Healing FacThor

How Thor Abdicated His Asgardian Duties by Never Flipping Down

Who Gave Thor a Healing Factor?

Thor just got buffed, as he seems to with each new wave. This time, it comes from the most unlikely of places: a fleet of F-16s. Air Cover has limited deck-building potential given its Tactic requirement, but it's downright awesome for Thor, as well as most other heroes who love minions.

How Good is Air Cover?

Running the numbers, we see it doesn't incur a long-term cost. It costs 2ER, and it gets you 2 cards back. Even on the simplest level, that's as good as Assess the Situation. That effect is pretty bland on its own, but this card achieves far more utility than that because (1) it grabs minion attachments precisely at the moment you want them in hand and (2) it can grab them from your deck or your discard pile, so you can continually reuse the same cards and the ability will never miss.

Why is Air Cover So Good for Thor?

To state the obvious, Thor loves minions. But, more importantly, he doesn't love threat. Having so little threat removal in his kit means that Thor can often struggle to flip down and handle the resulting scheme activation. If a side-scheme comes out at the same time, he usually won't respond quickly. So, with that in mind, it's usually best for Thor to flip down as little as possible. Air Cover, in conjunction with Suppressing Fire, is the perfect answer to this problem. With these two cards, Thor suddenly has S-tier hero-form recovery, which was already decently strong from Godlike Stamina. He can regularly extract 2 cards and 2 health out of every minion, which kind of makes you wonder whose side the minions are really on.

A Surprise Combo

Another excellent combo piece here is Surprise Move. In the past, when I've tried to use this card, I've run into situations where I've got Surprise Move in hand and a minion, but no upgrade for the minion. Air Cover fixes that problem by always guaranteeing an upgrade on every minion. The ready from Surprise Move also synergizes well with Thor and his in-kit 3-ATK stat, that can be further boosted to 5-ATK with Combat Training and Aggressive Conditioning. That 5-ATK is also the main reason for including Limitless Stamina.

Thor's Minions

As for the allies, we've got the Minion-Slaying Crew. Angela brings out minions, which Thor likes. Throg and Valkyrie benefit from having minions out when they're played. Winter Soldier may seem anti-synergistic given that he likes to steal the minions Thor wants to kill, but I've found that the additional threat removal is sometimes worth the loss of healing. Finally, Two-Gun Kid is great for softening up stronger minions before Thor deals the finishing blows.

Potential Modifications

There are a few cards you can easily add to mold this deck to whatever scenario you're going up against. Here are a few suggestions.

• Add Marked and Take That! if you want to push more damage to the villain.
• Add Hall of Heroes if you want to admit defeat and flip to alter-ego.
• Looking for Trouble or Spoiling for a Fight if you want more consistent minions. The former can ramp up threat removal and the latter can ramp up damage.

I'd say the biggest target for removal to accommodate the above cards would be Surprise Move because it can often do extra damage that gets wasted, but feel free to tinker around with other options as well.

I hope you're enjoying the new Civil War cards as much as I have! If you're feeling up to it, take a shot at a minion-heavy scenario with this deck or the new Air Cover archetype on another minion-slayer. It's a fun time!