Victoria used to work as an accountant for S.H.I.E.L.D. a while back, but she had a major career breakthrough when Norman Osborn took over, dismantled it, rebuilt it, and rebranded it to H.A.M.M.E.R. What does H.A.M.M.E.R. stand for? Who knows? Norman never bothered to come up with anything for it. He delegated that fundamental task to Victoria but it was never revealed what she came up with. Surely she named it something elegant like the mild mannered lady that she is.
Promoted to deputy director, Victoria supported Osborn’s plans because she truly believed that he would bring peace to the world. She acted on replacing the heroes with villains in the new team called Dark Avengers. She is willing to lie, cheat, kill, and even commit tax fraud, all in the name of peace. Should you trust her? A solid maybe, although she did some questionable things, she is always there trying to redeem herself.
I’m afraid I can’t disclose much more about her without entering into spoiler territory. If you’re interested in her and the Dark Avengers, consider reading up on the Dark Reign Story Arc.
First-hand Experience With Victoria
Victoria is coming up on Snap as a 2-Cost 3-Power card with the Ongoing effect of granting +2 power to every card that was created in your hand. She is the lowest cost card with a “global ongoing buff”, tied with the recently buffed Cerebro, but her restriction for buffing is a lot more lenient to more deckbuilding options. The major benefit of Victoria is that she is an Ongoing card, meaning that she works retroactively. If you create cards in hand, play those cards, and later play Victoria at the very last turn of the game, she’ll still grant her bonus to all of those created cards.
So, let’s see who would be in good hands with the Deputy Director. As a rule of thumb, granting +2 power to cheap cards is way more beneficial than granting it to high-costed cards, so Kate’s Arrows would be much better than Nick Fury’s 6-costed cards. I could list a huge collection of cards here, but I’ll keep the list short by placing only those that I think would take matters into their own hands on achieving your victory. These are strictly simple: play a card and get one or more cards in hand:
I need to mention that, ironically, she works fine with her boss, Iron Patriot, but I don’t think they will be part of the same decks because I truly think he doesn’t need her since his granted card is oftentimes powerful and heavily discounted if you can complete his mission; giving it 2 power won’t make that much of a difference. Also, they would often fight for the 2-Cost slot of your deck.
No matter what kind of deck you’re building with Hand, Quinjet should at the very least be considered to lend a hand if you’re creating cards that cost at least 2 energy. Having them both on the field and creating cards would be extremely powerful and a fun way to make things get out of hand for your opponent.
I might be tipping my hand here, but with all of those created cards on the field, it seems to be a good idea to also feature Mockingbird in your list. She was intended to be a payoff for S.H.I.E.L.D. decks before she was adopted by Thanos. Let’s bring her back home, shall we?
If you want to try your hand on something different. You could try discard decks. I know, it sounds like the opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish with Victoria, but there are a couple of keycards that would work greatly with her. Every time you discard a Swarm, you get 2 copies of him into your hand; those copies are, by sheer universal conspiracy, created in your hand. Also, if you find a way to discard Helicarrier, she’ll give you a ton of goodies for you to play with. Dunno if we can come up with a deck featuring these cards, but the synergy is there.
There are some situations where you would be with your hands tied with Victoria; as an ongoing card, she has the most amount of counters in the game. You won’t see many of them like Echo, Rogue, and Enchantress, but Red Guardian is all over the place, so keep in mind your positioning with Hand.
One last thing: it might seem obvious, but I just want to make sure that you realize that she doesn’t work with all created cards. So, don’t expect to create a deck featuring her with Thanos, Loki, Arishem, or even Thor and Beta Ray. She only works for cards created in your hand. I’m sorry, but my hands are tied.
Let me hand you a couple of decks that I will be using with Victoria.
Dualgloves’ Day One Victoria Hand Decks
Pool 2 Dino
This made me extremely nostalgic. This deck is for people who are just reaching into pool 3 and got Victoria as one of your first cards. It's a simple deck of a more civilized series.
Endgame Dino
Now this is advanced Dino. Extremely expensive deck with a ton of 5 Series cards, Wiccan is the key player here, if he grants energy you can do a lot of obscene stuff, including playing a turn 6 Gor together with Victoria. Not a difficult deck to play with, try to spend all your energy and even if you don’t get Wiccan, your power should still be enough to win.
H.A.M.M.E.R.
Oh yeah now this is cool. I truly hope that Victoria’s addition is able to bring in the S.H.I.E.L.D. archetype into the forefront. And I believe that if that happens, it will look similar to this list that might need some refining. Get copies of cards, play those cards and win. Don’t forget to keep your copies into the field for a bombshell surprise Mockingbird at the end of game. Be careful with your US Agent placement since we have two cards that he shrinks down. Galacta is such an overtuned card right now that you might need to slot in Shadowking somewhere into this list.
Hands Down
Do you share my desire to play a huge list of cards at the end of the game? This list is able to drop such a crazy amount of power in the last turn that will leave your opponents gasping in surprise as their cubes are stolen. The playline is simple, get your set up cards into the field like Sunspot, Black Swan and Hope Summers. On turn 4 you need to decide between Moon Girl or Gwenpool, usually the choice is taken depending on what you have in hand. Turn 5 you skip most of the time and on turn 6 you end the game by playing your entire hand on the field.
Variant Gallery
Victoria is almost always wearing the same office clothes, and she appears in such a small amount of comics that I don’t think she’ll be the queen of variants any time soon. For now and for the foreseeable future, she might only have her Pandart variant, which is pretty good. On the Datamines, she appears to have a second variant on the pipelines, but we can’t see any art on it now. Hold on a bit, and she might get a broader wardrobe.
Verdict
Victoria is not a second-hand card! I think she is great, and while we don’t quite have an archetype for creating cards, we are one step closer with her release. We might be one of two cards away from that happening, but I think it's close. So, if you were to ask me if you should grab her. I’d say to hold on a bit. She might not be that impactful right now, but I’m sure that in the future she could improve a ton.
Her spotlight is pretty good! Kate Bishop has been an amazing card for a while now, and it's the first time that she is easily accessible to all players. if you don’t have her, I would recommend not to waste this chance of acquiring her. Grandmaster is more limited than Kate but he is also a great card, especially after the buffs, don’t sleep on him. Yeah, with these three on the Spotlight, I would recommend spending keys instead of using tokens here. But wait a bit and see if Victoria will be hands down an amazing card.