A gathering of Geniuses

This deck grew out of 2 ideas: Using Spider-Man to re-ready Rocket's tech upgrades, and trying to build a basic-only Rocket Racoon deck. It didn't end up basic-only, but it did end up being a lot of fun, and having a lot of brainy characters (plus Groot) in the roster.

Setting up

10 upgrades, 7 supports, and 7 allies means this is a setup deck! get out the big playmat.

Web of Life and Destiny should go down as soon as you draw it. Once it is down, you can play and Spider-Man, Ghost-Spider, SP//dr from hand, and start getting that sweet card draw. Before Web of Life and Destiny is down, you can still get the spiders our with Make the Call, but it's less important since they are harder to recur.

At least one of Rocket Launcher or Particle Cannon should go down on the first deck pass. You will want them to keep the board under control and enable card draw through Murdered you!

Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier, and Ingenuity are your economy cards. They sooner they are down, the more turns they have to pay for things. The Power in All of Us is helpful to pay for these cards.

Cybernetic Skeleton and Thruster Boots help rocket keep schemes in check and also survive with his low HP pool. Get them down once your economy is set up. But if you do need to spend them as resources, you can use Salvage to get them back in your deck.

Focus on using Rocket's thwart and I've Got a Plan to keep schemes under control, and the damage you have to put away minions. Rocket's weakness during setup is his low HP, so try not to take any attacks directly with rocket if you can avoid it.

Gear Maintenance

An important rule for Rocket that often gets forgotten is that his tech upgrades do not have the "uses" keyword, so they do not get discarded when they are out of ammo. This is a very good thing for rocket, who can refill those upgrades, or convert them into cards with tinkering

One of the fun parts of this deck is managing the charge counters on Rocket's many weapons. Once Rocket Launcher and Particle Cannon are down, you want to keep them down, and refill them with Battery Pack and Flora and Fauna. Save your ammo for when you can use it on a bunch of minions, or to enable a murdered you! attack. As long as the big boy weapons are on the table, the Battery Pack give you as much value for 1 cost as playing the weapons brand new for 3 cost.

Use your Side Holster slot for a Rocket's Pistol, and use it! Ideally use the Battery Pack and Rocket's Pistol as discards for tinkering. You can also play another pistol in a pinch as an ammo refill, and discard the empty one (when you go over the limit of restricted upgrades, you immediately discard one).

The pit crew

Each ally has a job to do beyond just chump blocking. Lets go over the assignments:

• Spider-Man, SP//dr, and Ghost-Spider. The web heads are here for card draw. Otto can re-ready rocket's weapons and batteries for extra card draw, or in a pinch he can ready Ingenuity. SP//dr can draw you 1 card, deal one damage, and thwart for 2 every turn for just 2 resources once WEB is down. And Ghost Spider can find Schadenfreude or Reload from your deck right when you need it

• Gamora is your late game ace. She will draw you an event every turn. However in the early game she could discard right past your important upgrades and supports, so beware.

• Groot enables rocket to use Flora and Fauna to reload. He's also there to basic defend against minions, and keep them around until a good murdered you! turn

• Professor X is in every deck these days. He's doing the same thing here, thwarting for 3, blocking an attack, and confusing the villain so rocket can flip down

• Lockjaw is the clean up crew. Late game once all the expensive setup pieces are down, it can be tough to spend the 7 resource cards in this deck. Lockjaw is there in the discard pile waiting to eat up your extra resources and teleport in. Om nom nom nom.

Blue paint

This is a mostly basic deck, but just a splash of leadership helps out a lot. The Triskelion helps late game when you have Groot and SP//dr taking up permanent ally spaces. Having an extra gives you a bit of wiggle room.

Make the Call lets you get the right ally at the right time. Don't forget that The Power in All of Us still pays double when paying for a basic ally with Make the Call. Also don't forget that Spider-Man's ability is "play from hand", so avoid calling him up.

Regroup is there to bounce Spider-Man, Professor X or others back to your hand. It's very fun to play otto several turns in a row and really let loose with the weapons.

More dakka

All the guns are in hand, and all of the allies are ready to go. Now it's time for rocket's specialty: doing 1-4 damage a whole bunch of times. No big attacks here, just hits with the weapons and allies swinging. Once the deck is thin and you're drawing like crazy, you'll see those batteries and reloads very frequently.

Substitutions

You can tweak this deck to match your play style! Some good additions are:

• Moon Girl for even more alter-ego card draw
• "Welcome Aboard" (instead of The Power in All of Us) if you sub out a bunch of the gray cards
• Maria Hill, White Tiger, Nick Fury The classic card draw leadership allies
• Ready for Action to let Groot block the villain without dying
• Knowhere instead of The Triskelion if you use more Guardians
• Med Lab I really tried to make work, but it was awkward to play Otto in alter ego.

As always have fun with this deck, and let me know if you have any cool matches with it!