Welcome to Marvel’s Midnight Suns best Captain America guide. In this guide you will find the best cards of the Captain America, the best decks and how to play. If you want to be a Captain America in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, our guide is waiting for you.
Many of the effects in Midnight Suns calculate damage as a percentage of a hero’s Offence stat, commonly 50% or 100%. As a shorthand, I will write this as [X%]. Note that all modifiers to this stat apply, such as from Strengthened or mission cards.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Best Captain America Builds & Cards
My analysis of each character follows. I have applied the following template to each:
Name: The character’s name. If you needed me to explain this to you, you may be beyond help as far as the guide goes.
TL;DR: A simple summary of the hero’s effectiveness. For those of you who don’t want to read my endless text, and yet are still willing to take my word as gold for some reason.
Passive: The hero’s passive effect. Note that I’ll only be including the max friendship effect, as I have been reliably informed that friendship is magic.
Combo: The character’s effect when they lead a combo.
Cards: The character’s cards listed in order Attacks-Skills-Heroics, then in alphabetical order. Note that every character bar Hunter has ten cards total – four common cards available from the start, three rares, two epics, and one legendary unlockable through their challenge once they hit max friendship. I will only be running analysis of the upgraded version of each card, because really, who cares what the un-upgraded version does? Note that I have described the card in each entry – this isn’t because I assume people can’t read cards, but rather because damage is usually based on a hero’s Offence stat, so their actual damage isn’t necessarily obvious from a screenshot.
Recommended Builds: The set of cards I recommend you run as standard in a character’s deck. If you really want to be sweaty about it you can tailor each character’s deck for each mission – drafting in Stun effects for missions you need to bypass Protect and so on – but realistically this is far from necessary. Most characters have clear winners and losers as far as cards go, and the game really isn’t hard enough to need this amount of min/maxing. That said, if it makes you feel good, go for it.
Where appropriate I’ve provided multiple sets of options for heroes (because I’m nice like that), but this isn’t possible for every hero, either because they’re very one-dimensional in what they do or just because a lot of their cards are kinda bad. For heroes with only one build listed, their alternate build should be considered to be the ‘Hardcore’ build. This entails opening the deck-builder, closing your eyes, and clicking cards at random while screaming at the top of your lungs.
Captain America Guide
The world’s ultimate soldier, so perfect that he… never actually carries a gun. Or a sword. Or in fact a weapon of any kind, save for a ‘weapon’ made exclusively for not killing things with. He is apparently unaware of what soldiers are actually for.
TL;DR – A defensive tank hero who had the grave misfortune to be cast in a game that doesn’t want you to tank or be defensive. Can approach halfway decent damage numbers provided he stops doing his job entirely.
Passive – Begins combat with [50%] Block (in addition to any given by Fortitude), and gains [20%] Block per turn. Unfortunately these amounts are laughably small, rendering this passive effectively meaningless.
Combo – Both heroes gain Block. Would be a lot better if Block wasn’t just a much less useful version of Resist, but at least it’s better than Blade’s.
Captain America Cards
Deals [100%] damage and knocks back, forcefully if the target already took damage this turn. In the unlikely event of a kill, draws 2 cards.
A less than stellar card, as it doesn’t deal enough damage for anything with a substantial health bar to notice and doesn’t have enough utility to be worth using for its effects. That said, if you manage to find one with Quick on it, it becomes an incredibly useful card and an auto-include.
Deals [100%] damage, knocks back and Taunts.
Unimpressive name, unimpressive card. It exchanges the substantial card draw from Brooklyn Handshake for… taunt. This is not a worthwhile trade, and there is no reason to ever run this in your deck unless you really hate Captain America and want to fill his deck with Taunt cards to ensure he’s beaten senseless at every opportunity. The one saving grace this card has is that if you look very closely at the card, you’ll see it wins the ‘derpiest hero expression’ award, which is something at least.
Deals [50%] damage with Quick and Taunt.
Probably the single worst Quick card in the entire game. Just [50%] damage, no knockback, no other utility… and adds in Taunt, which is of questionable use even on a card you’re not using exclusively on targets that will be dead after you hit them. It says a lot about the game that even a card this bad is still an auto-include just because it has Quick on it.
Deals [50%] damage, and also consumes 33% of Cap’s Block to deal additional damage at a 1:1 ratio.
A rare example of a Captain America card that can deal respectable damage, this unfortunately comes at the price of having to stack Block on him until it reaches that point. It also means he suffers even more than Captain Marvel does when it comes to Taunt – he’s intended to soak damage, but doing so ensures he will never be able to deal damage worth a damn. Still, at least it gives him a damage option.
