Unusual Weapons - (Quick Strike+ Repurpose)

Gamora is one of the deadliest women in the Galaxy, even if she's using some unconventional weapons....

This concept was inspired by some discussion around Repurpose, a breakthrough card for Protection strategies from Wave 5. If you have been around this site at all the past year, you'll know the community loves this card. So when discussion came around to what decks don't want Repurpose, Gamora stood out as a generically competent hero that didn't have a whole lot to gain from the zero-cost card. Which makes sense, the obvious focus on Thwart and Attack events and few good ways to push a still good 2/2/2 statline, this meant Repurpose isn't really pushing her current strengths or bringing a new axis of strategy. So the goal here is find something interesting for Repurpose in Gamora!

What We're Bringing

This starts with Gamora's unique to her Deck-Building gimmick, and grabbing an off-aspect card that can synergize with a Repurpose focused strategy, and we're going with Quick Strike! This event will let us double dip into the ATK boosting affect of Repurpose (and other means of ATK scaling) to net us a cool combo finish at the end! To help with this, we're bringing along Adrenaline Rush, which Gamora's high tempo lets us afford to thread in and setup big combos. We'll also take Leading Blow, as another way to cash in on the burst scaling we're already doing.

Energy Barrier will be are main tech target for Repurpose, not being too expensive that we can still thread it in on our turns, while also giving Gamora some damage mitigation that she appreciates. Booster Boots is an even cheaper form of damage mitigation, and can also proc Repurpose in a pinch if we find ourselves needing a quick ready.

For our other piece of Aspect-Cheating we brought Clear the Area, which is just solid generic threat removal that Gamora can use to easily proc her abilities, and provides more cycling to find the setup we want.

For allies, we went with solid value pieces all around. Professor X with his ever valuable confuse and 3-THW, Groot with his much appreciated damage mitigation, and Rocket for flexible Threat or Minion removal. We round out the list with EGS and Helicarrier for economy.

What We Do

Like I said in the opener, we're trying to combo Quick Strike and Repurpose together here. Adrenaline Rush is going to be the card we run in the back end that helps push this threshold over the top. Assuming we Repurpose a Energy Barrier and pop three Adrenaline Rush, our turns can look like:

5 damage (Basic Attack) + 7 damage (Ready from Repurpose) + 7 damage (Quick Strike) = 19 Damage

In gameplay, I've usually found 2 Adrenaline Rush is what I'm still comfortable with playing for combo, which still is 16 damage using the same play line as above. This is far from the max damage though, this is actually fairly conservative considering we're assuming that we're starting in hero form and have no double-resources/resource generators. Alter-ego gives us Gamora's event scrying ability and another card from Conditioning Room (which can be deliberately set to give us a Quick Strike). Add in the extra resources letting us afford to play any extra copies of Repurpose, Quick Strike, Leading Blow, or even a Gamora Signature Attack and the damage climbs up.

So the plan is to get to the point that our high damage combos can arise. We thread in Adrenaline Rush and Energy Barriers when we can. Energy barriers are great for keeping our health up, but their chip damage actually contributes to our gameplan. Between them, Precision, and some opportunictic attacks we can flip the Villian pretty regularly before going into combo and finishing them off.

Otherwise, we're using our high tempo options to play control. Fineese and Precision both go a ways in helping this. Gamora's Thwart events, base 2-Thw, and some solid THW allies does most of what we need to keep threat down. We can also dip into a Repurpose for Thwart if need be, it's not unlikely we'll have extra energy barriers on board but are still waiting for a bigger combo hand. Even in two-player with a Voltron/low Thwart leadership deck as a partner, this one was still able to carry the threat mitigation. Though I'd be wary counting on this solely for any higher player counts or against Threat/Side scheme heavy encounters.

What We Got

So, to recap things, we're playing a high tempo hero that enables us to setup the pieces needed for a unique combo finish.

Pros:

• The combo is very consistent despite needing multiple pieces. We have lots of redundancy in our pay-off pieces, and actually going into a developed combo more than once it fairly easy if the game is going long. It's also versatile on how we can split up damage, which is great for closing the damage on the Villians first stage and getting a headstart on the second. Setting up two turn kills happens pretty often here.
• Repurpose gives us a lot of flexibility on top of what Gamora already brings to the table.
• Gamora's often biggest complaints (damage mitigation) is actually handled pretty well here. We still gain tons of benefits from going to AE, but rarely will we feel forced to.

Cons:

• High End burst threat is still challenging. It'll slow you down a good bit from going for game if you're presented with Side Schemes in 4/6 encounter cards, or if someone naturally introduces a lot of scheme like Mojo or Red Skull.
• Surprise damage can still be scary, especially if you're shuffling your deck with only 1 copy of Energy Barrier returning from the discard. Villian activations isn't particularly the concerning part, since that math is pretty easy to anticipate. Usually it's Quickstrike Minions coupled with Discards or absurd Teamwork trains that are giving you issues on this front.

That does it for what I have to say here. Though starting as a gimmick I've found this deck to have lots of interesting decisions and prioritizing in play testing, so I hope that anyone who tries it out enjoys. Cheers!