The best Midnight Suns characters

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 50-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. You'll probably want to run those no matter what.

The early-game Midnight Suns characters

1. Hunter
2. Ghost Rider
3. Nico Minoru
4. Captain Marvel
5. Doctor Strange
6. Magik
7. Iron Man
8. Spider-Man (unlocked early)
9. Captain America (unlocked early)
10. Wolverine (unlocked a little later)

The best Midnight Suns characters

Hunter

Pros: The largest and most adaptable deck in the game; several dual-use heal or hurt cards; powerful unique abilities like Mindbreaker

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)

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 Go Binary

Best card: Photon Beam (Damage and taunt enemies in a line)

B-tier Midnight Suns characters (Good)

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)

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

Best card: Limbo's Grasp (bonus damage to enemies punted through portals) 

Ghost Rider

Pros: Heavy potential damage; several cards that scale as the battle progresses

Cons: Starting deck is underwhelming; Soul Drain takes multiple rounds to empower

Best card: Hell Ride (heavy line attack but discards your entire hand)

D-tier Midnight Suns characters (Bad or impractical)

Wolverine

Pros: Lots of chain abilities; taunt + lifesteal is sometimes an effective defense; gets a free revive when downed

Cons: Very low damage; he's a tank who gets KO'd often

Best card: Stink of Fear (taunt and counter)

Late-game Midnight Suns characters

• Scarlet Witch
• Hulk

Scarlet Witch - D-tier

Pros: Great crowd control against weak enemies; one or two useful supports

Cons: Cards heavily dependent on positioning; low damage; take time to set up

Best card: Chaos Field (Allies near Scarlet Witch gain resist)

Hulk - TBD

I've not yet added Hulk to my Midnight Suns roster after 50 hours, but I'll update this list once I spend some time with the green giant.

Unreleased DLC characters

• Deadpool
• Venom
• Storm
• Morbius