Ironheart Suits Up

The premise of this deck is simple. Ironheart has always been a good hero with strong late game potential, similar to Iron Man. The only thing holding her back is the time required to upgrade her suit to Version 3.

Stroke of Genius has always been the MVP card of any Ironheart deck, but you only see it twice per shuffle. A resource that draws a card to replace itself and adds a progress counter? Yes, please! If only there was a way to play it more than twice...

Beast changed all of that.

Notably, the response on Beast works when he's put into play - doesn't matter whether he comes from your hand, discard pile, or if you cheat him into play. All that matters is that we have a Stroke of Genius in our deck or discard pile to add to our hand. So, if both happen to be in our hand, we'll have to use them to make sure that Beast's response hits them. Otherwise, we're good!

The next important thing is that all of the allies, sans Maria Hill, share a trait with our identity. Beast shares the Genius trait, and the remainder share the Champion trait, so all of them can be cheated into play via Sneak Attack. You don't want to do so with with Moon Girl, obviously, as her response requires you to play her from your hand, but 5 of the allies are solid targets for it. Also important is that Sneak Attack is an action, not a hero action.

So, now we have a way to recur Stroke of Genius, and we have a way to get Beast into play early on before our board is built up so we can take advantage of his response while our economy is weak. How do we further leverage him when Sneak Attack discards him from play, or if we had the resources to hard cast him?

That's where Suit Up, Rapid Response and Regroup come into play. Suit Up will fetch him from the deck or discard pile and add him to our hand, along with Clarity of Purpose. That makes him a valid target for another Sneak Attack in hand, or you can play him along with a Regroup, or if you had a Rapid Response on the table you can leverage that. Any time you play him normally, you should plan to Rapid Response him if possible, or Regroup if not, for more recursions of Stroke of Genius. There are two copies of Clarity of Purpose so that one can go on your hero, and one remains as a valid target for Suit Up.

There's some neat synergies with this, too. Suit Up grabs Beast and Clarity of Purpose and puts them in your hand. You spend the resources to play Beast and put a Stroke of Genius in your hand. Stroke of Genius now pays for Clarity of Purpose onto Beast, replacing itself in your hand. Beast now attacks or thwarts, taking 1 consequential damage, and Clarity of Purpose deals 1 damage to Beast to give you 1 wild resource, leaving Beast at 1 health to defend during the villain phase to maximize the value you get from Rapid Response. That resource can pay for the hero response on Falcon to let you ready Ironheart to double thwart this turn, or you can use it along with Ingenuity and Clarity of Purpose on your hero to pay for Moon Girl with 3 mental resources...

Alternatively, if you're in Alter-Ego form, you pitch Clarity of Purpose as a mental resource for Child Prodigy to add a progress counter for your suit. When Regroup isn't putting Beast back in your hand when Rapid Response isn't available, you can use it for Maria Hill or Moon Girl or Brawn, who can all benefit from being played again or having full health. Patriot is weaker, but you can still Sneak Attack him into play, give +1 ATK/THW to Ironheart, attack or thwart with Ironheart, attack or thwart with Falcon, pay an energy resource, ready Ironheart, attack or thwart with Iron Heart, use 6 progress counters to upgrade your suit and ready Iron Heart, attack or thwart with Iron Heart, use New and Improved to ready Iron Heart, attack or thwart with Ironheart...getting potentially 4 activations with +1 ATK/THW is solid.

Snowguard is definitely the weakest ally in the deck, but she's flexible. Sneak Attack is a dead card without an ally in hand, and she can be 3 ATK or 3 THW on demand in that scenario, and you can pitch her as a resource for Falcon. This is the first ally I would replace in the deck, Vivian is likely better. Spider-Man isn't a great option because we need to play him from hand, and there's not any better Champion or Genius targets. However, I have a small preference for Snowguard over Vivian at the moment because in a scenario where you can't afford to flip down to Alter-Ego and you're low on health, you can play Snowguard and get two blocks out of her before she dies. You can also Rapid Response her to get another two blocks. That's a lot of villain damage prevented, it can buy you breathing room if you absolutely need it. The effect on Vivian isn't guaranteed to be useful.

Once you're built up, Suit Up will let you play Moon Girl every time you draw it for 3 cards (Ingenuity, Clarity of Purpose and discarding Clarity of Purpose or using the response on Brawn will guarantee the 3 mental) and then you simply go to town with all of your upgrades, events and allies. You have plenty of thwart, plenty of damage, and Snowguard is plenty of tanking. Smash villain until dead.

The number of copies of Regroup, Suit Up and Rapid Response are still in flux as I play with the deck more - you could change the ratio of each if you want more Rapid Response and fewer Suit Up, for example - but from my testing, this works well for solo and multiplayer both.

Have fun suiting up with Ironheart!