Wolverine - Claw 'n' Draw

I was musing on the fact that Justice decks really need to be calibrated for a specific player count to a degree that usually isn't true of the other colours - except for the occasional specialised protect-everyone or kill-all-the-minions build.

...In general, that true solo Justice decks like sweeping things clean with lots of little thwarts; and in the specific that a solo deck that doesn't run One Way or Another is selling itself short, but it's borderline griefing to run it in four-player.

Then it occurred to me that Wolverine's personal thwarting events reward you for clean-sweeping in the manner I just described, and then it occurred to me that there's an entire archetype out there to work with, and the individual elements all chain into each other, especially if you're drawing extra cards by summoning side-schemes.

I just ran this deck on my semi-blind playthrough of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. box, and it was (a) tremendously fun, and (b) never in serious danger of losing ... except maybe the turn I flipped Zemo to his unmasked form, as I hadn't realised all the remaining secret counters would be dumped on the main scheme as threat, but he didn't draw an Advance so everything worked out OK. I will concede that I didn't interact with the box-specific mechanics all that much, though - I don't think I ever stunned or confused a vulnerable minion, and I mostly removed counters from alarms, locks and board members by bashing the villain in the face and resetting their HP.

So what does the deck do? Well, you call up side schemes to draw cards, then you clear them to draw more cards, then you polish off the main scheme to heal, then you ready back up and punch the villain for three, and then spend three health to claw him for eight more. Fortunately, you have twenty health, so you have plenty of leeway to trade blows and hurt yourself with your claws as long as you occasionally block judiciously.

Flipping down isn't necessary in some games, but sometimes you'll have 20 max health and 6 current health, and then it's nice to heal for six once or twice so you have plenty of extra health to spend as a resource. Between Dazzler, Professor X, Blindfold and Under Surveillance you should have enough safeties to go into alter ego two or three times per game - and the last two cards work even if the villain is Stalwart.

Other notes:

• You could add even more synergy chains to the deck with Overwatch/Chance Encounter/Followed, but they felt a little win-more in my testing.

• Hit and Run is the most questionable card in the deck (in the sense that paying three health for the effect isn't an amazing trade-off), but I found having the option to thwart with my claws occasionaly very valuable. Don't swap it for Stealth Strike - the guaranteed thwarting is more important than the damage; plus Stealth Strike isn't a thwart action so it doesn't trigger Justice Served.

• Heroic Conditioning is your second copy of Endurance, not your replacement for Heroic Intuition - the +THW is just a bonus that makes Making an Entrance a little more appealing.

• Utopia is still so insanely good that I wasn't tempted to leave the X-Men ally ecosystem, but I'm sure there's other good yellow allies you could sprinkle in to taste.

• The Stepford Cuckoos exist if you're hyper-paranoid and want more flipdown protection, but generally I found the cheaper Under Surveillance worked well enough on its own.