Taunts all enemies targeting a specified ally, then gains 50% of his maximum health as Block along with a stack of Counter.
This is the support card you run if you want your Cap to act as a tank. It gives a respectable amount of Block (although still not enough to soak many hits), and also provides Counter, which would be a lot more useful if Counter did more than sod-all damage. It can also be used as Shield Bash fuel in a pinch, and may be better than the alternative for that purpose…
Cap gains 30% of his maximum health as Block, and gives allies half that amount. Also draws two cards.
Which is this card. Due to providing less Block than Dig In this is strictly worse for dealing damage. The thing is, though, Captain America is not someone you take to deal damage. Building him to deal damage disregards the fundamental point that he’s, y’know, bad at it. If you instead want a Captain America who supports his team (because they’re better at doing things than he is), this is the card you want – it provides an admittedly small amount of Block to allies, while also drawing cards – and the cards you draw are probably going to be better than the ones you currently have if you’re reduced to playing this.
Cappy gains Block equal to the damage he deals for the next two turns; also draws two Captain America cards.
This card unfortunately suffers from the same problems Blade has – it’s a card which enables the rest of his deck (by both providing the Block needed to fuel his damage and also preventing it from being lost when used), but using it means spending a card play to make bad cards slightly less bad. Given how lacklustre Captain America cards are in general, drawing more of them probably isn’t a good thing, either.
Deals [150%] damage, plus another [100%] damage if the enemy is targeting Captain America. On kill it also draws two cards.
Not entirely awful damage, but not particularly impressive either considering it’s costing you a card play and a point of Heroism. If you’re not getting the two cards from the kill then this isn’t worth playing; if you are, it’s probably still not.
Deals [125%] damage and taunts all enemies in a standard-sized AoE. Also applies one stack of Weak.
This isn’t actually too bad of a card; AoE damage can be useful, and applying Weak will give Cap a fighting chance of surviving after Taunting multiple enemies at once. That said, Weak or no Weak, you’re still running into the problem that you’ll be losing most or all of your Block from using this card, which means the rest of your cards now deal next to no damage. If you want to run your Captain America as a pure tank, you want this, but even if you want a pure tank (which you don’t), Wolverine does that job better. As such, avoid.
Consumes 100% of Captain America’s Block to deal that much damage to all enemies in a line AoE, then draws a card for each target hit.
A very rare example of target-based card draw which doesn’t require kills to activate, and an even rarer example of a Captain America card that stands a fighting chance of killing something. If you’ve managed to avoid Cap getting hit for most of the fight, this is your payoff card – and it’s actually pretty good for the card draw if nothing else. Unfortunately being a Legendary with Exhaust, it’s not going to win you many missions.
Best Captain America Builds
Blade’s main rival for the title of ‘worst hero in the game’, Cap has to choose between either dealing mediocre damage with far too much setup, or tanking for his team for a turn before dying horribly. Neither is particularly useful, but given the way Midnight Suns works, you’re usually better off going for the former – mediocre damage is still better than no damage.
If you want to make ol’ Cappy work, I strongly recommend you stack him with as much Fortitude as you can get for him and try to find him card mods that give him Block without requiring a card play, either via Redraw effects or as on-kill effects for his Quick Punch. You can then treat him as a utility bot who can throw the occasional hit out via Shield Bash or Shield Charge.
Recommended Teammates: Cap really lacks substantial damage, so Iron Man, Nico or a Dark Hunter are strongly recommended to provide the burst damage necessary to remove bigger threats. You may find some success combining him with a second source of Taunt like Captain Marvel or Wolverine, allowing you to spread incoming damage out to soak it with Block; however, this usually leaves you critically low on damage output.
Captain America Utility Build
This is probably your best option as far as builds go. Taunt is generally avoided in favour of utility and stacking Block, with both Shield Bash and Shield Charge available for dealing damage when the rest of your team needs an assist. Tactician’s card draw is prioritised over Dig In’s additional Block because at the end of the day you’re hoping to never need to hit anything.
You’ll want to look for card mods that give Block on Redraw (or on kill, for Quick Punch) so you can boost up Shield Bash without wasting a card play. Otherwise, look for utility effects.
Captain America Tank Build
If you’re really dead-set on making him into a tank, this is probably how you’d do it. Both Shield Bash and Shield Charge are removed because you can’t expect to have Block when you’re busy taunting everything; these are replaced with Punch and Shield Bounce for Taunt. Tacticians are also dropped because your teammates shouldn’t need Block; a second copy of Dig In is provided, both for the Counter chip damage and because you’ll need every point of Block you can get to survive the enemy turn. Good luck.
