Assets Are Expendable

The best time to attack is after you've already made sure nothing can go wrong.

This is a true-solo Leadership Nick Fury deck built for Expert play, and it is basically two different Fury decks smashed together:

Maria Hill Voltron + Agents of N.O.P.E. control.

The Maria side builds one absurdly useful ally who turns thwarting into fuel for Fury's suit. The N.O.P.E. side uses Preparations and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep the encounter deck from disrupting that setup.

Those two ideas complement each other remarkably well.

The control package buys Maria and Fury time to build their board. Maria then generates the intel Fury needs to power his control tools, Flying Car, and eventually his Assault side. Once the board is secure, Fury stops gathering intelligence and starts spending it.

Everyone other than Maria is expendable.

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Two Fury Decks Walk Into a Helicarrier...

The two main inspirations here are Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. by TheMegaSage and Agents of N.O.P.E. by HeroicSkeleton.

The first demonstrated just how ridiculous Maria Hill + Sidekick + Inspired can become. Maria's thwart doesn't merely control the board: every point she removes gets moved onto Fury's suit. Reinforced Suit helps keep that engine operating, while Side-by-Side lets Fury and Maria amplify one another.

N.O.P.E., meanwhile, approaches Fury from the other direction. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. + Intelligence Analysis + Practiced Plan + Secret Agent create a control engine that can reject some of the encounter deck's nastiest plays while simultaneously loading Fury's suit.

Rather than choosing between those plans, this deck runs both.

Maria generates intel proactively.
The Preparation package generates intel reactively.
Fury spends it wherever the mission requires.

That's the deck.

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Maria Hill: Non-Expendable Asset

Maria is the one ally we're trying to turn into a permanent part of the board.

Sidekick keeps her around, Inspired turns her into a 3 THW / 2 ATK ally, and Reinforced Suit gives her the HP to keep using those stats.

Inspired Maria thwarting for 3 means:

remove 3 threat → put 3 threat on Fury's suit.

Those counters can become damage in Assault, a ready from Fury's Flying Car, encounter information from Fury's Watch, or fuel for other parts of Fury's kit.

This is why Maria is much more than a Voltron ally. She's effectively part of Fury's economy.

Side-by-Side

Side-by-Side is the payoff for building Maria.

It readies both Fury and Maria and can either repair them or give both +1 THW/+1 ATK for the phase.

With Inspired in play, the stat mode means Maria can thwart for 4 and transfer all 4 threat to Fury's suit, while Fury also gets the ready and stat boost.

This replaced the need for Command Team. In testing, Maria's limiting factor was almost always consequential damage rather than access to another ready. Side-by-Side is cheaper, more flexible, and much better on the turn Fury decides to end the game.

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Just Say N.O.P.E.

While Maria is building the suit, the other half of the deck is trying to make sure the villain doesn't ruin everything.

Intelligence Analysis is one of Fury's best cards. When the encounter deck produces a treachery that would wreck the plan:

N.O.P.E.

Practiced Plan can bring Intelligence Analysis back.

Secret Agent rewards those Preparation triggers by adding still more threat to Fury's suit.

And Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. covers the other half of the equation. If the encounter card isn't something Intelligence Analysis can handle, Agents can throw it away and give us another shot.

This isn't a complete encounter lock, and sometimes the replacement card is worse.

That's S.H.I.E.L.D. business.

But combined with Fury's Watch, EM Shield, Mockingbird, and Melinda May, Fury gets an unusual amount of control over what the villain is actually allowed to accomplish.

The important part is that the control engine isn't separate from the Maria engine. Both are feeding the same suit.

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Everyone Else Is Expendable

Maria gets health upgrades and a retirement plan.

The other agents get Last Stand.

That package is deliberately small:

Grant Ward costs 0 and attacks for 2. Last Stand turns that into 5 damage, then conveniently gets him off the board before he has an opportunity to reconsider his loyalties.

Nick Fury, Sr. was going to discard himself at the end of the round anyway. Get his enters-play effect, use him, then turn his 2 ATK into 5 damage before he leaves.

Mockingbird gives Fury a stun, which can be exceptionally valuable while Fury is in Stealth. Once she has done her job, she can become another Last Stand target.

Melinda May is the expensive specialist. She isn't something I expect to hard-play every time she appears, but Call for Backup can bypass her 4-cost price tag. Once she's around, her ability gives Fury another layer of encounter/boost-card control.

