Ant-Man Buffed Ally Expert Duo with Aggro Wasp Ally Swarm

DESCRIPTION

This is NOT a true solo deck. It's designed to be played two handed or with a friend, and it compliments and is complimented by my Aggro Wasp Ally Swarm Deck.

It's got 42 cards because there's room for modification, and you could cut what you don't feel you end up using. I've actually been thinking of adding some more cards to it because you thin out so fast when you get your allies upgraded.

I wanted to play a leadership deck built around keeping allies buffed and healed rather than throwing them in front of every hit, and actually tanking most of the hits on my hero as that seems more in theme for Leadership. I also wanted to play two handed without a justice deck and see if I couldn't keep threat managed in different ways.

WHAT THE DECK WANTS TO DO

This deck wants to get out allys, then buff them up with upgrades. Specifically, Ronin is the heaviest hitter, and Iron Man is terribly efficient.

The upgrades you use in order of priority are:

1. Inspired
2. Reinforced Suit - sometimes this takes priority over Inspired if you're trying to keep Ronin up and actively managing threat.
3. Power Gloves

You further buff your allies with Team Training and Boot Camp (played by the Wasp player).

The deck thins out fast when you start getting the upgrades applied to the allies. You tank hits on the weaker ones like Stinger, or a cheaply played Ant-Man (Hank Pym) or any of the allies you pull from Wasp's deck w/ Make the Call. You also tank a lot of hits on Ant-Man himself, since he has so many self-heal options and you can flip around so easily with his basic kit to go heal on Scott Lang.

You have room for five allies once you get Avenger's Tower out, assuming you are using just the Avenger allies and none of the Champions from Wasp's deck. You also get a discount when you play them from your hand, but not w/ Make the Call.

You will use First Aid and Inspiring Presence to keep up your heavy hitters, and don't actually tank big hits on them. Ideally once they are out, they never go away.

Non-Avengers Allies you'll end up using from Wasp's Deck:

• Ironheart - Ironheart is great because she gives you the extra draw and only lasts a turn or two.
• Brawn - Brawn is just terribly efficient w/ a good health pool.

I tend to try and get these out for Wasp (they are both intellect resource so she can shuffle them back into her deck from discard w/ G.I.R.L. on Nadia's side. These sometimes aren't worth using on Ant-Man as part of your ally pool because they aren't Avengers, but Ironheart is usually out of there pretty quick if you don't already have a full squad of allies out.

Avenger's Allies you'll use from Wasp's Deck:

• Sentry - great stats and a good healthpool. He makes you take an extra encounter card, but as long as you're stable it's worth it.
• War Machine - he's great for soaking a hit w/ Tough, and has good baseline stats for a 4 cost ally. Just don't use him until you soak a hit w/ his Tough status.
• Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) - I explain her a little further down, but you can play her from discard for cheap so long as you have a Team Training out.
• Spidergirl - She's cheap, soaks a hit and turns a minion off for a round or two, which can be huge value.

STRENGTHS

This deck is strong at spreading damage around in the right quantities, and the deck has decent action compression because of Ant-Man's Helmet, Pym Particles, Resize and Avenger's Tower.

It's also fairly easy to get set up, because you have pretty good odds of getting allies out in one of the two decks early, and spending your first run through of each deck stabilizing and getting enough assets out to continue to build your engine up. It doesn't matter which deck starts getting the allies out, though Ant-Man's is more efficient.

Once you're mostly set up, you're hitting for 4-6 with these allies or thwarting for 2-3 + 1 damage. Sometimes multiple times in the same turn thanks to Inspiring Presence, and then either healing up allies or playing ant-man's signature cards.

WEAKNESSES

Scheme Management can be difficult, especially vs. Villains that require minion management and scheme management without snowballing. Once you get a core set of allies out, it does stabilize pretty quickly.

Yellowjacket can actually be a huge pain in the ass, also. Specifically his scheme, Tech Theft, that kills tech cards - it can really hurt if it comes out and turns off the Reinforced Suits as it will make your allies unusable unless you want to keep them out, so it becomes a top priority.

PILOTING

Getting Ronin or Iron Man in your opening hand is great. Ant-Man's Helmet is also really good if you can get it early, and any of the three Army of Ants as well. You end up with some amount of damage you can do each round, something like 10-15 when you have a buffed Iron Man + Ronin and 2-3 ants out, or some amount of threat control w/ 4-5 damage if you can be tiny and have the ants out, along with whatever is in your hand, and likely an ally who can soak a hit.

DECKBUILDING EXPLANATIONS

I didn't add the Power of Leadership in because it ends up being not super useful with this deck. There's too many 1 cost upgrades, and not being able to use them on the expensive ant-man upgrades or cards doesn't really help. I also find myself using Make the Call to play allies out of Wasp's discard pile.

Swarm Tactics didn't really end up being useful in these builds, I always had higher priorities than readying my heroes.

You can play Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) or Ant-Man (Hank Pym) w/ Make the Call for free, and they come out with an extra HP from Team Training right away, then add a Reinforced Suit onto them later. Both are really effective as well.

I tend to use Rapid Response specifically for Hawkeye on any minion heavy scenarios for max value, but sometimes it can make sense to use it on your other allies as well when your back is against the wall.

CUSTOMIZATION

At first I played this w/ 3x Power Gloves, Inspired, and Reinforced Suits, but ended up wanting more allies, because it can fizzle out fast if you can't keep at least two allies running. You could probably add those back in and pull one of the Rapid Responses and maybe Stinger or one of the other allies, but this felt pretty stable.

OTHER NOTES ON PILOTING W/ WASP

Once I can publish a wasp deck, I'll link it again here w/ how I pilot her with this, but she's basically playing Boot Camp as a priority and getting her own allies out. Sometimes you end up buffing up her allies in her play area, and having her request First Aid or Inspiring Presence to keep the big aggro allies pumping out damage, or thwarting.

Not to get too into Wasp here, but the basic just of how she ends up complimenting Ant-Man is by doing a lot of self healing w/ Moment of Triumph and focusing on threat removal w/ "You'll Pay for That" (remember you can play two of these after taking damage from one hit!) and Into the Fray. Remember that the overkill damage will still heal you on Moment of Triumph, even if it uses overkill from something like Pinpoint Strike.

She runs a Helicarrier to help Ant-Man w/ resources early as well, which can be really helpful for some bigger early turns.

Keep in mind there's two Team Trainings AND two Boot Camps in these decks, so depending on the order cards come out, it doesn't really matter who gets the first two, but they should go to the same player to really make the allies more effective.