Hero Debrief: Iron Man

You. Are. Iron Man! As the billionaire, genius, superhero Iron Man, you’ll assemble your suit and take to the skies, with each piece of your suit increasing your power until you’re nigh unstoppable.

As Tony Stark, you are one of the richest identities in the game. Your starting hand is amplified by your Futurist ability which lets you draw three cards and keep whichever one suits your needs best. In addition to that, once Stark Tower is in play, you can allow any player to return the topmost tech upgrade from their discard to their hand. While handy for others, this will be extremely helpful for you, as each of your suit pieces are tech! Finally you have Pepper Potts, who can generate the resource on the top card on your discard pile. This includes resources from cards like Genius, Energy, and Strength, generating two resources!

As Iron Man, you are beholden to how much of your suit is in play. You start with a hand size of only 1, but you get +1 hand size for every tech upgrade you control. This can bring your hand size to a maximum of 7, which means along with Pepper Potts, you really can feel like the richest player. Because your hero hand size is dependent on tech upgrades, it’s important to use your mulligan to help draw them in your starting hand. Key pieces of your suit are the Arc Reactor (readies you once per turn), Power Gauntlets (deal 1 damage to an enemy), and Rocket Boots, which give you +1 HP as well as the ability to gain aerial. Spending a mental resource will activate your boots, giving you aerial for the round and boosting many of your cards. Power Gauntlets deal 2 damage instead of 1. The Mark V Helmet removes 1 threat from a scheme, or 1 from each scheme if you have AERIAL. Iron Man’s attack event Supersonic Punch deals 4 damage, which is boosted to 8 if you have aerial. The final piece of the suit is the Mark V Armor, an upgrade that gives you an additional 6 HP. Which means once your entire suit is in play, you’ll have a maximum health of 17! And let’s not forget the classic Repulsor Blast, an attack event that starts at 1 damage, but gets boosted by 2 for every energy resource revealed by discarding the top 5 cards of your deck. Which means you can get up to a maximum of 13 damage with some lucky card pulls (or some strong deck building). Finally your kit rounds out with Iron Man’s signature ally, War Machine. While he is expensive, his ability can deal damage to every enemy on the board, meaning the more enemies around, the better it is.

Deck-Building with Iron Man

Iron Man wants to get tech cards out early to build his hero hand size. Regardless of which aspect you choose, Basic cards like Plasma Pistol are a great inclusion. Ingenuity and Quincarrier are other great additions to any Iron Man deck, because they can help you pay for Aerial each round. Moon Girl and Nick Fury are great basic allies, as they can draw cards and help Iron Man find his tech upgrades.

Aggression

If you’re looking to add more tech from Aggression, Hand Cannon can help. It has limited uses, which means when it’s discarded, you’ll be down a tech upgrade. However, as the game progresses, you’ll have enough of your suit out, it won’t have an impact. You can combine it with Combat Training and Skilled Strike for some extra hefty hits. If you want to focus on minion control and overkill damage on the villain, bring along Relentless Assault and Moment of Triumph.

Justice

If you’re looking to add more tech from Justice, use Sonic Rifle. Confusing the villain can let you go back into Alter-Ego to access Tony Stark’s strong card draws and build more of your suit. If you need to spend more time in Alter-Ego right from the start, check out Under Surveillance, Counterintelligence, and Foiled! for keeping the main scheme from thwarting out.

Leadership

Why keep all the tech to yourself? Tech upgrades attached to the allies you control also count toward your Iron Man ability. Reinforced Suit gives +2 HP to any ally, making the upgrade generally useful. If you’re bringing some Guardian allies, Comms Implant and Laser Blaster are both stat boosting Tech upgrades. If instead you brought along some Avengers, Power Gloves will help out by pinging damage onto enemies. It helps to have allies that can help manage threat and minions while you’re building your suit. Allies like Maria Hill, Ironheart, and Ant-Man are great choices, because they are inexpensive (leaving you resources for your suit). Another great choice is Ronin, who gets increased stats just for having an upgrade attached to them.

Protection

Protection offers some solid tech cards for Iron Man with Energy Barrier, Forcefield Generator, and Electrostatic Armor. Energy Barrier almost always finds some use, but Electrostatic Armor will only trigger if you are defending, either through your basic defense or defense events. If you want to add some thwarting ability, Ever Vigilant offers a ready and main scheme threat management when Iron Man has Aerial. If you’re looking to add some extra damage, Nova is an ally that deals damage for energy resources, something Iron Man should have in good stock. Last, but certainly not least, Repurpose discards tech cards to boost the basic stat of your choice. This makes Iron Man incredibly flexible, especially with his ready from Arc Reactor.