Agent 13 is the standout new card from all of the SHIELD support in Sinister Motives. This deck uses her to ready Alpha Flight Station, Helicarrier, and Command Team. Using Captain Marvel's incredible economy, set up is fast and easy. Once the board has been stabilized and built, there are a bunch of different ways to burn the villain down!

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Draw your deck with Alpha Flight Station

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Agent 13 readies any shield support. For our purposes, Alpha Flight Station is the best target in the game! If we look at one ideal hero to alter-ego cycle:

Hero starting hand of 5. Spend to draw 1. Avengers Mansion to draw 1. Flip to AE to draw 1. Discard 1 to draw 2 from Alpha Flight Station. Activate with Agent 13 to ready Alpha Flight Station, then discard 1 to draw 2 more.

We've seen 12 cards this turn.

Do the same on the following turn, but with a starting hand of 6 and we'll have seen 25 of our 40 cards in just two turns! Assuming you have those 3 cards out, you've seen 25 of the 37 cards in your deck in one flip cycle, approximately 67.5% of your deck. The number only increases when you factor in Sky Cycle and Command Team, which create a loop with Agent 13 and Alpha Flight Station in alter-ego where you can continue to keep drawing cards for as long as Agent 13 has health and you have ready Command Teams. With all of the other draw effects this deck stacks, you can have turns of 30+ cards!

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Boost up your Top Agent

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We are including upgrades to boost Agent 13: Sky Cycle, Honorary Avenger, Inspired, Reinforced Suit, and Sidearm. This turns Agent 13 into an 7 health/3 thwart/3 attack ally who ignores retaliate and activates twice.

All of these are 0- or 1-cost. Perfect to loop into play by readying Helicarrier like a pseudo-Iron Man

Originally the deck didn’t run Sky Cycle, for fear of sequencing with it and Honorary Avenger and running down her health too fast. However, from testing it with and without, I can say that you’re drawing enough the sequencing doesn’t matter, and by the time she gets to the end of her health the game should be over.

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Piloting the Helicarrier

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While in Hero form, Helicarrier is often a better target to ready with Agent 13. It goes like this:

Spend Helicarrier to play anything->Agent 13 readies Helicarrier->Helicarrier into Inspiring Presence->Agent 13 readies Helicarrier->repeat with more Inspiring Presence or spend on something else (or use Helicarrier to help a multiplayer partner!).

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Battle Commander

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Command Team is often described as a "win-more" card. But here, it is the winning card! It serves multiple important functions for us:

1) Readying Agent 13. One of our win-cons is to loop Agent 13 with Command Teams to generate 21 damage (or more with Inspiring Presence and Innovation).

2) Getting important allies back into our deck. We are running allies with strong entered play effects. These allies are best kept in our discard, ready for the reshuffle, instead of staying on the field. We are going to be cycling our deck very fast, and often on our turn, meaning we can't wait to chump with them (and often don't want or need to outside of multiplayer). Command Team helps get Spider-Woman, Mockingbird, et al into our discard quickly.

3) Since we'll mostly be using it to ready allies with 2-stats, Command Team is 3ER for 6 THW/ATK, or when used with our upgraded Agent 13, 3 ER for 9 THW/ATK. Those are pretty good numbers! Equivalent to a more flexible Hand Cannon.

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Ending the Game

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This deck can end the game in ways that bypass the final villain stage altogether. I'll describe the ideal scenarios for each as a demonstration of what the ceiling looks like for this deck, though reaching these scenarios is often completely unnecessary!

Remember when we said that this deck can draw 25 cards in two turns? Well, what if we only had 25 cards in our deck?? It is incredibly feasible to get to a point where you have 15 cards in play (7 supports, 7 upgrades, Agent 13). At that point, your deck is all power allies, power events, resources, and fodder for your two Energy Channels. Draw your deck, loading up your Energy Channels in 1-2 turns and end the game right there.

Or use Lead from the Front to turn all of your 2 and 3 ATK allies into 3 and 4 ATK allies. A field of Nick Fury, Agent 13, Spider-Woman for instance can generate 10 damage from Lead. 20 damage with 3 Command Teams. 41 damage if Agent 13 and the Command Teams were topped off. Again, this is wildly unnecessary, but showcases the deck's power. In 4-player, we can contribute quite a bit!

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Other Options:

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Team Training can actually get in the way of cycling our allies back into our deck, despite giving Agent 13 another hit point.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes can give Agent 13 more activations after Honorary Avenger.

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Conclusion

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This deck is incredibly powerful, just for the fact that drawing extra cards is powerful. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did!