Lingchi

With the next big release a while out, I've been thinking about cleaning out my MarvelCDB inventory and share some decks I've been sitting on for a while. If people are interested, I'll try and share some of what I've been tinkering with over the next number of weeks. If you're interested, please feel free to let me know in the comments below or with a like on the deck.

Death By A Thousand Cuts

Gamora is an interesting hero as first glance you would think that because she can pull cards from other aspects, she has a lot of deckbuilding possibilities. But so many Gamora decks more or less play the same way, filled with relatively low cost attack and thwarting events. In some ways, this deck then is like many other Gamora decks you've played before, but I do have two combos to share that are pretty rare when searching decks on the CDB.

But first, the name - Lingchi - means 'Death By A Thousand Cuts', which really seems to fit Gamora. I may like the name of this deck more than anything else, because when Gamora's Sword is out, every attack event is an extra ping of damage. Personally, I love playing a 2-cost attack or thwart event, and then playing a handful of 0-cost cards, and keep chipping away at the villain. She doesn't close out with anything big, but she's pretty steady all around.

Anyways, let me share some combos with you:

Looking for Trouble + Chase Them Down + Turn The Tide

This idea revolves around pulling a minion. If you pull that minion using Looking for Trouble and this is the first thwarting card you play, you can then use her Precision response to ping that character with a damage (or the villain). Then, if you just cleared the main scheme, you can play Turn the Tide, and do 3 more damage, plus one more with the Sword if needed. Depending on how much damage is needed, you'll likely be able to clear out the minion you just drew, and these are both 0-cost cards. If there are side schemes out, there is also a good chance to trigger Chase Them Down at this point too.

If you are playing with a 2+ player count, it's likely that the 3 threat removal doesn't clear off the main scheme. In this case, you're hoping to play a different card or exhaust Gamora to finish the minion off, trigger Chase Them Down to clear a scheme, and then use Turn the Tide to hit the villain.

Warrior Skill

This is as good as time as any to mention one of the MVP's of this deck: Warrior Skill. I've been running versions of this deck for a long time, but the recent addition of Warrior Skill really helped the efficiency of this deck because when you just need that one extra point of damage to defeat a minion, it's great to have at your disposal, waiting in the wings until you need it.

You might be thinking that you can just use her Sword to do that last bit of damage in order to defeat a minion in order to open the response in order to play Chase Them Down, but you need to attack to defeat the enemy, and Gamora's Sword won't work for this. Be careful with this also on the response for Turn the Tide, as this needs to be triggered by a Thwart, so her Finesse response doesn't work here.

Momentum Shift + Precision Strike

The other recent addition to the card pool that impacted this deck was Precision Strike. Since we're already planning on pulling minions to attack, Precision Strike is an amazing way to heal Gamora back up again. Remember, you already have a ping damage if Looking for Trouble is your first thwart. With a boost from Warrior Skill, you can then immediately kill off a 4 HP minion and heal for 2 with just those two cards in your hand.

The other card that can heal you in hero form in the current card pool is Momentum Shift, but this card has a little more nuance to it. First of all, it costs one more to use, but you don't need to defeat a minion to use it - this can target the villain at nearly any time. However, you do need to have the ability to heal 2 HP of damage. Fortunately, we have a plan for that...

Dealing with Villain Attacks

With her 10 HP, this is a strategy that requires careful planning, but we will plan to tank every villain attack except for the turns we draw into Crosscounter. When we have sustained damage, it opens up the ability to trigger Momentum Shift, but also allows us to use an incredibly niche card: "You'll Pay For That!". This card doesn't get used much now that the card pool is larger, but this is one of the single best ways to thwart. It is likely to do 3-5 threat removal for the cost of 2 ER, which is better than even some of the best Justice and Hero cards. The downside is that you need to take real damage to make it worthwhile, but this is the point of this deck. Plus, this triggers her Precision response which is once per phase, so it comes with an extra damage.

One of the other major advantages Gamora has is Conditioning Room. The ability to heal and draw a card is really amazing, and it makes turns that you flip down likely for you to start your turn with an 8 card hand if you succeed with her alter-ego action. When combined with Crew Quarters, you can heal for 4 every time you flip down, which means you can deal with damage quite easily.

