Iron Man - Medic!

Iron Man will reach his full potential when you acquire and equip at least six Tech upgrades to achieve a hand limit of seven and 17 hit points. This means you'll be in Alter-Ego form for a few rounds as Tony Stark, using his Futurist ability to dig three cards deep and adding one of those cards to your hand, discarding the other two. Being in Alter-Ego form means the villain will be scheming quite a bit meaning the main scheme threat will be high in a couple rounds. And once you have fully built at least six pieces of Iron Man's Mark V suit, you will hardly go back into Alter-Ego form.

So with these two ideas in mind, I worry about thwarting with Iron Man as fast as possible changing into Hero form, and healing damage as I stay in Hero form (Iron Man is not great at defending). Therefore, I decided to go with the Protection aspect focusing on the healing factor with Med Team. Black Widow and Get Behind Me! are primarily used for resource generation (along with The Power of Protection) and can be used to disrupt the more detrimental Villain Treachery cards. In the Core Set, I only use nine Protection cards, and will evolving the deck over time in a progressive manner with additional Hero Packs.

To fill out the Basics, the idea is limiting threat in Alter-Ego form and healing damage in Hero form. So I maximized on Emergency and First Aid. I also maximize on Haymaker since it can provided medium damage and symbols for Repulsor Blast. The rest of the Basic cards being the typical Nick Fury, Mockingbird, Avengers Mansion, and Helicarrier.

The first phase of your play should focus on building Iron Man's Mark V Suit: Mark V Armor, Mark V Helmet, Rocket Boots, Powered Gauntlets, and Arc Reactor. Make sure to maximize the use of Pepper Potts and Stark Tower while you are building your suit. The next phase should be mitigating and reducing threat off of schemes and cleaning up weaker minions; while chipping away at the Villain's health. Keep in mind to heal your HP while you reach the last phase of the game, finishing off the Villain with your power moves, Repulsor Blast and Supersonic Punch.

A tip during situations with multiple weak minions on the field is to use War Machine to spread damage and using Powered Gauntlets to focus on individual minions. You can use Med Team to heal War Machine to continue to use his ability. In no minion situations, War Machine is better to just activate his Attack for 2 damage twice before having to Med Team up to full health.

I am using this as the base build while I progress further into the game as I introduce new Hero packs to the game which will open up different strategies with new cards. So far, with the Core Set alone, I have defeated both Rhino (standard) and Klaw (standard). I am going to attempt Ultron (standard) before moving onto Expert modes for each.