Welcome back to Precon Recon, where we try and update hero decks to be as thematic and efficient with the limited card pool available. Today, we're heading to space to do battle as the Deadliest Woman in the Galaxy, Gamora! If you want to check out our general thoughts on her core set, head on over here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2845511/1-2-punchboards-precon-recon-gamora

Training Regimen

Since childhood, Gamora has been honed into a deadly weapon, capable of taking down the toughest of foes without a second thought. Because of this, Aggression felt like the natural choice. However, don't expect this deck to simply be a damage-dealer, no sir. This build is designed to be as flexible as possible, capable of doing whatever you need in the moment while giving you to the opportunity to defend when needed.

For an opening mulligan, what you want to draw is pretty straightforward:

• Keen Instincts: You need these cards to pay for the many events you'll be playing every turn. 'Nuff said.
• Conditioning Room: A card that basically pays for itself if you pay for it with an event card, giving you some additional healing and card draw in Alter-Ego. Booster Boots or Crew Quarters are decent replacements early-game.
• Some decent events for your scenario: Dig for whatever events you need to help deal with the early-game threat or enemies you may face.

Unlike a lot of decks that may be inclined to play themselves, you need to pay careful attention to what's going on with Gamora. Due to just how flexible she is, your options are often fairly broad, depending on the number of things you have to deal with that are on the board. The best example of this comes when you are asked to defend; between "You'll Pay For That!", Counter-Punch, True Grit, and Crosscounter, you have a lot of choices when given the option to block, and many times you'll want to. Playing an event in the Villain phase will allow you to double-dip on your core ability, meaning that events like True Grit become far more playable when you get an additional damage out of it.

During the hero phase, you'll want to plot out your turn in a way that gets you the most out of you events. Decisive Blow and Forward Momentum are great examples of this, encouraging you to set them up for massive effects. Hit and Run is a great card when you have no other events in your hand, getting the most out of your core ability with one card. Piercing Strike lets you break through tough if needed, and Clobber and Impede help you to attack or thwart and then keep it for your next turn, ensuring you can keep an even tempo. Or maybe you just want to play it twice and whittle away at the enemy? It all depends, and that flexibility is what you want to capitalize on.

As mentioned in our article, Gamora's health is probably one of the trickiest things to balance, so we've thrown in a lot of tools to try and help with that. Beyond the many events, Conditioning Crew, Booster Boots, and Crew Quarters all work to keep Gamora alive and get her back into the fight as quickly as possible. And thanks to her penchant for defending with big pay-offs, you'll ideally spend more of your time fighting than fleeing. However, don't be afraid to flip down when you need to, as you have decent ways to remove threat afterward anyway.

The biggest weakness of the deck is something that isn't often in your control; running out of threat to remove. While this can seem counter-intuitive, if you have no threat to remove, you can often lose out on bonuses in damage, either from you core effect or Decisive Blow. This means that sometimes, you can be more liberal with flipping down to Alter-Ego if you've been diligent about the threat.

It's hard not to gush about this build because I just love how you can put it into nearly any hero slot and have it fill a particular role. It takes some practice to get a feel for how to pilot it, but it's worth the work.

Thanks as always for checking out our content, and be sure to stop by our Discord channel to keep tabs on our future deck releases: https://discord.gg/Cf68TY8KTu