Intro
Before the balance patch on 3/21/23 that brought nerfs to Thanos Lockjaw, control decks like this one simply weren't viable. Thanos Lockjaw was omnipresent and Space Stone made the idea of locking up a lane with Storm laughably silly. Now that the Mad Titan and his teleporting canine buddy have been tamed, Shuri appears to be the best deck in the meta. Many players are afraid she will have a similar reign of unchallenged dominance. Those players aren't running control lists like this one. I'll break down this deck and how it plays against Shuri decks.
Key Cards
Storm - The most important card. Playing Storm on curve against a Shuri deck should result in winning the Flooded lane in almost every case. That's because Shuri decks only play 2 power on turn 4 which isn't enough to steal away the Flooded lane.
Prof X - You want to play him on 5 into the lane you don't think the big Shuri bomb is going to land in. This is typically telegraphed if the Shuri player has an Armor or Cosmo down. Play this into the other lane and watch them retreat.
Daredevil - Makes playing Prof X easier so it's good to get him down. You typically want to play him on 2 because your turns 3 and 4 will ideally be Storm followed by a 3 cost + a 1 cost.
Sunspot - Be honest... You're already running him in several of your decks. You know why he's good.
Preferred Cards
Juggernaut is a great follow up to Storm. He also works well when you have one lane locked up with Prof X.
Sentinel is one of the more interesting options. This deck doesn't run a ton of low cost cards so sometimes you end up wishing you had another 2 Cost card to use up more energy. Sentinel solves that problem and is a decent power for his cost (he's average).
She Hulk is just great. Sometimes you need to just put out a lot of power. One cool thing you can do in this deck is play Storm on 3, Juggernaut on 4 and then She Hulk on 5 (because you "wasted" 1 energy on turn 4.).
Klaw is a great surprise cube winner. When setting up your early game you want to be conscious of where you play Storm and decide what other lane you want to try and win. Ideally you give yourself room to play Klaw and get the most out of him.
Rocket is just good value for 1. Could replace him with Ant-Man but this deck struggles to fill lanes sometimes. Hawkeye is too restrictive. You save Rocket for the later game 90% of the time but sometimes you just need to get some points on the board if you drew poorly and he's an average rate card for that.
Strategy
Shuri is a two lane deck that has three MAJOR weakness:
- Shang Chi
- Aero
- Lane lockdown
Many Shuri decks run both Armor and Cosmo to protect against the first two. However, playing either of those two cards makes them more susceptible to lane lockdown.
Shuri players have to choose between protecting their big cards or gaining an early tempo advantage.
This deck works well into Shuri by running Shang Chi for when they don't have Armor or Cosmo down and Prof X and Storm for when they aren't able to establish a strong early board.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/vBagQzd
Ideal Endgame State: https://imgur.com/a/R0qfyPs
In games where you don't draw Storm by turn 3, the other way you can win is by locking down a lane on turn 5 with Prof X and then using Juggernaut on turn 6 to push their Taskmaster into the lane with their Red Skull.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/J5vjnyz
Against Shuri be careful not to over invest in the Flooded lane.
Final Thoughts
I'm really glad lane control decks like this one are viable again. I missed them a lot during the last month and a half. Sadly, I think the playerbase at large has forgotten how effective they can be. If you try this deck out and find you're losing a lot, it's probably because you're not piloting it correctly. That's not meant as a diss.
Winning with these types of decks requires you to understand what your opponent wants to do(and where they're gonna do it) so that you can know how to build your board in order to dismantle their gameplan and restrict their options until you get them in checkmate. If you aren't really sure what Shuri decks are looking to do on a given turn of the match then you probably won't make the right play to counter them. Pay attention to what your opponents are doing and learn to counteract it. Best of luck to you and thanks for reading!