Maria's Fury: Engine of Destruction

First and foremost, this deck is intended to be played at a 4 player table. I've found The Bellerophon and The Douglass to be incredibly efficient in 4 player, but considerably lackluster otherwise. The goal for this deck is to really lean into her "engine" aspect. While setting up a board state is crucial on any hero, it's doubly so for Maria. The plan is to have every 6 cost helicarrier out, and make sure you're keeping them out. Without further ado, let's look at the deck!

Nick Fury is a key player here. It's why we include the sidekick package! These new helicarriers are 6-costs (yikes), so if we put them on the field, we want them to stick! Maria Hill's hero passive can help, but only so much. With Nick out, you can consistently upkeep your investments!

Command Team is great for readying Nick and thus, adding more counters to our helicarriers. A really cool interaction, assuming Nick has the health for it, is when you have all three out and use Reinforcements on them. If you use each of those 3 counters to keep readying Nick, you're essentially transferring 3 counters onto those 6-cost helicarriers as needed. That's some good value!

Agent 13 has several applications here! reusing one of your 6-cost helicarriers is always nice, but it can also be used to help with resource management using Helicarrier and, to a lesser extent, Government Liaison.

If you ever get The Iliad in your hand, that is priority number 1. No matter what cool combos or tempo plays you may want to throw out, I highly suggest making sure that gets on the board. Other than that, here are a few openers I'm looking to mulligan for:

If you have any resource card and Suit Up, you can use that to fetch Nick Fury and Sidekick, then use the remaining four cards in your opening hand to pay for Nick, and finally, use your alter-ego passive to fetch a S.H.I.E.L.D. support just to use as a resource. I generally go for either Command Team or one of the 6-cost helicarriers I don't feel will be crucial to the matchup early on.

If you have Helicarrier in your opening hand, you can use your passive to fetch Government Liaison, play it, then use its cost reduction to play Helicarrier. You could then use Helicarrier on either the last card in your hand if it is a 1-cost, or if you got lucky and had a resource card as well, maybe more! Or you can use Helicarrier to give one of your team-mates some help! This is a great turn 1 because now you can reduce the cost of every 6-cost helicarrier to 4! Keep in mind this opener works if you have Government Liaison instead of Helicarrier, as you can just fetch that instead.

If you don't see these openers don't fret. There are plenty more that you'll see as you play the deck more, and when all else fails, and you have at least one resource card (preferably Special Funding), just snag a 6-cost helicarrier and slam it down! Again, I've found prioritizing The Iliad is a good idea, as it is the most flexible of the bunch in terms of answering problems. Depending on the situation and your own awareness of the game, feel free to disagree and try a different one! Maybe you got lucky with resources, have an ally in your opener, and can manage to get out The Circe and then use it to throw down an ally, or maybe one of your team members might have an ally they really want to get out in addition to doing whatever else they wanted to that turn? That's a great tempo play! Maybe the villain is known for simply hitting hard and benefitting from those hard hits? Feel free to search out The Pericles! Against Red Skull? I think we can all agree that The Douglass will be a solid option there!

Once you have your engine running fully, which means all your helicarriers and most upgrades should be out alongside Nick Fury, it's time to watch the magic really happen. Get Ready, Side-by-Side, and Command Team will keep Nick Fury attacking/ thwarting, which will keep your helicarriers topped off. Nick Should stay pretty healthy with Reinforced Suit and Sidekick. I've found you can be in alter-ego for a lot of the game, so healing him back through Sidekick's ability and Side-by-Side should keep this strategy consistent. Agent 13, Victoria Hand, and On the Double Are great for readying up any helicarriers you want to use again depending on the situation. All-Points Bulletin gets pretty massive value near the end of the game, with up to 11 damage or thwart.

The strengths of the deck have been outlined, but I should note its weaknesses as well. The first 2-3 turns are all about setting up your board state, leaving very little in the way of tempo. You'll have to rely on your team-mates for early mitigation. You're going to spend a lot of time in alter-ego, so be prepared to add more threat to the main scheme then you're maybe used to! As long as you and your team have a plan to deal with early tempo while you build up your engine, you'll be fine.

That's all I've got! Feel free to provide any feedback or questions! I had a lot of fun experimenting with this deck and I hope it is as successful for you as it was for me!