So you just got The Rise of the Red Skull expansion, and you are banging your head against a wall with Hawkeye's preconstructed deck? Yeah, so did I. The goal of this deck is to make a few improvements to the preconstructed deck, using only cards from the expansion and the Core Set, for players who may not have many other hero packs to draw on. Inspired by Hawk's Nest 1.0 deck and analysis, and Hawkeye - Regroup!.

Hawkeye has a few key cards he needs for his 'archery engine':

• Hawkeye's Bow, obviously. Finding it is trivial, using your AE ability.

• Hawkeye's Quiver is essential for not only finding arrows, but storing them outside your hand.

• Expert Marksman adds efficiency, but only for arrows. It works well with Hawkeye's Quiver, allowing you to play arrows entirely without using cards in your hand, leaving those for playing allies and other upgrades or supports.

Hawkeye is squishy: he has relatively few hit points, and low defense, so he needs ways to prevent attacks or block them. Electric Arrow is useful for the stun, but allies are also useful for blocking and thwarting, which can compensate for Hawkeye's low THW.

Hawkeye benefits from more card draw to dig for his key cards, especially Hawkeye's Quiver. I found that the preconstructed deck effectively has 2 competing engines: his archery engine, and an Avengers ally engine. But they don't synergize well, and the ally engine is too expensive. For example, Avengers Tower only reduces the cost of allies, unlike Helicarrier, which is useful for any card (and why it costs 1 more resource); meanwhile, Expert Marksman only pays for arrows, not all the upgrades you need to get going along the way. With the precon deck, I found it difficult to build both engines up, while getting enough allies out to block.

Hawkeye's priority should be his archery engine. This deck tries to support that with more synergy and speed by adding a bit more card draw, cheaper allies, and supports that are useful for both allies and arrows, reducing trade-offs early on to provide a more straightforward strategy.

Key substitutions:

In general, I tried to get in more cheap allies to help early in the game, and swapped out cards that were less efficient or had too many copies, in order to add more card draw and ally options.

• Sky Cycle -> 2x Get Ready: Sky Cycle is more expensive, and you won't get to use it for multiple turns to make the extra cost worthwhile, since you will be using allies to block so often. Get Ready is a cheaper alternative, leaving more of your hand to build your engine early in the game, but still allowing to get more out of a buffed ally like Goliath.

• I removed 2 copies of Team Training. You can only have 1 in play anyway, so 3 copies is overkill. I can understand why there are 3 copies included in the expansion, but there are better cards to include in your deck instead of a extra copies. Note that this support actually makes Maria Hill a little harder to use, since her main benefit is from being played, not hanging around longer: you want to user her up and play her again with Make the Call.

  • 2 copies of Make the Call instead, to help bring allies back. Rapid Response and Regroup would also work well in this respect, but those are in other packs. ;)

• I removed 1 copy of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. As with Avengers Tower, there aren't as many Avengers allies in this deck, so Earth's Mightiest Heroes becomes less useful. Again, with Hawkeye, your allies will be used primarily for blocking, especially early in the game, making these cards to ready them less useful. Unlike other similar cards, however, Earth's Mightiest Heroes can also allow you to ready Hawkeye (he's an Avenger *character), allowing him to ready Hawkeye's Bow and fire off another arrow, which can be a useful combo later in the game.

• I added Helicarrier and Avengers Mansion, which are standard supports from the Core Set. Avengers Mansion is expensive, but the extra card draw helps find key cards if you can get it out early in the game, and can also help ensure you have the cards for combos later in the game. Helicarrier can help bring out expensive allies more often, or expensive supports like Avengers Mansion, which again helps increase card draw. It can even be used for arrows, after you run out of Expert Marksman resources on a turn later in the game.

• I removed Lead from the Front, and replaced them with more allies instead: Maria Hill and Nick Fury, for added card draw. Nick Fury is a classic and offers flexibility to deal with whatever is most pressing, including more card draw, which can be justified early in the game to get find your key cards.

• Avengers Tower -> The Triskelion. Given the addition of more cheap allies, not all of whom are Avengers, Avengers Tower becomes less useful, and less efficient.

Strategy

As with most Hawkeye Leadership decks, the main goal is to build up your Hawkeye engine, while using allies to block until you can really start raining down arrows. Mulligan hard for Hawkeye's Quiver, and Expert Marksman. Your first action is always to use your AE ability to get Hawkeye's Bow.

Early Game

Build your archery engine (Hawkeye's Bow, Hawkeye's Quiver, Expert Marksman).

If you are in Hero form, you need to get allies out to block, probably the cheaper ones. Maria Hill can help cycle through your deck to find the valuable cards (like Hawkeye's Quiver) and provide some much-needed thwarting along the way, especially if you have Get Ready. Make the Call can also help her out a few turns in a row.

Don't worry about not playing arrows in the early game: you will cycle through your deck and get them back later. Your priority early on is to build the engine and make use of allies to thwart if necessary, or clear our troublesome minions. Your base 3 ATK (don't forget the +1 ATK from Hawkeye's Bow!) can also help with minions.

Mid Game

Once you get Hawkeye's Quiver and at least one copy of Expert Marksman on the table, you will have a much easier time playing arrows without having to rely on your hand: play them from Hawkeye's Quiver, paid for by Expert Marksman. This is when you can start playing more expensive allies, and getting other upgrades in play, especially Team Training.

Late Game

The Triskelion will be more useful later in the game, once your archery engine is running independently, and you have the resources to play multiple allies. Until then, you will get more out of Team Training, which makes all allies more durable and thus more efficient, or Expert Marksman to pay for arrows early in the game.

Later in the game is when you can start taking advantage of ally combos, like Goliath's self-buff and Get Ready to do 10 damage in a single round, maybe even more with Ready for Action, Team Training, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, or Lead from the Front.

Make the Call helps bring allies back more quickly, and is about the same cost as Mockingbird's ability (1 resource + the cost of the ally to play them again), which can be expensive early in the game when you should be playing more upgrades and supports (unless it's Maria Hill).

With at least one Avenger ally in play (you have 4 in the deck), you may also be able to use Earth's Mightiest Heroes to ready Hawkeye, who can in turn exhaust to ready Hawkeye's Bow to fire off a third arrow, instead of using that ally's ability (and taking consequential damage in the process).

Having more of your upgrades and supports in play means your deck is leaner and you will be encountering your event cards more frequently, and have better opportunities to play them, making these late-game combos more viable, even with only two copies of certain key cards.

Possible adjustments

• If you have other sets, other cheap allies to consider include:

  • Ironheart
  • Wonder Man
  • Squirrel Girl

• Go all-in on Avengers allies and replace The Triskelion with Avengers Tower. This would make Avengers Tower more attractive and useful early on, which creates competition with the archery engine. Earth's Mightiest Heroes also becomes more useful.

  • War Machine becomes useful again in this context: he's the same cost (5) as bringing out a 2-resource hero and giving them a Tough card with Ready for Action (3+2 = 5). The main disadvantage is that he comes out with a Tough card immediately, which you will lose if you use a basic ability on the same turn, due to consequential damage, and it won't be around to block big attacks.

  • Maria Hill might still valuable for card draw, but Nick Fury might not fit as well in a mostly Avengers lineup.