I Think I'm in the Wrong Corps...

I was pretty sure this was the Nova Corps meeting room, but these guys look... different. They're all wearing red and black, carrying dangerous-looking guns and swords, talking some nonsense about comic books and card games, and I don't think any of them are even wearing helmets! Ah well, a Corp's a Corp. Might as well join in.

Nova's always been an interesting hero. Some of the best resource generation in the game and one of the strongest events in the game with Unleash Nova Force; UNF for short because I'm going to be referencing it a lot. But this power is balanced out by pathetically low stats and an otherwise generic event suite. 'Pool gives him a bit more spice to tip these scales in another direction. First things first, Nova is a match made in heaven for the new Metagames. Oftentimes in other aspects, it's easy for some of his helmet resources to go to waste, but Blackout and Tic-Tac-Toe make it so he always has something to do with excess wilds, and anything he might draw at the end of a UNF turn. And then there's Rock, Paper, Scissors, which is a major boon for Nova because he can cheat. Where most heroes probably have medium odds of winning a RPS flip, Nova can hold Connection to the Worldmind every turn, to win every game he plays as long as he doesn't see Symbiote Suit or his other Connection.

Speaking of Symbiote Suit, this is a card that, in the past, I was very disappointed with for Nova. It looks really good to boost his stats for UNF turns but a lack of readies makes it a lot worse on turns where you don't have it, and if you draw Shadow of the Past, "Bring the War!" causes you to lose it and probably die instantly because it's one of the only permanents with a wild resource worth playing. 'Pool fixes both of these problems and then adds new synergies: we now have Stick-To-Itiveness for more consistent readying, Rock-Paper-Scissors is a cheap upgrade with a wild resource that we're basically always playing when we draw it, and the Suit comes with the additional benefit of powering our Laser Swords.

The synergy between Laser Swords and UNF forms the core of this deck. Where normally your bonus readies were just getting you some extra chip damage with the card draw and resources being the main benefit, Laser Swords turns Nova into a bona fide killing machine, with up to 6 ATK assuming a Symbiote Suit and three icons in play. This synergy is absurdly powerful, and that's why we've built our deck to include as much card draw as possible, so that we can potentially play UNF every turn.

In addition to the usual Nova staples; Champions Mobile Bunker and Moon Girl; 'Pool aspect also enhances our card draw by giving us access to Mulligan. Now we can dig through our deck to find UNF's far more consistently, and if we draw a Mulligan with a UNF already in hand we can stash the Mulligan under Plot Convenience for later use. Before playing that Mulligan, though, be sure to spend some of your resources on those metagames. This deck has a lot of resources, mostly because we run so much card draw that we should always have things to spend them on. Nova's a bit frail, so our special resource cards probably won't stay at full power for too long, but often we can get back to full health using Tic-Tac-Toe, and even if we can't get to full we just have to stay above 5 to keep them as double resources. They get a lot worse once Symbiote Suit hits the table, but by that point they've already done their job by playing our expensive upgrades and allies in the earlygame.

Because boy are there some strong expensive cards to set up: not only do we have the aforementioned Laser Swords and Symbiote Suit, we also need to play at least a couple allies to power up the Swords. Headpool and Lady Deadpool will help us keep schemes under control, Dogpool will help with our earlygame frailty (especially alongside our Healing Factor upgrade and Cutupper), Bob is your cheapest way to get an icon out. Don't forget that sometimes the villain will do your job for you; not every side scheme needs to be dealt with. And then if you want to throw caution to the wind, you can start to Live Dangerously. Play it to draw cards for the team, then get rid of it during a UNF turn. Similarly, UNF also turns Dreadpool; otherwise a pretty annoying downside for the 'Pool aspect, into pure upside; he's just more fodder that lets you draw an extra card and get an extra use of your helmet every turn.

One last note, this deck is fine enough for solo but like most Nova decks it gets much better as the player count goes up. Most obviously because of UNF, but also because you can heal other players and their allies with Tic-Tac-Toe, draw them more cards with Living Dangerously, plus it makes the powerful Not my Responsibility a lot more likely to line up.

Samuel Alexander never asked to join the Deadpool Corps, but through his happenstance meeting with them, I think he's found a true family. Hopefully they don't get him killed.