Rocket Raccoon Aggression / Guardian Deck For Expert Ultron

After watching Guardians of the Galaxy, I wanted to make a solo Aggression Rocket Raccoon deck with only Guardian allies and no Avenger / S.H.I.E.L.D - specific upgrades to take on Expert Ultron with the Under Attack modular set.

There are two big challenges with this particular plan. First, it's quite easy for Rocket Raccoon to get killed on the first turn of the game if he has to take the attacks himself. He starts with only 9 hit points and he will take 3 damage plus a boost card in the first part of the villain phase along with 1 damage from the minion attack. There are 5 different cards in the encounter deck that have Ultron attack you again and when you draw into that encounter card, Rocket dies before the end of turn one if he has no one to block for him. Shadow of the Past can be considered a sixth potential game-ending card in turn 1 as his nemesis Blackjack O'Hare has Quickstrike and is a villainous minion. So there are a good number of allies included in this deck to block for him. Throg and Groot are the strongest allies for defending as they will most likely be able to block twice before being discarded. Healing / damage restriction cards such as Moment of Triumph, Endurance and Booster Boots along with Rocket's Cybernetic Skeleton and Schadenfreude are also included to help Rocket Raccoon heal and stay alive.

The second big challenge is that few of the Guardian Allies are good at thwarting. The only two-thwart ally is Star-Lord and he comes at the cost of an additional encounter card. This means that Rocket Raccoon has to do much of the thwarting himself. Because of this I did include two copies of Chase Them Down to help keep the threat levels low along with C.I.T.T. to allow Rocket to ready himself again after thwarting when threat levels are high. This also means that you need to stay in hero form for most of the game, especially since there is no way to confuse Ultron with this deck.

With your starting hand, you want to prioritize the following:

1. Play an ally
2. Play cards that add hit points or reduce damage
3. Play a weapon, preferably Rocket's Pistol since it is cheap and will be enough to do excess damage to minions, triggering Rocket's "Murdered You" ability
4. Play economy cards such as Knowhere and Team-Building Exercise
5. Do some damage to Ultron so that encounter cards which heal damage from Ultron don't surge into something worse.

You will want to stay in hero form as long as possible at the beginning of the game. Yu will want to start getting supports, upgrades and allies out in the first few turns. Try not to flip down to alter-ego until you have two tech upgrades (preferably battery packs) which can be discarded with Rocket's Tinkering ability. The first time you flip down, make sure that the main scheme is clear or down to 1 threat so that the threat added at the beginning of the villain phase doesn't pop the main scheme before Ultron schemes.

At some point you need to get the Particle Cannon out and once that's out, you want to continue adding counters to it with batteries for the rest of the game. The Particle Cannon can be used to defeat minions with excess damage, triggering card draws, while also doing damage to Ultron. Once you have played Team-Building Exercise and Knowhere, it becomes almost free to play most of the allies in this deck.

Before finishing off Stage 2 Ultron, make sure that Rocket is ready and you have allies and weapons in place in order to thwart Ultron's Imperative and defeat the two drone minions that appear when Stage 3 Ultron appears.

When Ultron is in Stage 2, I prefer drone minions over threat on the main scheme as these can usually be defeated with excess damage, triggering the card draw. Once Ultron is in Stage 3, I tend to avoid having more than one of these on the board at a time, since Ultron can't take damage when these are on the board, and with two hit points, it is harder to deal excess damage to them.