Secret Agent, Practiced Plan and a Yard Full of Minons

The Big Idea Secret Agent is the card that pointed the way. Every time I resolve a Preparation, it moves a threat off a scheme and onto my suit. That single line does two things at once: it keeps the main scheme in check while simultaneously loading up the Assault suit with fuel for bigger attacks later. So the whole deckbuilding question became: how do I trigger Preparations as often as possible?

The answer came in two parts. First, pack the deck with Preparations. Second, run Practiced Plan so those Preparations come back to my hand after they trigger, turning one-and-done effects into a recurring engine. The third layer is the fun one. I'm playing Aggression because the best Preparations in that aspect all key off minions, and I love leaning into the minion-control side of Aggression anyway. So instead of sitting around waiting for the encounter deck to hand me minions, I'm pulling them out on purpose with Looking for Trouble and letting the triggers fall like dominoes.

The Engine Secret Agent is the title, and it's a round one play if I can possibly make it happen. It sits on the board quietly and rewards me for every Preparation I resolve, and here's the key detail a lot of people miss: it's not once per round, once per turn, or once per phase. It's a straight Hero Response with no limit. Every single Preparation I trigger, Secret Agent fires. If I chain three Preparations in a turn, that's three threat moved off the scheme and onto my suit. That uncapped nature is the whole reason the engine is worth building around. Getting it into play turn one and leaving it there all game is doing work every single round.

Practiced Plan is what turns a strong upgrade into an actual loop. When one of my Preparations triggers, I trigger Practiced Plan and it returns that Preparation to my hand. The catch, and this is important, is that Practiced Plan itself discards after it's used. It's a consumable. That means I don't just want to resolve it once and feel clever, I want to resolve it, recycle the Preparation I got back, play it again, and fish for another Practiced Plan. Running 3 copies is non-negotiable for this reason. Each copy is a single recursion, so I'm really running three total recursions plus whatever I can squeeze out by cycling through the deck.

That loop is why the 3-of Preparations in this deck matter so much. Three copies of Aggressive Stance, three of Counterattack, three of Lie in Wait, and three of Espionage. Combined with Nick Fury's own Preparations (Intelligence Analysis, Eyepatch Camera) and the Secret Agent upgrade itself, I'm at roughly a third of the deck dedicated to the strategy. Preparations are also pretty cheap on average, so even when I don't have the full engine humming, the cards never feel dead in hand.

Feeding the Machine with Minions Here's where the Aggression choice pays off. Lie in Wait wants a minion to engage me. Counterattack wants an enemy attack to land on me. Aggressive Stance wants the board state to be spicy. All three of those conditions are best satisfied by having minions in front of me on purpose, not by accident.

Looking for Trouble is the primary tap. It reveals cards from the encounter deck until a minion comes out, and that minion engages me. On the surface that sounds terrible. Why would I willingly summon a minion? Because every minion I bring in is fuel. It triggers Lie in Wait for 3 damage. It sets up Counterattack if it hits me next villain phase. It gives Aggressive Stance something to work with. And every one of those Preparation triggers gets me a Secret Agent threat move, which either keeps the scheme flat or charges up my Assault suit for a haymaker turn.

Angela is the second minion-puller and a big reason she's in the deck. She pulls a minion out of the encounter deck when she enters play, which means I'm not solely dependent on Looking for Trouble to feed the engine. Two copies of Looking for Trouble plus Angela gives me three separate minion-on-demand effects, and Angela brings a real damage profile of her own on top of that. Between the two cards, I'm rarely stuck waiting on the encounter deck to do my job for me.

There's also a defensive wrinkle here worth calling out. Nick Fury in Stealth form forces enemies to scheme instead of attacking, which is a soft lockdown against the attack side of the villain phase. So I can bring in a minion, let Lie in Wait clear it on engagement, and rarely actually eat the attack I was inviting. When I do eat one, that's what Counterattack is for.

Card Roles The Secret Agent engine. Secret Agent, Practiced Plan (3x), and every Preparation card in the deck. The title upgrade is worth mulliganing hard for early.

Preparations that want minions. Lie in Wait (3x) deals 3 damage to a minion that engages me. Aggressive Stance (3x) leans into the minion-heavy board state. Counterattack (3x) punishes any minion or villain attack that actually connects. These are the bulk of my Preparation count and the reason the Aggression aspect fit the theme.

Preparations that handle the encounter deck. Espionage (3x) is there for Spy synergy and Surge cancellation, which pulls double duty as card draw and encounter control. Intelligence Analysis is a treachery canceler Nick Fury brings from his signature kit. Eyepatch Camera moves up to 3 threat from the main scheme onto the suit on entry, which is basically a Preparation that doubles as a one-card Secret Agent payoff.

