No(va) Quarter! One Turn Kill Combo

Aim: Set up a board of Honed Technique, 3 copies of Follow Through, and Test the Defense, pull out a field of minions to attack, then draw through your deck using Unleash Nova Force, "Bring It!", and No Quarter, then finish the villain with multiple copies of Full-Body Charge.

The deck plays best in 2 player, but it’s possible to pull the combo off in solo with a solid draw and good play. Against Expert Mastermold we won in the third player phase of the game after with this deck defeated 8 sentinel minions (which all had guard) and both villain stages in a single turn.

I will add a caveat, this is not a deck you just want to casually drop on other players. Your combo turns and some set up turns can take a long time and your teammates will sit and watch as you play solitaire for 30 minutes. That being said if you’re upfront about that and the potential for a short turn length game and people want to experience it, it’s a blast.

Card Selection:

No Quarter, Honed Technique, Follow Through: This is the engine that makes the deck run. The deck runs 25 Aggression (Red) cards to maximise its draw power from No Quarter and you will find yourself with a massive hand of cards after the first 2 copies are played in a turn. With Honed Technique, Aggressive Energy, and Keep Up the Pressure No Quarter deals 8 damage to a minion. If you have previously reduced that minion to 1HP, Follow Through means you will discard the top 10 (unironically a quarter of your deck) cards of your deck and fill your hand with red cards. No Quarter also sets your board up for your combo by putting the key red pieces into your hand and providing you the resources to play them, you may also regularly find that a speculative No Quarter provides you with the ability to build and combo in the same turn.

Angela & Looking for Trouble: Both cards pull a minion from the encounter deck for you to engage to enable No Quarter plays during early game set up and late game combo turns. Angela can defend for you when things get ropey and her 2 damage can set up No Quarter for more excess damage. Looking for Trouble combines with Unleash Nova Force providing another ready and draw for nova on the combo turn. Both allow you to draw multiple cards with "Bring It!".

Ms. Marvel & The Locust: Both cards have fantastic synergy with the powerful events in the deck. They can get vital copies of card drawing events into your hand to dig deeper for the combo or return copies of No Quarter and Full-Body Charge to your hand when you are ready to combo. Ms. Marvel can be played early for two uses before the final turn and you can even recycle The Locust during a turn by defeating him to a Thwart action before you deck yourself, then drawing him again with No Quarter.

"Bring It!", Plan of Attack, Keep Up the Pressure: Use these cards to dig deeper through your deck to keep the momentum going on your combo turn. There is just a single copy of "Bring It!" as you can only play one per turn. I have been particularly impressed by Plan of Attack in this build because you can reduce the number of cards in your deck fairly quickly and use it to search out No Quarter, Full-Body Charge, or Pot Shot (if you need to pump up the excess damage on larger minions. You want to put down Keep Up the Pressure as soon as you see it, can afford it, and if it does not interfere with other players playing player side schemes, but wait to clear it for your combo turns. In 2 player game the side scheme enters play with 4 threat which is a single copy of Lightspeed Flight and a single Nova activation away from being defeated, enabling a ready and a card draw too.

Full-Body Charge & Test the Defense: Full-Body Charge is your finisher and you should be able to play it multiple times a turn. It deals a whopping 12 damage thanks to Honed Technique and can even reach 14 with the help of Aggressive Energy and Keep Up the Pressure. If you find yourself (deliberately or desperately) on 4 or fewer HP, you can target a minion and deal up to 16 overkill damage to the villain with a single copy. Test the Defence provides you with a much needed way of converting minion damage into villain damage. You should aim to have a copy in hand when you place the fifth counter on so that you can put the second copy down and start loading it up for more damage. The copy in your discard pile is now ready to be shuffled back in to your deck when you run out of deck, and that is going to happen a lot. Its very easy to play 10 attack events in a single turn with this deck and that means an additional 10 damage on the villain.

Pot Shot: Use extra copies to land villain damage and don't forget that you ready and draw from defeating a villain stage.

The Resources: A total of 7 Wild resources in the deck means you are likely to have one after a mulligan to play your helmet first turn using Sam Alexander's ability. 7 Wilds also means that you have a good chance of being able to reduce the cost of Nova's signature events and meet the resource requirements of Honed Technique and No Quarter. The damage from Audacity should not be discounted too.

So their you have it, abuse No Quarter and Unleash Nova Force and see how fast you can blaze your way through the villains HP!