SCL 1602 - N(otk)VA

Also see tjjj's take on the deck, which reminded me that Moon Girl is a no-brainer.

This is my one-turn-kill NOVA deck for SCL 1602, which is a fun puzzle and is successful if you draw into Unleash Nova Force relatively early in your turn

• Solo Champions League Season 16, Round 2 - (10/08/23-10/28/23)
• Villain: Taskmaster + Sci-Fi + Hydra Patrol + Ship Command
• Difficulty: Standard
• Hero: Nova, Phoenix, Rocket Raccoon, Thor, or Venom
• Aspect: Justice
• GMW Marketplace Units - Refer to "Available Units" on Season Leaderboard. If this is your first Round of the Season, then 4 Units. TRoRS - 1x Tech Upgrade if you add Experimental Weapons modular set to the set-up.

1 RoRS tech upgrade + 4 GMW market points

• Tactical Scanner: Draws you five cards
• Calculate the Odds
• Contingency Plan
• By Any Means: That 2 threat can provide an extra Unleash and a trigger for Turn the Tide. So good!

Mulligan strategy

• Hard mulligan for Unleash Nova Force and a thwarting solution (Clear the Area, Making an Entrance, Lightspeed Flight) to deal with the initial Hydra Patrol
• Keep any GMW market cards that you have since they all cycle themselves + provide bonus effects
• Chance Encounter is also really valuable (to the point that I maybe even should have included 3), since it allows you to find your valuable allies, which all provide some sort of card advantage
• One Way or Another also has a lot of early value
• When you have Unleash and thwarting, you really just want to read the rest of your hand to figure out how best to

Other notes

• Lay the Trap and By Any Means both have a lot of value later in the turn to help you keep drawing cards and providing a final opportunity to trigger Turn the Tide.
• Pivotal Moment is a damage backup plan, but I found that I used it most often to clear Stage 1 of Taskmaster while using some dead cards for resources. To clear Stage 1 you are trying to minimize wasted damage so you really want to consider all of your options.

Results

• I managed to win all three games on the first turn with no health or threat left on the villain side and 16HP, 16HP and 15HP left on the hero side in each of the games respectively.
• Games 1 and 2 went fully according to plan with my drawing into Unleash before I cleared the first side scheme. In game 3 I had to tread water for a bit and did not draw into Unleash until after I clear Hydra Patrol. I managed to get my exact damage needed to end the game, but it was very close and I certainly made some poor timing decisions along the way to make it closer than it needed to be. A large mistake is to clear the 1 threat off the main scheme before you don't need to because it provides Turn the Tide access and another Unleash opportunity, but you often need to wait until very late in the game to get Ms Marvel out to recur one of the Turn the Tides and you can also draw into one pretty late and have wasted the trigger.