Punching Their Pressure Points

Peter, do me a favor and put on your work-out mix, would you? I need to let off some steam.

Welcome back to Curation Crew, the series that works to highlight the best content Marvel Champions has to offer in an effort to downsize and curate a more compact collection. Typically, I do these deck write-ups in-character, but today we’re teaming up with the Winning Hand podcast, so I felt it more appropriate to do a traditional write-up that lays out how the deck works, how it looks to leverage its tools, and recommendations if you want to make any alterations.

This deck was paired with the Winning hand podcast episode featuring Toe-to-Toe, which you can listen to here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-x5h5g-19154e0

Gamora is one of my favorite heroes in the game, and a big part of that is her ability to get the game started from turn 1 with little to no set-up, and this deck looks to capitalize on that, pushing tempo with reckless abandon while keeping the board state nice and tidy. By the end of the game, don’t be surprised if you have around 3 or 4 permanents in play.

The goal of this deck is to get maximum value out of your various events, with something for every occasion, and a vast majority of your attacks can be used to either smack the villain or take out minions with an added bonus. All of this also works to counter some of the awful cards that your Nemesis set can bring into play; typically, stunning and confusing Gamora can be utterly debilitating, but with the ability to play lots of low-cost events, you can rip off those status cards and still do something on your turn.

• Angela and Infiltration are here to get some minions in play so you can trigger your various events for some nice kickers. Both allows you to select minions rather than drawing blindly, which is a huge boon, and even more importantly, Infiltration can summon a minion but doesn’t have to. While it can be helpful to get some of those event bonuses, it can be just as nice to remove 5 threat from a scheme with no repercussions and then get to smack the villain unopposed.
• One by One, Precision Strike, and Relentless Assault all give you little boons for defeating minions in considered ways, allowing you to deal extra damage or heal. And if there are no minions in play, you can still spend One by One and Precision Strike to deal some damage to the villain and get your hero ability to trigger.
• Toe-to-Toe, while it doesn’t do something when you use it to defeat something, is just great value. It’s fantastic at removing some of those pesky minions, especially Nebula, circumventing her nasty Retaliate, and it can be helpful to get some shots in on the villains, assuming they don’t get anything too good from hitting you. If you have Crosscounter in your hand as well, all the better!
• Multitalented is a great card that can be used early-game but will shine after you’ve gotten both Keen Instincts into play. With multiple wild resource generators, you can guarantee getting all 3 effects consistently, all while triggering both of your hero effects. Even if this is the only event you end up playing in a turn, it can be fantastic value.
• Clear the Area is here to even out the balance of Thwart to Attack events while allowing you some extra economy when needed.
• Crew Quarters and Endurance are here to help keep you alive and offer Upgrades and Supports to discard if you’re forced to that aren’t your resource generators.
• Lock and Load and Keep Up the Pressure are here to give you alternative sinks for your thwart when the main scheme isn’t a problem and sets you up for some big turns. Gamora's Sword is too dang expensive and I find myself never playing it because of this; Lock and Load makes it far more palatable, and if you get it into play early it can offer a ton of value. Keep Up the Pressure, on the other hand, can set you up for a big turn when you can clear a ton of enemies or you can try to close the game, grabbing the perfect event and giving all your attack events that turn a little extra kick.

What’s great about this deck is how flexible it is, able to tackle whatever the scenario hands you. Your mulligan will vary wildly depending on what the villain’s start set-up is. A bunch of minions? Try to get some of the events that will get you some kickers. Multiple side schemes starting in play? Get Infiltration or Clear the Area depending on how much threat starts on them. Additionally, your AE ability and, when you get it in play, Conditioning Room will get you more cards, so you can often flip to hero form with 7 or 8 cards. Since so many of your cards are Attack and Thwart events, the odds of you getting that extra economy from your AE effect is pretty high.

It’s worth noting that you should be very deliberate in terms of the order in which you discard your events, as you are stacking the bottom of your discard pile for when you pull back events via Conditioning Room. This can be hard to plan for at times, but often there will be some events that will feel more prevalent to a scenario than others; setting yourself up with the right event can be a game-changer.

Gamora doesn’t really want to block, and she rarely does. Between Crew Quarters and Conditioning Room, she heals for 4 HP every time she flips down (2 HP the turn you flip down and another 2 when the next player phase starts). This is also an Aggression deck that isn’t afraid of flipping down since you have such great thwarting options, so don’t hesitate when the need crops up. You will REC from time to time, and I find that Gamora can DEF for fellow players when they’re pressed or for herself if a daunting attack is headed her way, but this is a rarity in my experience.

Other than that, Gamora is rolling with the punches, moving as the scenario demands, and making quick work of any opposition she encounters.

I’ve been working on this deck for months, with this being something like the 14th or 15th iteration on the deck, and I’m still making small tweaks here and there, as I mentioned in the podcast. Here are some cards that I previously included and chose not to, but might serve you better than they did me:

• Rocket Raccoon and Groot were both allies I considered including, Rocket to help manage minions and Groot to protect me from the villain or the occasional minion. I ultimately found that both were too expensive for this deck and tried to solve issues that didn’t need solving. Gamora has some decent survivability and plenty of better ways to deal with minions.
• Multitasking was considered instead of Clear the Area, but I found it really easy for Gamora to set up removing exact threat from a scheme thanks to her core ability and THW stat, so I found it more consistent that she would get the extra card draw than having multiple side schemes in play at once.
• Momentum Shift was considered as an off-Aspect event, giving Gamora some survivability. In practice, this card was often ignored, feeling expensive for what it did and rarely feeling worthwhile until late-game when you have your resource generators to eat the higher cost.
• Aggressive Stance was considered to try and pull a particular attack event when a minion would enter play, but I found that I rarely played it and it was rarely needed, as this deck is flush with great responses to minions already.
• Martial Prowess was considered to help pay for her many Attack events, but it was usually overkill when you already have 2 wild resource generators that cost less. Rarely did Gamora want to take the tempo hit to get this in play.
• 1 or 2 copies of Aggressive Energy almost made the cut to help set up Multitalented in the early game and to get some extra damage, but outside of One By One it rarely offered any consistent value, ultimately feeling inconsistently helpful. Gamora already does a great job setting up minions to get taken down by her events, these usually were unnecessary.
• Down Time was considered to reduce the frequency that Gamora needed to REC, but between her other tools it became redundant.

As I mentioned in the podcast, I could see reducing the number of Toe-to-Toe’s in this deck by 1, though I’m undecided on this. If I was to do that, I would probably swap it for a 3rd copy of Multitalented to help balance the resources in the deck, but I’m still uncertain of this at the time of writing.

Ultimately, I love this deck and find it to be consistently entertaining, offering me a hero that can start putting in work from the get-go with little to any need to set up. She can do anything the game asks of her and you’ll always feel like you're making a positive contribution to the team.

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work; I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment either here or on my BGG post associated with this deck. Do you prefer this style of write-up or my more in-universe thematic write-ups? Do you agree with the off-Aspect cards I chose for this deck, or are there others you can see yourself swapping in? I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and I’ll see you next time.