Ma-Maria, Here We Go Again

My my, how can I resist ya?

This is the deck I played through a 4p standard Mad Titan's Shadow campaign. The goal was to recur Maria Hill as many times as possible per turn, which on average is an additional three cards per player.

I wouldn’t recommend this deck for anything but 4p, as that’s when Maria is the most useful – she becomes a 2-cost card that gives 4 resources when played, thwarts for a minimum of 2 and chump blocks for you against the villain. If you’re looking to make your friends around the table really happy, then read on.

The Engine: To do this, you need the draw power yourself to grab as many copies of Rapid Response and Make the Call as you can. This is why Wanda is so great here – she naturally filters through her deck with her Superpowered Siblings ability, as well as The Sorcerer Supreme and Spiritual Meditation. Summoning Spell gets your engine set up quickly.

We can combine this with a moderate Strength In Numbers strategy, making use of Stinger and The Triskelion to draw 4-5 cards when fully built.

Of course, Maria helps some as a rebate, but the true stars of this engine are Black Panther, Kaluu, and Nick Fury. Black Panther can store an extra MtC, SiN, or Summoning Spell. Kaluu can help you grab a Chaos Magic or Summoning Spell. Nick Fury rarely does anything but card draw when he enters play. For turns you’re digging through your deck, playing a Nick Fury and a Rapid Response lets you have a hand size of 9 at the beginning of your next turn if you chump block with him.

The Payment Plan: Band Together goes online often by the end of the first turn, and becomes an easy 3 to help pay for Nick and Molecular decays. Because of how much I draw, I’ve had more turns where I have had more than enough resources than not enough. Don’t feel bad playing a loaded Band Together for a two-cost like Maria or RR.

Chaos Magic is a game changer.

The Game Plan: This strategy doesn’t run on autopilot. You have to assess what you have in your hand, board, and discard to optimize your turn. Here are some of the strategies to maximize Maria:

• Play Maria and Rapid Response, let her die by blocking and recur her so everyone draws on villain phase.
• If Maria is in the discard, request an action from the first player to play Make the Call to pull her from your discard.
• If Maria has one damage on your turn, play Rapid Response and swing with her again, triggering RR. Then play a second RR and thwart again, triggering another recursion and card draw. Do this for as many times as you draw RRs.
• If you have MtC in hand and used up your RRs, thwart a final time, discard her, then MtC her back.
• If Maria is in play but doesn’t have a damage on her, thwart for 2, use Command Team to ready her and thwart again. Then use MtC or RR.
• If you have her in play but no way to defeat her, play Nick Fury when you’re at max ally limit to discard Maria and draw three cards from Nick. Then MtC her back in to play. You can use Summoning Spell to bring Nick in from the draw pile and displace Maria. Don’t forget to thwart or attack with him before you send him away!
• You can also use MtC on your friend’s allies to displace Maria.

I’ve discovered that going last in a phase doesn’t hurt as much as you would think – you’re giving the other players more cards they can optionally discard at the end of the phase, filtering their deck to grab what they need.

After you’ve played as many Marias as you can, you will have cards/resources to spare. That’s great – play that Molecular Decay or Hex Bolt you have left over.

In the final turns of the game, you can instead go all-in on draw power and play as many Hex Bolts and Molecular Decays as you can draw.

Why 41 cards? Because I didn't know what to cut when I added the Command Teams. I'm thinking a Spiritual Meditation, but I haven't done the mental math on what the difference would be if it would be removed.

In conclusion, this is a really fun deck to play. I love giving Drax a hand of nine cards before his turn begins, and playing this deck makes you a favorite at any table. Just be conscious on your play time by planning ahead, and let everyone else feel like they're the hero!

I'm not the first one to build a deck like this, but Command Team really smoothed out this style of play so it was worth bringing some attention to it.

• InigoMontoya's Avengers Assemble, Disassemble and Reassemble! deck showed a great use of Black Panther with Summoning spell
• Brianlights was working on a similar deck back when I was putting together this one
• As far as I know, SquigglyDiagram was the first to publish a strategy like this here
• Danimal808 made a Captain Marvel version, aptly calling her Oprah.