"Fully mission-capable." War Machine Protection

I haven't seen anybody put up a Protection War machine deck, so here's mine. I typically play in 3-player and 4-player tables, so keep that in mind as I chatter.

War machine has lots of damage built-in and is quite self-sufficient with his Upgraded Chassis. The purpose of the deck is to be able to leverage Deflection, Ever Vigilant, and Energy Barrier to make War Machine into a character who can help with whatever the team needs doing.

In the Early game you focus on getting out as many Upgrades or Allies as possible. If you have Martyr in hand, your #1 Priority is Shoulder Cannon. Otherwise, you should focus on Upgraded Chassis so Rhody can do his flips at full efficiency. You have so many sources of damage that you probably won't need to go and prioritize damage-dealing cards in the early game - they'll likely be around whenever you need them. Focus on playing Targeted Strike whenever you draw it. If you have to, early-game Deflections and Med Teams can help keep your Teammates confident.

in the mid-game when minions are rampaging and the Villain is just an all-out hooligan, Energy Barrier can help keep your Tough cards on you for longer - especially if you have 2 of them out. With Energy Barrier, you can laugh off the damage thrown at you by Minions. You can conserve your Tough cards to use on the Villain himself.

Late game, you'll be dropping Energy Barriers if you need them or going ham with your War Machine events. You'll be using Martyr in tandem with your Shoulder Cannon/Full Auto to help create perfect outcomes of damage, and unloading your full arsenal every 3 turns. with Iron Man thwarting every round.

On to the card choices!

Allies:

Black Widow is the first card I often reach for when building Protection, and here she is no exception. You can feed her with either Quincarrier/Awareness or you can pitch copies of Deflection and Ever Vigilant if you don't think you need those. In the late game I'd generally want my Ally slots taken up with Widow, Iron Man and Martyr. This leaves Ironheart sitting in the hand, which conveniently enough also provides a Mental Resource, ready to be spent on Widow's ability.

Martyr is not a card I typically go for, but the synergy she has with War machine's kit I think warrants testing. War Machine's damage sources - especially Shoulder Cannon - allow you to set up minions for Martyr to harvest Tough cards from. It isn't Bug with Energy Spear but It can help you make choices regarding crowd control or to help set up for a big Overkill spike with Full Auto while keeping your Ammo Counters to pull it off at maximum value.

Iron Man is kept on the board for as long as possible. With Black Widow staying on the board for Encounter Card control, and Martyr being nearly immortal when the Shoulder Cannon is out, this leaves all your healing to pile on to iron Man to help with threat control. Unless you burn him with Two Against the World, he should probably stick around forever.

Ironheart - Use her in the early game to help tank for teammates or to provide light damage and threat control. Later on when Widow is on the board, Ironheart tends to turn in to mental resource fodder - especially if martyr and Iron Man are taking up the other Ally slots.

Events:

Deflection - a card I originally used with Wasp, Deflection is nothing but gravy in a War Machine deck. It helps you keep your other players(or yourself) up longer, and James Rhodes Alter-Ego Action helps mitigate the hefty discarding that Deflection sometimes does - some might even consider the discard effect an advantage for deck sculpting. Its unfortunate if this thing mills Quincarrier, however.

Ever Vigilant - a small card that might get cut for something else, or gets leaned in to with other inclusions. It needs Aerial which delegates this card to being resource Fodder until you get the Upgraded Chassis out. Its there to provide assistance to the Justice Player to controlling Threat during the midgame, and to help smooth out the turns in which you Defended other players. When you go on the offensive, it gives War Machine the chance to pile on just a bit more damage, if you can find two resources AND don't have other cards you'd rather play. I'm considering running it alongside Bait and Switch to give War Machine a decent suite of Threat Control that better leverages his supply of Tough status cards.

Two Against the World is included since Energy Barrier is a 3x in the deck. 3 Resources can sometimes be difficult to provide if you don't have your whole setup deployed, But being able to Double-tap with Tony and Rhody, and pulling limited-use cards from the deck I think is good enough to try and field test.

Supports:

Crew Quarters is an auto-include for every War Machine deck. Don't even argue.

Night Nurse is Night Nurse.

The usual staples of Helicarrier and Quincarrier are present for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what to use in Quincarrier's spot in case a teammate twists my arm to relinquish it. Possibly a 3rd Enhanced Awareness? That feels like its too much, however.

Med Team is there to help keep valuable allies on the board, mostly. This helps Martyr and Iron Man sticking around longer to help maximize what they're meant to do as described above. War Machine doesn't often need a lot of healing but this provides insurance in potentially dicey turns.

Upgrades

Energy Barrier is there to ensure Two Against the World always has a target. It also helps in keeping War Machine's Tough cards from getting sniped by any minion that survives your damage output or by quickstrikes.

2x Enhanced Awareness is to help with Black Widow and to act as a resource card dump in awkward turns where you have too many Resource cards in-hand. I'm not sure If this is a great move. The deck's costs are rather high.

This deck's main concern is how expensive many cards in it tend to be. Thankfully they're mostly 2C cards in Protection which offers clean pairings when playing out your hand. It still leaves the deck vulnerable to awkward draws, however.

What do you think?