S.H.I.E.L.D. Recruitment Drive

Join S.H.I.E.L.D. today and save humanity from threats foreign and domestic.

At the start of the game, use Maria Hill's Alter-Ego ability to start with The Circe. Don't mulligan anything, but say goodbye to all of those cards unless you draw a double.

Throughout the game, use Maria's Reassignment ability to move counters from Field Agent and/or Command Team to The Bellerophon, The Circe, The Iliad, and/or The Pericles. Also use Superpower Training to get S.H.I.E.L.D. Director out as soon as possible. If you have to get it out first, just grab Life Model Decoy; you never know when you might need another Timmy! (I don't care if I already made this joke. It's funny right there).

Once you have The Circe, you can play some pretty impressive allies:

• Agent 13 just does so much. Two The Iliad, two Helicarriers, or even more Support Staff are all great.

• Beast lets you grab a resource, like Special Funding, which you can use to generate even more counters on your stuff.

• You're gonna defeat side schemes, aren't you? Cable lets you draw more cards for doing so.

• Dum Dum Dugan hits like a truck. Or thwarts like... stealthy truck? Maybe I've lost the metaphor, but he's really expensive but FREEEEE with Circe, and you can exhaust all those supports you haven't used up yet to make him hit harder and stealthierer.

• Giant-Man is a massive 4 THW, 4 ATK ally that can be kept healthy with Field Agent and Regroup.

• Goliath can swing out for an impressive 5 ATK, but only for the rest of the turn. With some Command Teams and Field Agents, you can get a lot of extra damage out of him.

• Havok is going to hit pretty hard sometimes and in doing so, take a lot of damage. Use Field Agent to help keep him around a little longer.

• Nick Fury lets you add a counter to your ships whenever he uses a basic power. If you use Command Team to ready him, he can help super-charge your counter reassignment. If you use Field Agent, you can get a longer-lasting, more repeatable use of this ability. If you use both, well that's just the best of both worlds, isn't it?

Field Manual Misc.

• Special Funding, Reinforcements, and S.H.I.E.L.D. Director work on any S.H.I.E.L.D. support, not just ones with uses/counters. Don't forget that you can place counters on Helicarrier if there's no other option and simply reassign them somewhere else later.

• You must choose 3 non-Leadership S.H.I.E.L.D. supports for this deck and include all legal copies (1 if it's unique or one-per-deck, 3 otherwise), or simply have none. I'd like to go down to 2 copies of Field Agent if I could to fin in more Regroup or Rapid Response.

• The Iliad is the best ship overall. Lots of counters, lots of flexibility, looks really cool. The Bellerophon is also great for dealing with a swarm of enemies and/or tough tokens. The Pericles is great for confusing the villain, giving your allies a tough, or a high SCH minion a confuse as well. And what do you with that confuse? Flip down to Alter-Ego and go shopping for a new ship.