Valkyrie | Shadow Infiltration

What’s the worst thing about Valkyrie? Her threat removal? You might be tempted to say it’s her economy. Or perhaps the defense package?

While all of those are valid guesses, everyone who’s played Valkyrie in Standard 3 knows that the worst thing about Valkyrie is her nemesis set. It’s a death sentence in solo and is pretty much an auto loss the second you see Shadow of the Past. Kinda sucks all the fun out of a hero when you’re always just a card flip away from losing.

While there have been a few deck manipulation cards around for awhile that could help you try to dodge Shadows, they’re pretty much all in Justice. And for my money, I’ve never been able to get Valk Justice off the ground. The threat removal is good but it’s hard to get enough damage to consistently kill the bigger minions. Aggression is just so valuable for buffing her attack.

When Specialized Training came out I thought that would really help since even just a +1 ATK goes a long way towards one-shotting minions more consistently. And she could certainly use the card draw. But 5 threat is a big hill to climb for Valky, even if it is the perfect number for Flight of the Valkyrior. That card is good when you can pull it off, but it’s one too many steps for consistency’s sake in my opinion.

But now that we have Infiltration, Justice is back on the menu. Five threat removal for only 1 resource is just what the resource starved Valkyrie ordered. Suddenly clearing Specialized Training is a breeze, and if you do happen to get a minion for your trouble, well at least that’s the one thing Valkyrie is well-equipped to deal with.

And now that we’re playing Justice that means we can use all that other cool stuff to do our level best to avoid our number one loss condition. Blindfold gives us 5 chances to dodge Shadows, as does Going Undercover. And a surprise bonus for playing Infiltration I hadn’t considered before it happened was there’s a chance you’ll discard Shadows when playing that card. Plus all that control just helps us line up light boosts and minions for encounter cards as well.

As for the rest of the cards I kept the cost curve as low as I could since we’re paying for Death Glow all the time.

Build Support helps get some desperately needed economy on line with Helicarrier and Quincarrier.

Manifold helps find Specialized faster and thwarts for 2 or 4 if you don’t block with him.

Grant Ward is just a super cheap ally that may or may not betray you. Wiccan and Ironheart also just cheap and useful allies.

Upside the Head makes for a nice easy villain phase, even if you don’t desperately want to go to alter ego or anything. It’s only 1 cost to confuse and then you get to flip down, dodge an attack and draw an extra card. And hey if you happen to have bothered to play Annabelle or have Visit Valhalla in hand then even better.

And the rest is just standard Justice fair. Now I’m not saying this deck is gonna beat Expert Ronan or anything but I’ve had a few really good games with it and it’s the best Valkyrie has ever felt to me. It can gain control of the board while allowing Valk to do Valk things. And Enchantress won’t be able to ruin all your fun like usual.