Minion generation. Looking for Trouble (2x) is the tap. This is the single most important non-Preparation card in the deck for making the engine run. Damage finishers. Concentrated Fire (2x) and Spray Fire (2x) are the Assault-form payoff events. Once I've moved a pile of threat onto the suit, I swap to Assault, drain the threat into a boosted attack, and cash in the hoard I built up during Stealth turns. Spray Fire is especially nasty when I have a board full of engaged minions from Looking for Trouble, because it hits the villain and every minion.

Nick Fury signature kit. Fury's Watch converts suit threat into thwart. Fury's Flying Car is an attack support. EM Shield is mostly a resource card in this build since I'm not getting attacked much in Stealth. Assault is the permanent that sets up the suit in the first place. Covert Surveillance (3x) is a flex card for me. It lets me swap back to Stealth in hero form after an Assault turn, and it thwarts a little on the way. That matters because it breaks the usual "flip down to go back to Stealth" cycle and lets me stay hero-side longer.

Allies. Six allies, all with Aggression-aspect or basic synergy. Maria Hill is the SHIELD glue and the signature ally pairing. Angela is pulling double duty here, as noted above: she pulls a minion when she enters play to fuel the engine, and she's a strong damage piece in her own right once the board is loaded up. Spider-Girl is the safety valve. When a minion comes in hot from Looking for Trouble or Angela and I don't want to eat it right away, Spider-Girl can stun or confuse it to buy me a round of breathing room. That's huge when my Preparations aren't lined up perfectly yet. Sunfire is the other big damage piece that benefits from a minion-heavy board. Throg and Two-Gun Kid are flexible role players that give me options when the board pressure shifts. Safe House #221 is the ally support that keeps them sticking around through consequential damage. This is a very ally-light Aggression deck by aspect standards, which was a deliberate choice to leave more room for the Preparation suite.

A Turn in the Wild Here's the loop I'm usually chasing. Turn one I'm in alter-ego picking my suit, mulliganing hard for Secret Agent, and trying to get the title into play as early in round one as possible. Secret Agent is the bedrock, so if I have to flip down an extra time to find it, that's fine. Turn two I'm in Stealth, letting minions scheme into my suit and starting to drop Preparations as upgrades. Somewhere around turn three or four I've got Secret Agent down, Practiced Plan in hand, and two or three Preparations sitting on the board waiting for their triggers.

Then I play Looking for Trouble, or I play Angela, or both. A minion comes out and engages me. Lie in Wait fires for 3 damage, Secret Agent moves a threat. I trigger Practiced Plan to get Lie in Wait back. Counterattack sits ready for when I do take a hit. I play another Preparation, trigger it somehow, Secret Agent fires again. That's two, maybe three Secret Agent triggers in a single round on a good turn, and none of them capped by a once-per-round clause. The suit is now sitting at a nice pile of threat. I swap to Assault form, play Spray Fire boosted for the full amount, clear out any remaining minions plus hit the villain hard, and then Covert Surveillance back into Stealth so I can do it again next round. That's the dream turn. Most turns are shorter, messier versions of that, but the shape is the same: pull minions, trigger Preparations (plural), move threat (repeatedly), cash in on Assault, reset.

What I'd Watch Out For The biggest weakness of this build is the opening hand. If I don't see Secret Agent, Practiced Plan, or at least one Preparation in my starting seven, the first two or three turns feel rough and I'm basically just a vanilla Nick Fury. I mulligan aggressively for the engine pieces.

The second thing is knowing when not to fire Looking for Trouble. If my hand is empty of Preparations or I don't have the engine online yet, summoning a minion is just summoning a problem. This deck rewards patience on the trigger and punishes players who fire Looking for Trouble on instinct.

And the third thing is encounter deck matchups. A scenario that floods minions on its own means I barely need Looking for Trouble, which is great. A scenario with very few minions means I'm leaning harder on Counterattack and the Nick Fury kit. This deck bends around the encounter, but it does bend.

Why this works for Secret Agent At the end of the day, Secret Agent is a card that says "do the thing you want to do anyway, and also get free value." I want to play Preparations. I want to control minions. I want to build up Assault threat for big attack turns. Secret Agent rewards all three on the same axis. Practiced Plan makes the Preparations recur. Looking for Trouble makes the minion side of it consistent. The Aggression aspect provides the Preparations that key off the minion board state. Every piece of this deck is doing multiple jobs, and that's exactly what I want out of a themed build.

If you're coming into Nick Fury from the precon Justice deck and wondering whether he plays into Aggression, my answer is yes, and the Secret Agent title is the bridge that makes it work.