You've Got This, Shuri!

Shuri likes readying. This is known. So I, like everyone else, initially wanted to play her in a Sidekick deck, especially because of how powerful T'Challa was. But, and maybe this isn't everyone else's experience, I found it really awkward to play. Playing Suit Up, T'Challa, and Sidekick in the same turn is too expensive to be practical, especially in the earlygame, so you depend on drawing everything in the right order. It just didn't feel great to me.

But in the initial deck that I built, I also tried out the other, less well-known ready effect that Leadership has access to: "You Got This!". This one showed promise. And so I decided to pivot and build a deck entirely around it.

Our ally lineup is designed to synergize with YGT as much as possible. Maria Hill, Kid Omega, White Tiger, and Wonder Man all have very high stats for low costs (Wonder Man in particular is notable since using YGT lets you make use of his 3 ATK without having to discard anything from your hand). Of course the lowest cost of all goes to Grant Ward, who comes in for free and can be brought back with Make the Call before sacrificing him again, a combo I've used to great success in another recent deck of mine. The other two allies here; Power Man and Goliath, can temporarily boost their stats, activate, then get sacrificed to YGT.

Goliath and Grant also do great work with Command Teams. For the max damage combo, if you have Goliath, Team Training, and a Command Team charge available, you can attack with Goliath twice for 10, then use YGT to sacrifice him and attack with Shuri for 6 (+2 from Claws), then attack again for 1 (+2 more, or you can sacrifice claws for +5 instead). That's a maximum of 23, but we're not done yet because we're also including an old forgotten Core Set staple: Lead from the Front. If you draw this card with YGT, you get to triple dip from the boost: Shuri gets boosted, the ally gets boosted, and then Shuri gets to steal your ally's boosted stats. Now your Goliath combo is doing 28, and that's before counting any other allies you have in play. Even if you can't get the full combo (maybe Goliath has already activated a few times beforehand or you have to use the weaker Power Man) you're still hitting hard. Also keep in mind that Lead From the Front applies to all your allies for your whole turn, not just the ones you already have in play, so if you're at the ally limit you can play Lead, sacrifice an ally to YGT, play Grant, and he'll also get the bonus.

And that's about it. The deck looks simple enough, and hearkens back to a time before Leadership decks were all about big team effects and trait synergies. But the sequencing can still be pretty interesting, especially figuring out how to make the best use of all your readies. So if you're anything like me, give this list a try. And don't worry: you've got this.