Ready to Rumble in the Jungle

Ready to Rumble in the Jungle

If you'd like to see a discussion of this deck, see the following video: Black Panther Shuri | Protection Deck Discussion | Ready to Rumble in the Jungle

VILLAINS TESTED AGAINST to refine the deck (in both standard and expert): Klaw; Unus; Four Horsemen; and Magneto.

Deck Refinements:

• Removed Atlas Bear
• Added:
  • a 2nd copy of Energy Shield
  • Rogue

Then:

• Removed
  • Rogue (effective when used, but the deck was just getting too expensive).
  • Both copies of What Doesn't Kill Me (which are unusable turn 1)
  • Quincarrier (No longer necessary without the above event)
• Added:
  • 2 copies of Ready to Rumble (Valuable throughout the game but especially on turn 1)
  • Helicarrier
  • Nick Fury, Sr. (increases the capacity to build out or immediately remove 3 threat).

NOTABLE ELEMENTS OF PLAY:

• Primary Target for the player side scheme, Build Support: Helicarrier
  • Secondary Targets: Leo Fitz and The Elephant's Trunk

• Dora Milaje allows a Dora Milaje ally to remain in play permanently. Okoye is the highest priority because she becomes a 3 THW, 3 ATK ally, but getting any one of them in play makes for a great asset.

• While Queen Ramonda is an amazing healing asset, she's far more valuable once The Elephant's Trunk is in play, more often being utilized for card draw than healing.

• Leo Fitz has 8 tech targets. Prioritizing one of the zero-cost tech upgrades, Energy Shield, allows it to be played immediately to give other allies extra activations, makes for a cheap readying target for Repurpose, and also provides a card to discard if a treachery forces one to discard an upgrade. Energy Barrier is usually a better option if just gathering a card as a resource to play another card.

  • Shuri would then target her identity-specific upgrades or Forcefield Generator with her Alter-Ego Inventor ability.

• Repurpose is expected to find a target almost every time it's drawn.

• Ready to Rumble provides the much needed readying after Shuri uses her Inventor ability to help her set up her Black Panther upgrades. This is valuable throughout the game but especially so on the opening hand.

• The 3 ally combination of Nick Fury, Nick Fury, Sr., and Moon Girl helps tremendously with card draw to set up Shuri's kit and provide much needed attacking and thwarting, including from drawn Black Panther events. Even if one does not have Moon Girl, The 2 Furys are still great assets in this deck.

Conclusion: The initial iterations of this deck were mostly effective but fairly inconsistent. I underestimated the cost of exhausting Shuri on turn one, often having to choose between sacrificing setup to gain some mild board control or potentially allowing the villain to quickly gain a fairly overwhelming board state.

Adding an extra copy of Energy Shield, two copies of Ready to Rumble, and Nick Fury, Sr. turned the deck into an effective one at dealing with minion and scheme threats from turn one and allowed Black Panther (Shuri) to control the board state and eventually set up larger than expected final turns, with damage ranging from 21 to 29 points to end the last four games. After refinement, this became a fun deck indeed. :-)