Director Danvers

I guess going from one of the most powerful beings in the universe to Director of Shield is more of a lateral promotion, but she’s still very powerful so it’s fine.

This deck seeks to fix one of her big weaknesses by providing a ton of thwarting power from all your SHIELD underlings. I’m really excited for what the new box will bring to this deck, but until then this is the best I can do. And it was kinda an accidental discovery that Agent 13 works incredibly well with Alpha Flight Station. That is what initially inspired me to build her with a bunch of SHIELD stuff.

There is definitely a version of this deck that runs Agent Coulson instead of Monica Chang with Counterintelligence instead of Surveillance Team. If you were to do that I would say to replace Homeland Intervention with Agile Flight. That wouldn’t shift the overall balance of energy resources in the deck so I think it’s all personal preference. I just have a bias towards Monica.

This deck works well in both multiplayer and solo, but I especially like playing multiplayer and having everyone else run side schemes to use to trigger Chance Encounter.

Deck Goals:

1. Use your SHIELD resources to keep threat at a minimum.
2. Use your huge number of energy resources to load up Energy Channel and pay for Photonic Blast.
3. Draw tons of cards to fulfill the first two goals.

Mulligan Priorities:

1. Engine building cards: Alpha Flight Station, Agent 13, or Quincarrier
2. Thwarting Tools: Monica Chang
3. A Side Scheme and a Chance Encounter together

Early Game:

Spend your first few turns flipping and drawing to try and get your key pieces out. Don’t be afraid to take some damage since that lets you draw cards in hero form. On top of drawing up to your hand size, for the first two or three turns you want to flip every turn to pull in an extra two cards per turn after the first. You are gonna be digging really hard to try and get both Agent 13 and Alpha Flight Station out since if you use that pair in Alter-Ego you’re drawing two more cards per cycle. So if you start in Alter-Ego on a turn, draw a card, Alpha Flight twice with Agent 13 readying to back up, flip to hero to heal and draw and you have seen 12 cards in your deck with no other actions taken. That gives you so much to do on a turn and lends you a ton of versatility and options for a deck that isn’t running any additional damage.

Mid-Game aka Doing your job:

While those two are crucial to our game plan, the other side of it is steady threat management. I’m gonna need the class to repeat after me since whenever I loan a Monica deck to friends, sometimes they don’t catch on:

In this house, we do not pay for Surveillance Teams!

Chance Encounter is here to make sure you always have Monica Chang available to you. If you have a Chance Encounter on the board and Monica is in your hand, use her to pay for something, then pop that side scheme and get her back. If she’s on the field, she is there to chump block for you (as long as you’re not at full health already, take a hit for more card draw). If she can’t take a hit you want to use her as soon as possible. You want her bouncing back to your hand to be played as much as is physically possible. I hope Agents of Shield gives us a Skrull upgrade or ally that lets us make a copy of an ally on the board just so we can play double Monica. Monica is our most useful asset in this whole deck after our two card draw cards.

Just do chunks of damage where you can while making sure there is no threat on the board. Homeland Intervention is there to double the power of your Surveillance Team without having to remove a counter from them. Yaw and Roll is incredible value with the caveat that you have to thwart something else before hand so either a basic will do or Crisis Interdiction is enough to set up a decent turn. With everything at your disposal you shouldn’t have very many little yellow triangles around to clutter your play space.

Closing out the game:

With threat firmly under control, ending the game is remarkably easy. If you don’t have an aggression player to do that for you, just power up your Energy Channel upgrades and start throwing haymakers. Normally I’m all for playing out your whole hand whenever possible, but I’ll make an exception for if you draw an Energy Channel while there’s already one on the field. Hold onto that for next turn because if you can’t pop the one that’s down this turn, you’ll definitely be able to after the draw. There is more than enough lightning bolts in this deck to max out one of these every turn, especially with all the card draw you have.

Miscellaneous, but important stuff:

1. Your Field Agent supports are solely there to make sure Agent 13 stays in play. Don’t use them to safeguard anyone else.
2. As many SHIELD cards as we’ll be playing, it’s good to get the Sky-Destroyer out in the mid game. It’s decent damage and it’s possible you’ll be triggering it every turn.
3. I said chance encounter is there for Monica, but once you have all three Surveillance Teams out, you can use it get out someone else. Either Nick to draw more cards or Spider-Woman to confuse the villain.
4. Vigilante Training is there in case you know you’ve played or discarded all your threat removal early in a deck to make sure you still have some when you need it later. it’s not a crucial piece, but it’s still a bit of utility to make sure a bad shuffle doesn’t mess up your game plan.

Other than that, have fun. This deck is a blast to play.