Flipping down is always tricky in solo, but Gamora can easily remove all threat that is accumulated. Turn the Tide loves threat on schemes. However, if you're playing multiplayer, I'll strongly suggest flipping every turn because those 8 card turns you have are incredibly strong.

However, with her 10 HP (13 with Endurance), Gamora is susceptible to any villain that attacks twice. Angela and Nebula should be kept on the table nearly all the time, just as 'just in case' blockers. For the longest time, I've always tried to use Nebula up quickly, just in case I pulled Shadows because I didn't want to lose that value on the table. Recently, I've discovered though that it's just worth possibly not getting an extra activation as long as it gives me one more blocker in case of Assault.

Sample Turn

Here's an example of a sample turn and all of the triggers and responses you might want to hit.

Suppose you started a hero turn with a 5 card hand where there is 4 threat on the main scheme and 3 threat on a side scheme. You look down at: Looking for Trouble, Turn the Tide, Chase Them Down, One By One and Acrobatic Move

First, you would play Looking for Trouble, putting a minion into play, and then removing threat from the main scheme down to three. Suppose this is a 6 HP minion with toughness. Oops!

Not a problem. Trigger Precision response to deal a damage to the minion and remove the toughness. Then, use Acrobatic Move to deal 2 damage to the minion, and trigger her sword for another point, leaving the minion with 3 HP left. Don't forget to trigger the Finesse response to remove a threat from the side scheme.

Next, use a Keen Instincts to play One by One to attack the minion, but increase the damage using Warrior Skill. This will let you hit the minion for 3, defeating it. Then you can play the Chase Them Down response to remove the final two threat from the side scheme. Once this is cleared, you're free to trigger the response to Turn the Tide where you can damage the villain for 3. Plus then hit the villain for another one with your Sword.

Oh, and don't forget all of this happened while you were still in the middle of playing One by One, so now that you've defeated that minion (and just did a bunch of other stuff) you can now hit the villain for 3 damage with the second sentence on that card, plus do another one with the Sword.

AND, you still have your basic attack or thwart, so if you came up short on any of those responses, you can use Gamora's basic action to shore up anything you might have been lacking there.

Finally, you could then flip to alter-ego to heal for 2 using the Crew Quarters and the Conditioning Room, possibly look at a few cards for next turn, and be ready to heal 2 on the return flip and be ready for an even bigger turn.

Total damage along the way here would have been 7 threat removed from 2 schemes, 6 damage (plus a tough removed) from a minion, and 8 damage to the villain. Plus we still haven't accounted for Gamora's basic action. This is a crazy amount of efficiency from a 5 card hand, one generator on the table, and a single use of Warrior Skill!

Weaknesses

This deck can really handle even some of the beefy minions. I just shared a pretty typical example of dealing with a 6 HP minion with Toughness. However, this deck will struggle with villain decks that don't have many minions. Like all decks based around Looking for Trouble, if there are only just a small number of minions in the deck, you can churn through pretty fast. You'll have to be careful with that.

The other weakness is hitting your responses for Turn the Tide when you play high player counts. Removing the last threat from the scheme isn't as easy to do with 4+, so this card can sometimes be dead. In fact, Chase Them Down can also be a dead card too if there aren't any minions on the table and ditto for Momentum Shift if you're at full health. And if there are minions on the table, you all of a sudden won't be so inclined to play Looking for Trouble either. Be aware there is the possibility of dud turns.

Summary

This is one of the most fun decks I've ever played. There are a ton of responses to consider, sometimes layered into each other as in my sample turn. There also isn't a ton of setup required so you can hit the ground running (although having Gamora's Sword, Warrior Skill and a copy of Keen Instincts sure help). There can be times where you need to count out your damage and thwarting, especially from the Sword, Warrior Skill, Finesse, Precision, and her basic action just to make it efficient. The more you play this though, the better you get at knowing what multiples of 1, 2 or 3 you need to bring down a villain or side scheme.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this write up. Hope you'll try this deck and have a blast. Always appreciate a like at the top and comments down below.

Until next time Champions...