Iron Man Just Wants Upgrades

Tony Stark likes tech. We all know this. So... what if we leaned into that as far as we can go?

Every single tech upgrade we could find goes into this deck. The first goal is to get Iron Man to an 8-hand size as quickly as possible. That means that you want to get out Symbiote Suit and at least six tech upgrades as quickly as possible. This is when you are weakest, but Ingenuity and Futurist are your good friends here. Only play Pepper Potts very early or if you otherwise don't have any good options that turn - while she essentially gives 1 free resource each turn, the 3 resources are usually better spent getting out Symbiote Suit, Forcefield Generator, or Mark V Armor (or multiple 1 cost upgrades).

Notice that vast majority of the cards have the icon for use with Repulsor Blast and Energy Shield. This is important, since the vast majority of your cards will be on the field as the game goes on.

Dauntless is fairly easy to meet the conditions for - between the 3 DEF after you've equipped Symbiote Suit and Armored Vest and the damage reduction from Energy Barrier, Energy Shield, and Forcefield Generator, you should be able to shrug off most attacks. In addition, Symbiote Suit, Endurance, Rocket Boots, and Mark V Armor all give bonus HP in case something does get through, giving you an even bigger buffer at a max HP of 30. You also have the option to use Specialized Training to further boost your DEF to 4 or give you an even larger HP buffer, but I typically recommend the ATT boost unless you have a teammate who can use it more efficiently.

Once you get at least five tech upgrades out (or four tech upgrades and Symbiote Suit), you'll only ever go back to Tony Stark for a rare recovery. Down Time and Symbiote Suit boosts Tony's REC value to 6, and Arc Reactor ensures that you'll be able to recover and do another basic in the same turn, so you should always be able to just recover two turns in a row and just flip back quickly.

Because of how the deck shrinks so much as you get your upgrades out, feel free to use your Adrenaline Rush, Civic Duty, Energy Barrier, Energy Shield, Forcefield Generator, Plasma Pistol, and Stun Gun as often as possible. Locking down the villain with Stun Gun may mean that you don't need to defend, which frees you up to discard all three Adrenaline Rush or Civic Duty in a round to get a whopping 12 Thwart or 10 Attack in a round, and that's before using Repulsor Blast, Supersonic Punch, Powered Gauntlets, Plasma Pistol, or the Mark V Helmet to boost those values even further. If you discard a tech upgrade with Repurpose (the Powered Gauntlets or Plasma Pistols are ideal for this), then you can boost those values even further. On top of that, Ever Vigilant and Two Against the World give you additional opportunities to ready yourself.

Arc Reactor means that there's no real exhaustion cost to defending, so you should defend almost every round. That means that, with six tech upgrades, Symbiote Suit, and Unflappable on the field, you'll be getting a whopping 9 cards a round.

As for minions, your main method for dealing with them is to let them attack you and rely on the combination of Dauntless, Electrostatic Armor, and Energy Barrier to give you what effectively amounts to Retaliate 5. War Machine, Plasma Pistol, and Powered Gauntlets can help you finish them off or knock off a Tough status while saving the big hits from Repulsor Blast, Supersonic Punch, or an Adrenaline Rush charged basic attack for the villain.

This deck is weakest against extremely quick decks and really scheme heavy decks. While it builds up faster than you would expect (the vast number of upgrades means that Tony doesn't need to be as particular about WHICH tech upgrades he puts out other than Arc Reactor, only that he's getting to six as quickly as possible), decks that come hard and fast like Ronan aren't going to be easy. Once you're built up, you're at your best when you're focused on attack and defense; though Civic Duty can be discarded to give you good thwart turns, it's usually best to leave the threat removal to another player who is better specced for it and treat the Civic Duty cards as just being present for emergencies.

You may notice that the deck is a full 50 cards instead of the typical 40. That's deliberate - even with the upgrades that like to cycle back into your deck like Adrenaline Rush, you still have a fairly small deck size once the upgrades are all out, and you'll have a quite large hand size. Going to 50 cards means that the extra encounter cards don't happen quite as often.