While this week may have been the toughest in terms of hero choice, I think it's no surprise to anyone that Ant-Man was easily the strongest pick out of the bunch. With an insane stat line increased even further by Nord Stone, consistent access to flipping cards, and the all powerful Army of Ants, Ant-Man was pretty equipped to handle it all this round.

While a lot of people were definitely frustrated by the difficulty level and length of Hela's Expert encounter, this round has definitely reaffirmed that it's my favorite encounter in the game. The strategy you need to form in order to sequence things efficiently is next level on this encounter, and while it's late in the round, I hoped I could lend this deck and some tips in general to those still needing to finish their games this week.

Strategy

At the start of the game, mulligan HARD for the helm, Army of Ants, and Quincarrier, and of course Nick Fury and try to get them on the table in that order of priority.

As the game continues and Hela gets more powerful, your priorities and strategies need to change to clean things up as quickly and cleanly as possible.

Step 1: Stop the Doggo

When the game first begins, your first priority should be taking out the doggo. At 4 Health and a tough, you should easily be able to take him out in one round, as all he needs is a ping from flipping to giant form, a basic swing, and one additional damage.

Step 2: Smack Down the Goddess of Death

After you take out the doggo, the next step in our quest is to grab that Norn Stone ASAP to take further advantage of all the additional readying in our kit. Focus on damaging Hela first and foremost, only blocking with Allies that are on 1 health and only do 1 damage and/or scheming. You have a TON of healing in your kit between Ant-Man's Helmet and What Doesn't Kill Me, and at this point Hela is only hitting for 3-4 damage per attack, so please don't waste your resources on defending yet.

Step 3: Grab the Shiny Thing

Once you kill Hela this first time and grab the Norn Stone, you won't be killing Hela again until the very end of the game. With all our healing, tough statuses and chump blocks, we really have no need to flip her to wounded again, especially since doing so would waste a ton of damage that we need to spend on beefy minions an to close out the game.

Step 4: Set Up For the Sprint

After you grab the Norn Stone, try to set things up so that you can advance the game to the next side scheme AND defeat Skurge in a single turn. This should be a pretty reasonable ask with our crazy stat line and multitude of readies. If you don't think you're in a spot to do both in one turn, just try to set up for a turn to do so by getting allies, Army of Ants, and Ready to Rumble onto your board and spend your activations keeping threat down and/or dealing with minions and another annoyances.

On that note, at this point in the game you don't have to worry too much about keeping threat that low on the main scheme, but still try to keep it below 11 before you end your turn if there are still Advances in the deck.

Step 5: Set up for an EVEN CRAZIER Sprint

Once we're at side scheme 2, our next goal is to set up a turn where you can clear the side scheme, kill Nidhogg AND take care of the NEXT side scheme all in one turn. If you can help it, try to hold off on using the ready action on your Norn Stone until you're ready to try and pull this off. While it seems like a lot, with an ally or two and 2-3 readies you easily have what it takes to get this done. The encounter cards in this encounter can be brutal, especially at this point where Hela's base attack and scheme are up to 4 BEFORE any attachments that might've come out.

Step 6: FINISH HER

Once you've got Odin, you can focus on getting his armor and then finishing things off. You should absolutely prioritize stunning Hela if you can, getting tough statuses on yourself if Nightsword isn't out, and chump blocking whenever neither are an option. While with the help of Odin you should be able to finish things off pretty quickly, I've seen her hit for 11 freakin damage in one attack in this end stage, so be freakin careful.

Roadblocks

There are some pretty freakin' annoying encounter cards that can really slow your game down this round, especially thanks to the modular sets. Luckily, we can deal with the majority of these threats fairly easily barring some really bad luck.

Kang (Master of Time) and Laufey

I've seen a lot of people talking about these cards and putting in specific tech for them, but that seems a little much for me. Thanks to Nord Stone, we can easily take them out with a flip to giant, a swing, and two extra damage from allies or ants. Seeing either will definitely slow down your game a turn, but they're by no means truly terrifying threats.

Fear of Kang

Kang can definitely be a bit more annoying to deal with if one or two of these are on the board, but luckily we still have plenty of damage in our kit outside of attacks. Remember, neither the ping from flipping to Giant form NOR Army of Ants are considered attacks, so as long as you can take him out in the span of 2 turns it's definitely not worth flipping down AND wasting resources on getting rid of the obligation.

Light of Centuries Sphere

This one will definitely slow you down and be annoying to deal with, but by no means is it a death sentence. If you start your turn in Tiny when it comes out, all you need is a single ready to clear the side scheme and then whatever it pulls out. Either way, definitely always prioritize clearing it out immediately to avoid the extra encounter card. Also, this is a great Vivian target if it lines up right.

Frozen

Here's the whole reason I went with Ant-Man over Drax this round. This will definitely slow down your game and need to be taken care of ASAP with how much we rely on readying with our deck. Luckily, even if we can't confuse Hela we can very easily flip down for a turn without feat of losing to threat. Please note you can also target this with Vivian if you want to hold off on dealing with it for a turn.

Unnatural Storm

More ready hate from the encounter deck. Definitely prioritize taking this one out if at all possible, as you don't want to be stuck in a situation where you have to deal with this before readying multiple times in a turn as we like to do with this deck.