Hail Hawkeye! ~ rethinking the Red Skull precon

This is a moderately tweaked version of the Hawkeye preconstructed deck from The Rise of Red Skull. My wife and I picked up Clint and Jessica as they came in the box and had a great time working our way through, all of which was pretty plain sailing save a couple of attempts to beat Zola's army of minions. However, after getting swamped by Red Skull's side-schemes on our first attempt we decided to tweak the decks a little bit and I'm really happy with how Hawkeye worked out.

I love decks with low cost curves, this probably comes from years of playing Arkham Horror LCG where there's nothing more frustrating than having a handful of expensive assets and events that you just can't play. So here I've focused on being always able to play the allies in your hand, bringing them back from defeat quickly and cheaply and being able to fire off at least one arrow a turn without spending a card. Once you're set up I feel this deck hits that Marvel Champions sweet spot of feeling totally empowered and able to fling the good stuff at the villain whilst enjoying some nice little interactions and combos at the same time.

So how does it work? Well, if you're paired with someone that can thwart pretty effectively then you can afford to ignore your arrows on the first run through your deck. The ideal run-through would look like this: get down Avengers Tower and Quincarrier as soon as you can, then place your two-cost allies - which is everyone except Iron Man and Mockingbird - for "free" whenever they're in your hand. Alongside this you're putting down Rapid Response and Team Training with your The Power of Leaderships or with any arrows that make their way into your hand, as you're not going to use them until the second cycle of your deck anyway. If you're lucky enough to have placed down an early Hawkeye's Quiver then you're really laughing as it will have a good number of arrows on it by the time you come to actually use it. During this process you're using your cheap allies to thwart, block, and essentially hold the fort (with their 1 extra HP if you made it happen) until you're ready to fight.

Once all this is done (and, granted you're unlikely to have had the cards come out in the perfect order, but you'll still have a good few elements on the board) then the fun really beings. Hawkeye's Bow is always at your command in alter-ego, and with a thin deck for the second run you're going to see the ammo for it very often. Leadership is an enormously powerful aspect as it is, and with the fun options opened up by Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Sky Cycle you'll be able to pick and choose which avengers (i.e. everyone except Maria) you want to put in a shift each round. It's particularly fun to use Teamwork on Wonder Man for his 3-attack without taking any consequential damage OR spending a card, and a joy to see Maria Hill pop back into play - giving everyone a draw - after she's thwarted for 2 and been bounced by Rapid Response. Plus, and I can't emphasise this enough, being able to drop Inspired on Iron Man for free thanks to his ability and use your box of tricks to ready and use him multiple times in a round is just pure satisfaction.

I'm not even slightly expert at this game, but just wanted to share what I think is a really fun deck to play with for others in my situation. Enjoy! And please share any thoughts or comments below.

... oh, and yes I'm aware that I've committed the sin of including more than 40 cards in the deck. Feel free to cut out 1x Team Training if you don't want to play one for your team-mate, and you can always ditch Maria Hill if you want a pure avengers line-up.