Ronan's Heroic Assassin

Just wanted to share the deck I used to cap off my YouTube channel's Heroic challenge of trying to beat every scenario on Heroic difficulty using a different hero. After 7 attempts, this took down Heroic Ronan! video link

I also won a practice game off camera and had a bizarre loss where Exhaustion forced me to discard Element Gun to Banishment. I still had 10 or so draws to find a replacement which would have won the game but did not, so call it 2.5/8 wins, ~30% win rate.

This deck is intended to win the game on turn 2. It's about as close to a shoot the moon strategy as you can get. While it's technically possible to survive two Heroic villain phases against Ronan, I don't love those odds. I do want to acknowledge this deck ended up only 4 cards different from WWF's recent popular Star-Lord deck (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/56498/3-turn-kill-every-villain-1.0), so I don't want to steal his thunder, but it's actually based off a deck DescryGaming played (that I can't find posted), and is only 1 card different.

This deck sacrifices a bit of consistency compared to WWF's deck for 3x Band Together, which enables higher max resource output on the combo turn if everything aligns. You need to get a little lucky with the encounter deck, but there are enough blanks that don't get in your way between the non-guard minions and side schemes that you will eventually have a game where the door is open. Then you go for it. You don't need to go too crazy on turn 1. Set up the Element Gun and a blocker or Bad Boy. On turn 2, start ripping Call for Aids, hopefully end up with 3 allies in play before playing Blaze of Glory, get some "free" damage in with Daring Escape, and finish it off with a massive Sliding Shot (remembering Universal Weapon can give you another facedown encounter!).

I've posted the decklist as I played it in my video, but I would cut the Innovation (pretty narrow) for a Build Support. Bad Boy was seriously clutch in my win and almost-win, essentially deferring two resources to the combo turn, and hiding in alter-ego lets you survive one activation for free (a scheme just advances to stage 2) and avoid Fanaticism.

If you want to recreate a really fun game and tell your friends you beat Heroic Ronan, try it out! It might take some patience since it requires some luck, but man is it fun to pull it off.