Green Weekend Warrior Seeks Legal Aid

Typical day in the Superhuman Law Division

insert legal jargon here later

remind Hellcat to pick up my coffee

Rhodey is bringing donuts

Just kidding - or am I?

This week's Deck of the Week is She-Hulk Justice - you can check out the audio cast here: https://mcm-podcast.com/2021/07/16/dotw-3-she-hulk-justice/

This week on deck of the week I was asked to build a She-Hulk Justice deck. She-Hulk is one of my favorite characters from the core set and she pairs super well with Justice. Crimson has been making that case and taking it to court for almost 2 years now - so it was time to try something Greenish-Yellow and different. This deck doesn't run a ton of justice decks. It doesn't even run the flip card from Ant-Man so I'm sure some of ya'll will Lay Down the Law and tell me how wrong I am. The deck thrives on Allies - yellow, feline, and basic in variety! Let's get into it - this deck is all about She-Hulks signature ally Hellcat!

Well you see in a certain frame of reference - Hellcat can thwart for free! If there is anything super-human lawyers need - it's unpaid interns!

Thwart for "Free"

I hesitate to say free but I'll stick with it. The goal of this deck is to get down Hellcat and be able to Thwart with her, bounce her, replay her, and complete a second thwart - for free - every turn. That seems a bit crazy for a 3 cost hero but it's totally doable. As the Justice player you'll be expected to thwart a bit and Hellcat will be your primary source. How do we do this? Well let's use our copies of The Power in All of Us to play Avengers Tower, Quincarrier, and Team-Building Exercise. That's a big investment but the payoff is amazing with Hellcat able to thwart 4 a round without touching any cards in your hand!

Ally Choices

It's a bit weird to include The Power in All of Us without our basic friends Nick Fury, Mockingbird and Ironheart. I really wanted to optimize Avengers Tower with Hellcat being out almost the whole game you are still going to want open ally slots so ensuring all your allies are Avengers is pretty essential.

Luckily - Justice has enough Avengers allies to make this work. Quake and Wiccan make great blocks or Earth's Mightiest Heroes fodder. Speed can work to double your thwarting for 2 turns (8 thwart between Speed and Hellcat). Spider-Man is mainly there for multiplayer but works in a pinch in solo. Luckily your Hellcat cost reducers work with all of these allies as well. So if there is a turn you don't need to bounce hellcat you can use your setup to get another (typically free) ally. You may choose to swap in Mockingbird and Nick Fury and I wouldn't blame you. I'd probably drop the two copies of Tenacity or Earth's Mightiest Heroes to do so.

Events

Why so few?

While justice has some of the most potent events in the game - they are also the most generic and boring. When I first built this I had no Justice events and it was a bit too much of a gamble building up to Hellcat 2 copies of For Justice! and Clear the Area give you just enough thwart to get your combo set up. Earth's Mightiest Heroes and One-Two Punch are your main events. You want to see them as often as possible so it is important to not stack your desk with too many other events.

Upgrades

The upgrades in this deck are a bit peculiar. Under Surveillance helps giving you some breathing room on the main scheme and Skilled Investigator is great because often once set up I don't have to flip very much. Enhanced Physique and Tenacity are a bit more strange. Here's my reasoning. Originally I had The Power of Leadership in here to help with the non Hellcat allies but I found often those allies came out on turns when I only used Hellcat once, and for free. What wasn't free were my 3 basic ESSENTIAL supports. I wanted more targets for this card once my supports were out. So I included an Enhanced Physique. This is a mistake it should probably be a Enhanced Awareness or should it? More on that later.

The job of this upgrade is to fuel One-Two Punch and Split Personality we want to be able to use our Earth's Mightiest Heroes so if you get an awkward hand of 3 cards and Split Personality you can attack, use Earth's Mightiest Heroes and still play Split Personality. The drip resources are actually pretty great cards. @dr00 has been on the record of this for a while and I am really coming around on them. Champions - and She-Hulk in general is all about explosive turns. Setting up turns where you can ready and swing 3-4 times really make this deck shine as a thwart engine that still packs a punch.

Now Tenacity is a great card.

Ok, I probably couldn't defend that in court. But with this deck I actually found She-Hulk had enough resources to play around with things. There's something to be said for playing a ready that you can use on a later turn. We all love One-Two Punch and Tenacity in this deck functions as a One-Two Punch that you pay 2 extra for to keep it on the board for the opportune moment. It turns out with Enhanced Physique that opportune moment happens a ton. While the EV of a 3 cost ready for 3 damage is low - the burst potential and fun factor are high. I'm not saying Tenacity is efficient but in this deck it was fun?

So what have I learned about She-Hulk Justice.

She's a power house. She can take down difficulty villains in solo - my recorded plays with this final version were vs Ultron and Red Skull (yes - on standard I know - I'm a filthy casual) but they were a blast. Her kit really needs some thwarting but Hellcat can truly be that source. I used to overlook She-Hulks signature ally a lot - I once even thought she was the worst signature ally we had. Good thing War Machine has a pack coming our - because Hellcat just bounced way up the charts [in my heart]!