We are Gamora

Introduction

Anyone that's played a lot of Venom knows that his setup effect is a double edged sword. Given there are only so many weapons you can add to the deck without wasting your identity weapons or adding unneeded bloat its not uncommon to mill 8-10 cards at the start of the game looking for one of your identity weapons. This is where the new mill archetype from Next Evolution comes in, now instead of milling a large chunk of your deck to just add one card to your starting hand you can add two or three and maybe start off with an ally in play. Starting off with an 8 card hand is powerful and can get you off to an easily snowballable start but how can we push this new archetype even further? Introducing Venom's unofficial identity ally Gamora!

We are Gamora

Each time Gamora activates you have the option to mill cards from your deck until you find an event and add it to your hand. She was already one of the more powerful Guardian allies but now that she can also trigger the effects of Digging Deep and White Fox shes in a league of her own. Now each of her activations has the potential to add two or more cards to your hand or even put an ally into play. With all this new power we want to take full advantage of it and that's where our Leadership cards come in. The signature Guardian Leadership event, Welcome Aboard, lets us play Gamora, or one of our other allies, for cheap. Command Team lets us ready Gamora, or one of our limited life span allies like Nick Fury or Professor X, for accelerated value.

Med Lab

To make sure we keep the Gamora train rolling we want to be able to replay her as soon as possible after her last activation and that's why we bring in Med Lab. Now, in order to play Gamora from Med Lab we're going to need a bit of extra setup, Venom is not inherently a Guardian in alter-ego so we are unable to replay Gamora from Med Lab until we can setup Honorary Guardian but it can take a pass or two through the deck before this combo is fully setup so we also run the staple Leadership replayable ally Maria Hill, while she may not accrue as much value for us as Gamora she can at least make sure our Med Lab isn't wasted while we setup the combo.

The Arsenal

As strong as she is Gamora can't make up a deck by herself so lets talk about some of the other picks for this list.

The Foundation

Some cards are good in almost every deck and form for foundation of a well rounded deck. One of Venom's best friends is Helicarrier, since many of his identity events require a steep double resource type requirement we can use Helicarrier to reduce their cost by one and insure that Venom's hero resource is enough to play any of his resource restricted events.

A strong choice in any ally based strategy Team Training lets us get an extra activation out of our allies for additional value.

Next Evolution Goodies

Next Evolution gave us some nice new toys in the form of player side schemes and Mission Leader. The side schemes help us setup our critical pieces like Helicarrier or Gamora, and Mission Leader racks up value for us through out the game drawing us a free card any time we clear a side scheme, and since Venom is a Solider we get to play it for one less.

Milling

A staple Guardian upgrade, Booster Boots, lets us take an additional chance at milling one of our targets while getting that free damage reduction.

Finally one of the more controversial picks in the deck, Lockjaw. If there was ever a deck that Lockjaw could fit into it would be this one, he's already happy to be milled into our discard pile since that functionally adds him to our hand, he gives us a reliable outlet for Welcome Aboard if there isn't another ally in our hand we can play, and Team Training gives him a third activation that he's normally unable to get.

Conclusion

Outside of an obvious pick like Domino, Venom feels like one of the strongest identities for a Digging Deep strategy. Until now Venom has often felt like a clunky identity, powerful when setup, but slow to get going with some potentially devastating openers where you start with half your deck in the discard pile and one to two turns away from your first encounter card due to shuffling. Now that we can turn that dreaded mill into the opportunity to race out the gate with half our kit setup, Venom feels like hes had all his weaknesses filled in and is one of the stronger identities in the game. I hope all of you have fun digging through your deck with Gamora, its been the highlight of the Next Evolution meta for me.