Overview
The basis of this deck is an attempt to make a non-Shuri/Sauron deck that can profitably run Typhoid Mary. Why is this worth doing? It's simple. Her Fantasy variant is sick and any excuse to use that variant is worth exploring.
Key Cards
Generically good cards that Afflict
- Red Guardian - Important tech in some matchups with premium 3/5 stat line
- USAgent - Massive value against even a single target. Playing him early is fine because it discourages the opponent from playing big cards there (like a mini Goose)
- White Widow - Clog + Afflict in one card is great. The clog portion synergizes with Sage
- Cassandra Nova(maybe?) - Not yet released but seems like a Sage that you can play turn 3 which might also net you 1 or 2 Afflictions if the opponent plays the cards she hits
Beef
- Typhoid Mary - In this deck she's mostly a 4/10 due to runing Luke Cage AND Ajax
- Ajax - He can get very tall. Mitigates Typhoid Marys downside. Actually he turns it into an upside by letting you essentially redistribute power from your other cards to him.
- Sage - She's very large at the end of games. The Affliction effects in this deck make it easier to have many different power levels at a location.
- Hydra Bob - just a really beefy card that is great for nabbing priority early on (to hit key Red Guardian targets) or surprising the opponent with a strong lane contest on turn 6.
Tech
- Shang-Chi - Lotta big stuff in the meta rn. He is required. If you don't have priority, you can go Hazmat + Shang on the final turn to pump Ajax and flip a Shang lane.
- Red Guardian - See above.
- Luke Cage - Required to help mitigate Typhoid Marys and Hazmat downside in games where Ajax doesn't show up.
If she keeps her current text of generating two powerful 1-cost cards for you, next month's season pass card, Kate Bishop, looks to be a sizeable improvement to this budding archetype.
Weaknesses
There are some weaknesses that an Afflict version of Good Cards has that a standard Good Cards list like Silky Smooth doesn't. Namely, our payoff cards are vulnerable to Shang (and Enchantress for Ajax). However we do have some tools to avoid or mitigate the impact of Shang and Enchantress. Playing Hazmat can drop Typhoid below 10 power to dodge Shang. We can also play Typhoid or Ajax into a USAgent lane and drop Luke Cage and Hazmat on turn 6 (without priority) to pump their lane up.
Basically, it's possible with strategic play to avoid some common tech cards. This will revolve around really timing on the smart use of Luke Cage and Hazmat and really good placement of key cards like USAgent, Typhoid Mary and Ajax.
Conclusion
I doubt this deck will be competitive at the highest levels of Snap. The biggest factors that will hold it back are it's vulnerability to Shang and Enchantress in some of it's key cards (USAgent, Luke Cage, Typhoid and Ajax), clunky curve at the higher costs (there aren't many good 1 cost cards we can run with Ajax) as well as the fact that there is some anti-synergy between cards like Luke Cage and Ajax. This makes you weak into Loki's or Rogue's who steal your Luke Cage.
Games where you end up playing Luke Cage AND Ajax may prove to be difficult to win. If your affliction cards aren't able to generate good value to Ajax as his 5/7 statline isn't impressive on its own.
Looking forward, this archetype will benefit from the support of a few more good cards which happen to afflict in order to make up for the inherent vulnerability to tech cards like Luke Cage, Shang Chi and Enchantress. Overall though it feels fun to play with many options on how to put games together.