Gamora Limited

Gamora Limited

This is a "Limited" deck in that it only contains cards from the Core Set and products containing Guardian heroes: Galaxy's Most Wanted, Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax, Venom, Mad Titan's Shadow (because of Adam Warlock), and Nebula.

That said, two of the cards in this list are from the Core Set but were also reprinted in Guardian products: Counter-Punch (Drax & Mad Titan's Shadow) and For Justice! (Mad Titan's Shadow), and it's these Guardian versions of the cards that made the deck list (although they're the exact same card). I used the double resources which came with Gamora as well, so that when you mouse over the deck list every card is from a Guardian product.

I went with all Guardian allies to reinforce this theme (an early version of the deck used Mockingbird and Nick Fury), but I also wanted to use Knowhere and 6 is the minimum number of Guardian allies I want to run to include it.

Videos:

• Gamora Limited vs STANDARD Drang
• Gamora Limited vs EXPERT Drang
• Gamora infiltrates the Museum
• Gamora escapes from the Museum

My Thought Process

I went with a Justice + Protection splash because they have a good assortment of Attack and Thwart events available in the limited pool, and went heavy on them for four reasons:

• That's her Schtick (obviously)
• You can almost always use Keen Instincts when 52.5% of your deck is an Attack or Thwart event (or both)
• You get more bang out of Finesse and Precision for the same reason
• Gamora's Alter-Ego Action has a decent chance of drawing a card for the same reason

Event Mix:

The mix is only slightly unbalanced: 9 Attack, 10 Thwart, and 2 which are both.

Only 3 of 24 events are neither Attack nor Thwart:

• "Think Fast!" for a set-and-forget Confuse status which can make flipping down for a turn a little less anxious
• 2X One Way or Another for the card draw

Defending:

• Crosscounter is great when you don't want to basic defend (or when you do defend but it's a big attack).
• Counter-Punch and True Grit let you get more than "-2 damage" if you decide to basic defend because of your Responses, allowing you to Defend and have it count for a bit more than a basic Attack (2 damage plus 1 threat removal with Counter-Punch) or basic Thwart (2 threat removal plus 1 damage with True Grit). This means I'm happy to basic Defend if I have one or both of these in hand.
• Justice Served can obviously get you an extra ready during the hero phase, but it also combos well with True Grit if you can clear a scheme with it: Exhaust to defend, play True Grit to remove two from (and ideally clear) a scheme plus ping for a damage with Precision, then if the scheme was cleared discard Justice Served to ready. This means you want to get it into play before playing True Grit!

Allies:

Her signature ally Nebula is a great tutor for a wide range of events.

There's a mix of the Basic Guardian allies:

• Drax for attacking the villain
• Groot for defending against minions
• Rocket Raccoon for attacking minions
• Martinex only costs 2 because you're a Guardian, and is good for 2 or 3 activations and a block.

Eros is Maria Hill minus the card draw: Come in, Thwart for 2, then block. I don't think I've ever used his Response.

Note: After playing Collector 1 and Collector 2, Wraith is probably the better ally for this slot!

You could easily swap Eros for Quasar whom I like for his "enters play" Response and 2 ATK, or Wraith whom I like for his Interrupt to cancel a boost effect and 3 ATK.

As mentioned above, this gives you 6 Guardian allies which is the minimum (for me) to run Knowhere.

Cost Curve:

Half of this deck is 0 and 1-cost cards (20), which is more than the 2 and 3-cost cards combined (17). This (ideally) maximizes Keen Instincts use and your Responses.

What do I miss?

• The two cards I miss most for this deck are Turn the Tide and Endurance, neither of which come in Guardian products.
• I certainly miss Clear the Area and Skilled Investigator, which are two of my favorite Justice cards. They both only came out of The Rise of Red Skull box though, so aren't part of the Guardian pool.
• I could use Sonic Rifle which IS in the Guardian Pool (Venom), but I wanted to go event-heavy and build-lite so as to always get the extra "pings".
• I'd also love Ironheart and Professor X in this deck, but the former only came in the Wasp hero pack and the latter in Mutant products.