I Knock 'Em Down

A paired deck, meant to be played two-handed solo, duo, or multiplayer alongside Think Tank: I Set 'Em Up (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/49165/think-tank-i-set-em-up-1.0)

Alternatively, anyone who brings The Raft to the table would be great, as long as you can convince them to use it for the Minion Mill. Or bring it yourself and just bribe the Justice player to include it and play it ASAP.

Minion Mill

The Raft is a justice card, but Aggression loves it. The general idea here is to abuse the power of The Raft to keep minions in rotation for Thor to clobber for profit.

This profit comes by multiple avenues:

• Thor draws two cards when engaging a minion on the villain phase.
• Thor draws two more cards when he engages a minion in the player phase (using Defender of the Nine Realms or Shatterstar)
• Thor can smite at least one minion per turn to draw a card with Blood Rage
• Thor can overkill minions using Hammer Throw, Relentless Assault, or Hand Cannon to damage the villain, augmented by Follow Through
• Thor can heal from overkill using Moment of Triumph
• The Raft gains a bonus thwart for each minion "incarcerated"
• Hall of Heroes gets a counter whenever Thor himself kills a minion, and he can draw even more cards when he flips down.

Raft Shenanigans

So the ideal setup would involve getting minions out and defeated as quickly as possible to circulate them through The Raft. You'll want to use Defender of the Nine Realms to summon them so you can beat them down. Once we kill the 5th minion, we start to get overflow... A random minion dealt back to Thor as an encounter card which will start to fuel his draw machine.

Once we reach 6 minions (two in circulation), we should deal one to Jessica Drew as well, so that Thor can engage it during the player phase by using Shatterstar to draw two MORE cards.

At seven or more minions in circulation, we have even more interesting choices to make. Since The Raft is a Response, we can choose when to activate it. We can be picky with minions (sending those with Tough, Quickstrike or bad when revealed effects back to the encounter discard pile). If you want to go all in, though, you can just load Thor up with multiple minions per turn then sweeping them all at once with Lightning Strike. Be careful, however, since you have to decide which minions to put in the raft before you draw your next hand, so unless you're saving Lightning Strike, it might be safer to just stick with 1-2 minions per turn.

Because of this uncertainty, I also opted not to include "Bring It!". It was originally part of the deck, and it wasn't bad exactly... if you have even one minion, it will draw you one card. But if you deal yourself 3-4 minions and then fail to draw into "Bring It!" or Lightning Strike, your game could get ugly fast. I found it more reliable and safe to stick with 1-2 minions per turn.

Surviving the Villain

The biggest challenge here is going to be Surviving the Villains activations. That's where your contacts, Jessica Drew and her Think Tank come in. The partner deck here is playing Green/Yellow Hybrid, and she has plenty of control. She has no problem facing down the villain with her Forcefield Generators and Energy Barriers. She can Stun/Confuse with Pheromones and Sonic Rifle. The Think Tank also employ Med Teams that can heal up Thor's "sidekick", Shatterstar)

When playing this deck on Standard mode, I tended to face-tank with Thor and heal back up with Moment of Triumph by abusing overkill damage. This is still an effective strategy on Expert mode, but only once you're built out with 3 x Follow Through and a thinner deck (more reliable access to overkill). Unfortunately, on Expert, you don't get the grace and freedom to build out without constant Villain pressure. I originally designed this deck with only Shatterstar and Throg, but had to add in more allies during playtesting against Expert Thanos.

Pushing for Victory

Once you're built out and your Raft-minder has the minions flowing regularly to engage with you, the overkill damage keeps ticking on the villain. This isn't usually a "one-turn-kill" proposition... you have to survive a couple turns of the Villain's second stage to get there. I like to take my time with each game, though, and feel powerful at the end, so I kept up the steady minion-slaying to the final buzzer. Consider, though: each minion you deal back is like virtually increasing the villain's health (by competing for your damage). Not sure how this would work if you stopped dealing yourself minions in the final stretch.

Honorable Mentions

• As mentioned before, "Bring It!" didn't end up making the cut for me, but against non-stalwart villains or standard mode, feel free to add it back in
• in the Valkyrie iteration of this deck, I included Bug and an Energy Spear to get a little extra damage each turn and kill a tough card. Valkyrie attacks every turn, though, and it's her primary way to kill minions. I didn't find Thor basic attacking every turn... but maybe there's a place for amped up Bug in this deck.