Huge Ships

The villain is gonna need a copy of this.

Maria Hill has a pretty clear strategy to build around, especially in leadership. Once set up you have a never ending supply of counters that effectively gives you free status cards and ally deploys. Writing that out makes me realise just how broken that is!

The only weak points are the low health and the time taken to set up. In testing I found a couple of good early plays to get going.

For the first you need to have a double resource and an ally in your opening hand. If I don't have this I tend to mulligan to try and get it. With that you can use Maria Hill's alter ego ability to search for The Circe, spend 6 resources (will be 5 cards) to play it, then get the remaining ally for free. With the allies in this deck that should be enough to start dealing with threats and get safely through the first turn.

A second option is to go for either The Pericles or The Iliad. Even without any double resource you will have enough cards to play one of these. Or, if you happen to open with cards that give extra resources, playing one or two of those is a good start. Just be careful of villains that hit hard right from the start though, as you may not have many ways of preventing damage. Which of these options is best really depends on the scenario.

After that your next priority should be to get out some cards to help with resources, Helicarrier, Government Liaison, and Support Staff. With one of these out and a double resource in hand it means you can play The Iliad or The Pericles if you get them. The other resource you need is more counters, which can be from some of the cheaper supports or Reinforcements. E.g. an ideal turn two play could be to play Government Liaison, use that to play Field Agent, move a counter to The Circe, then play another ally.

The turns after that should get a lot smoother, just make sure that your expensive supports don't run out of counters. So, just to explain a few of the other choices and notes:

• Field Agent is pretty key to the deck as it is the cheapest source of counters. This plus Command Team make great targets for Reinforcements.
• The Triskelion is a cheap S.H.I.E.L.D. support that gives more options for cards that interact with shield supports. Note that you can use Reinforcements to put counters on this, then move them to other supports. With Field Agent your allies can survive for a while, so the extra space is useful.
• As mentioned before, the double resources are important for the first turn play with The Circe. This is why I went for The Power of Leadership over other options. I still like a copy of Organizational Support to help play the other expensive supports, you have plenty of supports or allies that can be exhausted for it (e.g. an ally with 1 health remaining, supports with 1 counter left, The Triskelion). Beast has a bit of a resource toolbox here.
• Agent 13 is amazing here of course, being able to get extra uses of The Iliad or Command Team. Her and Nick Fury are priorities to keep alive with Field Agent and tough statuses from The Pericles (if you can stun the villain every turn you often don't need to use the toughs to defend).
• The other allies are pretty interchangeable, just play good stuff. Note that while in hero all of them are S.H.I.E.L.D., so work with Field Agent. I like Giant-Man as you can keep him on 3 health. Then, as The Circe is put into play, it means you get around the trait requirements. I found Groot to be nice as the tough statuses allow you to trigger his heal ability. Then Gamora is useful late game to find more copies of Reinforcements or All-Points Bulletin. Just be careful not to use it early on and skip over important supports. Ghost-Spider could be good for that too.
• On the Double can sometimes get you extra resources by readying Helicarrier, Government Liaison, and Support Staff.
• All-Points Bulletin can quickly get up to above 8 damage/thwart. It's great.
• I did not put in the other ships The Douglass or The Bellerophon, just to keep the cost and setup down a bit. They will be good for particular scenarios though, or maybe worth adding if you are in a game with 2-4 players. Same for Sky-Destroyer, it didn't feel necessary.

Enjoy!