Hawkeye leads The Avengers

This deck has cleared every scenario to date in Heroic 1 difficulty

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Intro:

Hawkeye is on the scene, and with him: some new cards!

I've had access to the Red Skull box for several days now and have been putting Hawkeye through the ringer on Heroic difficulty. This is what I've come up with at the moment, after testing out some of the new additions.

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General deck strategy:

What I've found is that a more traditional Leadership deck still cleans up, including a few of the tougher Heroic Red Skull scenarios (Zola is the standout, sorry Red Skull).

Team Training was added to shore up his allies, as was Black Knight (who is a fantastic ATK value for his cost, even if he didn't have pierce), Goliath (one of the most bonkers Leadership cards in the game right now, especially with Get Ready) and Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Other new cards were tested, but were not found to be super efficient for what this deck is trying to do. Ready for Action is enticing for many scenarios, but in the pierce-heavy Red Skull (or heroic settings where you need to gain a larger sense of tempo), it can be a burden.

Sky Cycle's appeal is very limited right now (it's combo-heavy, as most of the best targets are not Avengers and thus require Honorary Avenger), though an Avengers tribal deck (which Hawkeye can pull off since signature Mockingbird is an Avenger) is one of the easier places to make that work.

I'm a fan of Earth's Mightiest Heroes in this deck as it enables Hawkeye to ready to either shoot more arrows (ready his bow) or pew pew for 3 damage a pop if needed.

Classics like Nick Fury (who does an insane amount of work against the low-health Red Skull villains) and Maria Hill are hard to put down. They are still so incredibly efficient and like a Siren's song, lured me away from a full Avengers tribal deck at this time.

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Hawkeye-specific strategy:

Make sure you hard mulligan for his quiver as soon as possible. Even if you don't get it, however, he can still fire off arrows and duck into alter-ego/have his allies do his defending for him.

Take advantage of Sonic Arrow. Hawkeye is a glass cannon without allies, and a well-timed confuse can provide him the respite he needs to duck into alter-ego.

Be wary of cards or encounters that take away supports or upgrades. If Hawkeye is caught out with just his quiver on the board and there are arrows in it, he's going to have a bad time.

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I'm currently brewing a Hawkeye Avengers deck that's similar to the pre-built one, but it requires more testing. Avengers tribal can work for Heroic thanks to the addition of more allies, but it can still rely on multi-card combos: which you don't necessarily have time to setup in Heroic. I may hold off on that until the Ant-Man pack is released.