I got this one, Mr Stark - Ironheart

Ironheart is awesome!

I recently acquired Ironheart after it was the featured hero on MarvelCDB and finding out she was a buildup hero, Stora loves buildup heroes. I also acquired Scarlet Witch at the same time, so that's why you'll find Wiccan in this list, I wanted to try him out. I had heard that you should only run Ironheart as Leadership if you play solo, and you'll find an overwhelming amount of solo Leadership decks on this site, but I wanted to be different cuz why not! I intended to play the entire first "trilogy" of campaigns with this deck, but stopped after Expert Ronin (and Expert Nova), they broke me... I was able to complete it, but let me tell you, it was a week every day after work for 2+ hours and failing over and over, Nova was 11 attempts, Ronin I stopped counting after 20. This deck does NOT beat that "one bad turn" issue that Ronin and Nova can deal you, but it's still a very fun deck for anyone looking to play Ironheart solo without leadership. My struggle with Ronin was his first turn, and my final games against him I was finally able to navigate that without too much issue. The winning game was pulling Sonic Rifle at just the right time to flip back to alter-ego, nothing super fancy. But lets talk deck play.

It's a pretty straightforward deck when you look at it. You're using cards like Under Surveillance and Sonic Rifle to delay while in alter-ego to get progression tokens, and your allies to block for you the turns that you're in that stage 1 zone. It feels like a leadership deck like that, but trust me, that's only in stage 1. Once you hit stage 2, and as you work towards stage 3, you don't NEED to flip back and forth so much, use cards like Photon Beam and Fly Over to build your progression tokens up. The hand limit of 5 and 2 thwart is good enough to handle most situations, but if you do find opportunities to flip, take them and you'll hit stage 3 faster. Use Waylay whenever you can to weaken elite minions then finish off with Photon Beam so that you get your two tokens. Once you're in stage 3, you still want to do things to give you progression tokens but you're basically never flipping back unless forced to by the villain. You can hit 18dmg a turn with a New and Improved in your hand and enough allies on the field.

Wasp: Only use this ally when you've got crisis icons to worry about. Guard and Patrol minions can be easily dealt with in this deck, but Wasp helps out when you just can't get a crisis icon to go away. Note on this effect as well, on Ronin's Main Scheme 2b it doesn't ignore that effect if Ronin has the power stone, so Wasp in that situation (and every situation that doesn't require ignoring a Crisis Icon) is just a resource card for you.

Nick Fury: You should be drawing cards. This deck (and most decks, let be honest) you should be drawing cards. I mention this because a friend of mine was testing this deck with me to give feedback, and I guess he was using Fury for damage to get scenarios going faster and gave feedback to remove Nick. Nick is here for cards, then do whatever you want with him. A free blocker for 3 cards when you have stuff you don't need? Sounds great to me.

Daredevil: probably could be swapped out, but is nice for clearing up basic minions. I feel like the 2 atk on Ironheart is a little low for the campaigns I played her in, so Daredevil allows you to still thwart a little, add a dmg, then a basic attack or Photon Beam to finish the job. He is basically a turn to play though, so if you think you have a better ally to add in, he's an easy cut.

Disguise, Followed, and Heroic Intuition: All cards you can probably cut. I initially put Disguise in there because I thought I might want to thwart but not flip, but I ended up just flipping every turn with this deck. Hindsight being 20/20 I should be cutting it from this post and replacing it, but I won't because I think it's nice to have a blank spot and tell people "Please add in a personal preference card here" Followed and Heroic Intuition are also fairly nice, and Followed on a Specialized Training right before you pop it is nice, but some scenarios need these less than others. Use your best judgement.

Specialized Training: I rarely if ever was blocking or recovering, so those trainings to me aren't as useful. The decision was always between Combat or Surveillance Specialist. I ended up on Combat 90% of the time, but I think if you do decide to cut Heroic Intuition then Surveillance jumps up super high. Just like everything else, use your best judgement, but I think you'll always end up gravitating to Combat.