There are 12 Midnight Suns characters, and though you can make best friends with all of them through the many hangouts and conversations that punctuate the campaign, you'll face tougher choices putting together a three-hero kickball team that can defeat Hydra.
You'll want to use each of Midnight Suns' heroes on at least a few missions in order to unlock and upgrade some of their cards, particularly heroes like Wolverine and Ghost Rider who have less-than-great starting decks.
Some of these characters are unlocked later in the campaign, so we've placed those in a special "spoiler" section at the end if you want to preserve these reveals (which Midnight Suns telegraphs pretty strongly, in my opinion).
Certain characters play off one another better than others, and what type of mission you're facing is absolutely a consideration. But over the course of my 60-plus hours, I found the most general success in this team comp:
💪 A bruiser who has 2+ cards that inflict triple-digit damage on heavy enemies
🦸♀️ A support character who can trigger powerful status effects or prevent damage
🔀 A hero who either specializes in knockback or clearing out zero-HP minions that arrive as reinforcements
Note: For each hero's "Best card," I'm excluding Legendary cards which are obviously powerful, and obtained by completing special Challenge missions unlocked by reaching Friendship Level 5 with them. You'll probably want to run those cards no matter what.
Midnight Suns characters
- Hunter
- Ghost Rider
- Nico Minoru
- Captain Marvel
- Doctor Strange
- Magik
- Iron Man
- Spider-Man (unlocked early)
- Captain America (unlocked early)
- Wolverine (unlocked a little later)
- Scarlet Witch (unlocked about halfway through)
- Hulk (unlocked late game)
The best Midnight Suns characters
Hunter
Pros: The largest and most adaptable deck in the game; several dual-use heal or hurt cards; a couple of useful card draw abilities; Heroism generation
Cons: Composing a synergistic deck isn't as straightforward as the other heroes
Best cards: Guarding Strike (free heal just by remaining in your hand, but a moderately powerful attack too); Holy Spark (Quick, but can also cure allies)
Nico Minoru
Pros: Very high damage ceiling; big heals; final passive draws cards
Cons: High risk, high reward; starting cards like Curse and Empower aren't great
Best cards: Witchfire (Damage a random enemy, recasts on KO); Blood For Blood (triggers heal on a KO)
A-tier Midnight Suns characters (Great)
Iron Man
Pros: Versatile; his Quick abilities also carry knockback; many of his abilities are enhanced by redraw
Cons: True to his egotistic personality, his deck doesn't synergize much with other heroes
Best cards: Quick Blast (Quick + damage + knockback); Air Superiority (Hits every enemy, damage boosted by redraw)
Captain America
Pros: Huge block generation; block-taunt-counter combo can be devastating; card draw
Cons: Taunt can backfire; mainly a support character
Best cards: Shield Bounce (damage and taunt enemies in an area)
Spider-Man
Pros: Balanced mix of multi-target, knockback, status effects
Cons: Lacks a heavy finisher ability on bosses
Best card: Opportunist (Makes environment attacks free, +2 moves)
B-tier Midnight Suns characters (Good)
Captain Marvel
Pros: Self-sufficient; bonafide bruiser with a good beam ability
Cons: Have to play Go Binary to unlock her full power; taunting can bring damage that removes Binary; no true "bomb" card
Best card: Photon Beam (Damage and taunt enemies in a line)
Blade
Pros: Excellent sustain; heavy single-target damage
Cons: Abilities are best played in a particular order to set off the combo
Best card: Stake (big lifesteal heroic)
Scarlet Witch
Pros: Great crowd control; AoE supports provide protection (but clustering your heroes is generally a bad idea); rare Quick ability knocks back in any direction; Hex Mark can gain "On redraw, gain concealed"
Cons: Her starting deck is pretty bad; cards heavily dependent on positioning; low base damage; many abilities don't pay off immediately
Best cards: Detonate (blows up an environmental explosive for massive damage and radius); Chaos Field (Allies near Scarlet Witch gain resist and heal)
Doctor Strange
Pros: Surprisingly versatile; two powerful "Epic" cards that can negate damage completely
Cons: Some heroic cards require 4-6 heroism for max effect; slow setups
Best card: Shield of the Serpahim (adds resist to the whole team); Agamotto's Gaze (4 cards on the next turn, draws last 2 attacks)
C-tier Midnight Suns characters (Less-viable, or OK with caveats)
Magik
Pros: The most knockout-focused hero in Midnight Suns; Portal is a hole you can use to set up advantageous enemy collisions and is quite fun; very viable when paired with heroes characters who don't run lots of knockback cards
Cons: Reinforcement and Banish are cool but expensive rare abilities; almost none of her cards deal direct damage; fairly low damage overall
Best card: Limbo's Grasp (bonus damage to enemies punted through portals)
Hulk
Pros: Giant damage when rage is maxed; Rage boosts team-up attacks and counter
Cons: Slow to build maximum rage; awkward starting deck; expensive heroism card cost; best combo requires stunning and then attacking enemies; he's the last character you unlock
Best card: Rampage (Chain 3, Taunt)
D-tier Midnight Suns characters (Bad or impractical)
Ghost Rider
Pros: Heavy potential damage; several cards that scale as the battle progresses; Hell Ride is a great finisher
Cons: Starting deck is underwhelming; Soul Drain takes multiple rounds to empower; Drop abilities take multiple plays to execute; other abilities either damage him or gain power too indirectly
Best card: Hell Ride (heavy line attack but discards your entire hand)
Wolverine
Pros: Lots of chain abilities; taunt + lifesteal is sometimes an effective defense; gets a free revive when downed; eventually gets a passive that heals through redrawn Wolverine cards
Cons: Very low damage; he's a tank who gets KO'd often; I'd rather have Quick than Chain in most scenarios
Best card: Stink of Fear (taunt and counter)
Unreleased DLC characters
- Deadpool
- Venom
- Storm
- Morbius
