"I am Ronin"

"I am Ronin"

Groot is a great candidate for Ronin in my opinion because you're building towards two complimentary results:

• Big Protection Event plays because your DEF will be high.
• Big Groot Event plays because your DEF will be so high that you'll preserve your growth counters.

Potential big results

Base DEF 3 with...

• +1 from Armored Vest
• +1 from Defensive Conditioning
• +1 from Innate Reflexes
• +1 from Ronin
• Temporary +1 from The Best Offense... ...gets you to 8, allowing you to easily preserve your growth counters, but then you can spend one counter when defending to get another +3 from Vine Shield for a total of 11 "Stop Hitting Yourself" damage.

Preserving your counters allows for some BIG "I am Groot" and "I. AM. GROOT!" plays.

In Harm's Way maxes out at "only" (LOL) 8 damage and 8 threat removal, but with some readies (Army of One) on a turn you played The Best Offense... you're basic attacking / thwarting for 8 at least twice when fully built out.

Since Status Cards now have priority over Forced Interrupts (I'm not sure when that change came, but there was a time when it was the other way around) spending one counter to get a Tough with "We Are Groot" is REAL good value, and you might basic defend anyway to preserve that tough for Indirect damage or an extra attack you didn't account for.

Multiplayer only?

I haven't tested this in solo yet, but I feel like it's going to take a long time to build up, making it better in a multiplayer environment where your partners can do the thwarting. That said if you can match the villain's setup it'll probably do fine in solo.