Family Therapy

The goal of this deck is to face Kingpin and redeem with a little bit of patience and empathy. Once he's in play, you have a pretty beefy 3 THW 2 ATK 6 HP ally that'll be around for a long time thanks to First Aid and the ability to replay it multiple times. With a little luck, you can accomplish this goal on turn one. With a bit of clever sequencing, you can raise those odds even higher.

There are 3 copies of Strategy Session because you want to mulligan aggressively for it at the start since each copy is an extra copy of any side scheme in your deck. Manifold is also included, but the play lines are a little different. Your starting hand will include Innate Perception, so you basically get to look at 11 cards with an aggressive mulligan strategy. You want to find it so that when you flip to hero form on your first turn, the first event you grab will be Face the Past, drawing you 3 cards and readying you. If you manage to get Show of Empathy or Strategy Session in your starting hand, you can guarantee a turn 1 redeemed Kingpin.

So the ideal sequence is: Innate Reflexes and Show of Empathy in your starting hand. Play Innate Reflexes and Show of Empathy. Flip to hero form, and grab Face the Past with Practice Makes Perfect. Thwart SoE before playing FtP to get Kingpin, draw 3 cards, and ready. Thwart SoE again and completely redeem Kingpin. Enjoy.

Things won't always go that perfectly, so here are a few other sequences:

Here's the sequence:

• Step 1: Put Innate Reflexes in your hand then draw the rest of your starting hand. If you don't have Strategy Session or Show of Empathy, mulligan everything but Innate Reflexes (and Face the Past if you found it). You have ~75% of drawing either Show of Empathy or Strategy Session in this opening hand sequence. Innate Reflexes makes our target slightly less likely but it ensures our ability to clear it turn one substantially.

• Step 2: Hopefully you have found Show of Empathy or Strategy Session. What you do next depends on whether or not you have one of those cards (and which one you have). If you don't have either, skip to step 4.

• Step 3A: If you have Strategy Session only, just remember to play it before flipping to hero form to find Show of Empathy.

• Step 3B: If you have Manifold in hand, unfortunately you cannot play both him and Innate Reflexes unless you have a double resource. If you do, you can play them before Face the Past and you're all good. If not, you'll have to play him after Face the Past, but it might save you some resources anyway if you happen to draw Show of Empathy.

• Step 3C: If you have Show of Empathy, just remember to play Innate Reflexes and thwart it once before playing Face the Past in the next step.

• Step 4: Flip to hero form and grab Face the Past with Practice Makes Perfect (if you already have it, grab One Way or Another instead to draw even more cards). If you manage to get Show of Empathy after playing these cards, great! If you finally get Strategy Session and didn't have it before, that's a little unfortunate as it's too late, but you will likely have a player side scheme you can use it on so you can tuck it for later.

• Step 5A: Now, be careful with how you sequence this next part. If you have Show of Empathy before Face the Past (either through Strategy Session or Manifold), play SoE and Innate Reflexes first so you can can thwart it for 3, play Face the Past, then thwart it again to fully redeem Kingpin turn one.

• Step 5B: If you don't find Show of Empathy before you play Face the Past (because you didn't draw it, Strategy Session, or had Manifold but no doubles), you still have a couple of outs. Just make sure to attack or thwart something else before playing Face the Past since it will ready you and also make you unable to attack the villain. Play anything you can to draw cards (Skilled Investigator and another player side scheme and/or One Way or Another) to get a Strategy Session or Squirrel Girl to your hand. Remember that you can keep Innate Reflexes to play after drawing up with FtP since you're mainly focused on getting to 3 THW so you can easily clear Show of Empathy.

And failing all of that, you can take an attack or two from Kingpin until you have redeemed him. It'll be a slower start that we'd like, but it's completely fine and easy to complete by turn 2. In the rarest of games, you're guaranteed to complete it by turn 3.

Other things of note:

• Remember that Face the Past removes itself from the game as part of its effect, so you can't tuck it to play it again. It's really sad, but it is what it is.
• Assess the Situation and Photographic Reflexes is such a great combo for building a crazy big hand for the next turn. Use it to guarantee Squirrel Girl gets the full 4 counters.
• Waylay is helpful for getting a little extra damage, but also for helping you heal more with The Rez.
• Every player side scheme has exactly 3 threat (or 6 in the case of Show of Empathy) so that Echo can easily defeat them with her 3 THW with Innate Reflexes. It's certainly possible to run others, but they'll be a little slower to complete. Also the math changes quite drastically in multiplayer, but Show of Empathy will always be 6. This also ensures you get a lot of mileage out of Strategy Session.
• I'm a huge fan of Lay Down the Law with Echo, but with this specific deck strategy, it makes more sense to have For Justice! as a more reliable source of thwarting. It's also the same cost and effect with Photographic Reflexes, so you might as well give yourself the flexibility.