A FortunAnt Man

Deck concept

I managed to buy a Spanish-language copy of Nightcrawler, despite not reading any Spanish, so take my view about this pack with a grain of salt.

No one seems to have published a deck yet which uses Change of Fortune with Ant-Man, but I think they should. With three Army of Ants it is fairly trivial for Ant-Man to manage a minion down to one hit point in the hero phase, and then defeat that villain with an Energy Barrier or Dauntless without needing to spend a card from hand. So here is my attempt to bring this combo off.

Card choices

The focus of the deck is to manage each minion down to one hit point in the player phase, using Army of Ants, Plan B, and Ant-Man's own Giant Nuisance ability, so that they can be defeated with a single Energy Barrier ping from the villain attack. Dauntless is a back-up method to deliver that single ping of damage via retaliate. That's a fair few cards to get down, but no Ant-Man deck is going to pass on the Army of Ants, so it isn't as daunting to get into play as all that.

The theory of the deck means that we will be taking most hits on Ant-Man himself, but a few allies are still needed to give cover against Assault, especially early in the game when not all the supports and upgrades are out. Daredevil can't use his response to trigger Change of Fortune, but he is still a useful cheap ally who can thwart or block.

Specialized Training gives access to Front Line Specialist, which is fantastic in this build. The extra hit points give more scope to Dauntless, and the extra card draw goes a long way too. The only issue is that Superpower Training is a higher priority because Ant-Man's Helmet is so critical, so the game may be over before Specialized Training can get into play.

Ant-Man needs to get his Helmet into play as quickly as possible, so Superpower Training is a great card for any Ant-Man deck. With the helmet down and What Doesn't Kill Me, there's plenty of healing in this deck to mitigate the damage you will inevitably need to take.

I guess the question is whether "Come Get Me, Bub!" should have been included. I felt that the Tough card would really limit this strategy, while the only investment which is really wasted without a compliant minion is Change of Fortune itself, only 2ER. For those reasons I preferred the flexibility of What Doesn't Kill Me, and just take my minions as they come.

Playing the deck

The goal with this deck is to absorb as many villain hits as possible without defending, profiting from minions as and when they appear. Ant-Man has good card draw from Resize, Ant-Man's Helmet, and Pym Particles before you even get to Change of Fortune and Specialized Training, so there should be scope to get the key pieces into play relatively quickly.

Ant-Man always rewards a steady rhythm changing into your other hero form every turn. It is essential to spend at least some time every turn in Tiny form so that the Army of Ants can do their thing, and to eke out as much thwarting as possible. The allies can really help with thwarting too.

Although half the deck is upgrades and supports, the key Energy Barriers will most likely need to be played more than once so the deck will not thin out quite as much as you might think. With just the two Giant Stomp it may be difficult to close out the game decisively, but with allies, Ants, and all the other damage channels available it shouldn't take a lot of turns to grind the villain down.

How to lose with this deck

Villains like Sabretooth who punish you for undefended attacks are obviously an issue for this deck. Thwarting is a bit on the weak side too. Change of Fortune, and Ant-Man's Helmet give a lot of mid-game acceleration, but in the early game when you most need the extra cards you may either not have them in play, or not have enough other pieces to actually bring Change of Fortune off. A good way to lose is to mulligan for something other than Ant-Man's Helmet.

Conclusion

Ant-Man is a strong hero any way you build him, but this was different enough to make me enjoy playing him again.