in the stock list pull their weight poorly. The widely agreed first cut is Hero's Blade, an equipment with too little payoff. Heroic Return is six mana for slow single-target reanimation, which an aggro deck cannot afford. And at least one of the clunky removal spells like Make Your Move can come out for cheaper, more flexible interaction.

Avengers Assemble starts strong, so a handful of targeted swaps take it a long way. If you only buy a few cards, the budget side alone (Heroes' Podium, Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, Cadric, Soul Kindler, Honor-Worn Shaku, and Flowering of the White Tree) tightens the deck for under $15 total. Add Roaming Throne and Cathars' Crusade when you are ready to spend more, and the heroes really start to assemble.

Is the Avengers Assemble precon good? Yes. It is widely considered the most focused and beginner friendly of the four Marvel Super Heroes Commander decks, with an aggressive go-wide plan that works right out of the box.

Who is the best commander for Avengers Assemble? Captain America, Team Leader is the intended face commander and the best fit, since the whole deck is built around flooding the board with Heroes and handing out +1/+1 counters.

What should I cut first from Avengers Assemble? Hero's Blade is the most common first cut, followed by slow cards like Heroic Return and clunky removal such as Make Your Move.

Upgrading more than one Marvel deck? Here are our other guides:

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Sources: EDHREC precon guide, Card Kingdom upgrade guide, EDHLAB upgrade guide, Draftsim upgrade guide. Prices approximate as of June 2026.