And after these agents reach the discard pile, Make the Call lets Fury decide whether any of them suddenly became necessary again.

That gives the ally package a very different feel from conventional Leadership:

Maria is infrastructure. Everyone else is a tactical resource.

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Finding the Right Assets

The player side schemes are essentially tutors.

Build Support normally finds Fury's Flying Car. The Car is one of the most important pieces in the deck because Fury's basic thwart generates suit threat through Gather Intel, and that threat can immediately pay for another Fury activation.

If Flying Car is already established, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an excellent second Build Support target.

Call for Backup normally finds Maria if she's missing. Once Maria is established, it becomes a way to bypass the cost of an expensive specialist such as Melinda May or Nick Fury, Sr.

Specialized Training generally finds Surveillance Specialist, further rewarding the basic thwart activations Fury already wants to make.

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Stay in Stealth...

Most games should spend considerably more time in Stealth than Assault.

Don't Break Cover just because adding 3 damage to an attack looks tempting.

Stealth is doing too much work.

It protects Fury from ordinary villain attacks, lets him exploit his strong thwarting, gives Maria plenty of threat to remove, and buys time for the N.O.P.E. package to establish control.

During this phase, suit threat is a resource rather than something that needs to be hoarded indefinitely. Spend it on Flying Car and Fury's Watch when doing so improves the board.

The goal isn't to accumulate the biggest possible pile of counters.

The goal is to reach a board state where you know you're safe enough to stop caring about next turn.

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...Until the Mission Changes

Eventually the deck reaches the point where Fury has:

Maria established,
Flying Car online,
the scheme under control,
several counters on his suit,
and some combination of Side-by-Side, Last Stand, Concentrated Fire, or Spray Fire available.

That's when Fury Breaks Cover.

Now the engine reverses direction.

Threat that Maria spent the game accumulating becomes bonus damage.

Flying Car becomes another attack.

Side-by-Side becomes another attack while potentially increasing Fury's ATK for the rest of the phase.

Last Stand turns an expendable agent into 5 damage.

Concentrated Fire and Spray Fire give Fury additional ways to cash in the suit.

The deck doesn't want to spend six rounds slowly attacking the villain.

It wants to spend six rounds making sure the villain is losing...

and then inform them all at once.

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Why Some Obvious Leadership Cards Aren't Here

This list has gone through several changes based on actual Expert games.

Command Team rarely saw play. Fury and Maria already generate plenty of thwart, while repeatedly readying Maria mostly accelerated her consequential damage.

Clarity of Purpose also rarely justified spending a card and resource on future economy. This deck generally wants its resources immediately.

Rapid Response looked perfect for the N.O.P.E. half of the deck, but the ally suite turned out to be surprisingly poor at triggering it. Stealth means allies rarely need to block, while several of our allies leave play by being discarded or otherwise aren't defeated.

That led to Last Stand + Make the Call instead. It fits the disposable-agent half of the deck much better.

The result is less of a traditional Leadership engine and more of a Fury engine that happens to be using Leadership.

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Mulligan

The highest priority is usually getting Fury's core infrastructure operating.

Fury's Flying Car and Fury's Watch are premium keeps.

Build Support is effectively another Fury's Flying Car when the Car isn't already available.

Maria or an efficient path to Maria is excellent, particularly Suit Up or Call for Backup.

Sidekick is much more appealing when Maria is already accessible.

Secret Agent can be excellent eventually but isn't needed for initial setup.

Don't be afraid to pitch expensive allies. Melinda May and Nick Fury, Sr. are useful cards, but neither is more important than getting Fury's actual engine running.

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The Experiment

What started as a Maria Hill Leadership deck gradually picked up the N.O.P.E. control package, and the result turned out to be more synergistic than expected.

The two halves aren't competing for Fury's attention.

They're feeding each other.

Maria keeps the schemes under control while manufacturing intel.

The N.O.P.E. package keeps dangerous encounter cards from dismantling Maria's board while manufacturing still more intel.

Flying Car turns intel into tempo.

Assault turns intel into damage.

Last Stand and Make the Call turn everyone who isn't Maria into whatever Fury needs right now.

So while this may look like a Maria Voltron deck and a Preparation-control deck got accidentally shuffled together...

That is, in fact, exactly what happened.

And somehow it works.

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"Until the villain tries something stupid, we're in Stealth. When they do..."

N.O.P.E.