The opening wave loaner node is there for the first sub (48 hours). Then a series of one time nodes appear to open the remaining subs. EotS is one that doesn’t make you run the loaner team every day.
Every day except 1 has wave nodes, which are great for points, and the fact that it’s 7 days means you can go light on the first few days and heavy on the last and still reach most/all of the progression goals.
Every node, in every PVE, has more points available than the one before. Assuming you’re hitting nodes 6X, you’ll easily get the Vulture covers.
Haven’t updated this for a long time, but some info is still relevant:
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/65959/pve-enemy-of-the-state-2017-06-29-to-2017-07-07#latest
I’m sure I had a post with all the waves, but can’t find it anywhere.
4* Luke Cage was a game-changer for me, particularly with even only a few covers in his passive. Even without Quake, the number of countdowns dropped by enemies almost guarantee enough protect tiles that almost nothing short of a Konran Meteor Hammer will hurt you. Bonus points if you also have 4* Wasp with yellow covers, who can immediately turn all that defense into single-shot match damage offense (but make sure all the Kishu are already gone, or you risk eating Caltrops).
The only problem I have with this event is that I REALLY hate 5 wave nodes.
I hate them too, until I see the leaderboard after the sub and that some of my competition waited too long on their clears and then got chewed up by the wave nodes and ran out of time. But for me the only big annoyance are Teisatsu. Oh, if you hate 5 wave nodes then you’re really going to hate the final node on the last sub, it’s 6 waves. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be investing in some health packs.
For long wave nodes, i like to try and make them more interesting for myself, by doing things like using nico with somebody like 3* storm or 3* bullseye to see how high i can buff the special tiles. Nico, medusa and storm is a good team for a 5 wave node because of the healing.
There are a lot of great wave node characters and/or Teisatsu tile countering characters for this event:
Hela, replace those Teisatsu tiles with your own and see your tiles buff quickly
3* Bullseye - the original wave node champion, who can also get rid of enemy tiles
4* Thanos - get rid of an attack tile every round
Strange (either version) - lots of passive damage and finally a good use for the eye power
She Hulk - get lots of Teisatsu tiles out then convert and buff half of them with her blue
4* Cage - gets enough defense tiles out there to neutralize the enemy tiles (most of the time)
Kraven - reduces strength of enemy attack tiles
Ant Man - same idea as She-Hulk convert all of those tiles to your benefit using his blue
5* Daredevil - regenerates and places Strike tiles and can convert and stun
5* Gambit - yes his purple can replace a bunch of tiles and deal a lot of damage, many ways to get that purple very fast too (lesser extent 3* Gambit too but no purple AP generation makes him not as effective)
4* Gamora - stun those Teisatsu so they don’t generate those tiles in the first place
Gwenpool - Sploit those tiles out of existence
Invisible Woman - lock those tiles in existence and generate your own tiles
4* Jean - AoE damage and remove 6 tiles
Medusa - shuffle and steal
Sandman - AoE stun
4* Star Lord - lots of AP and replace enemy tiles
Vulture - Airborne and destroy lots of enemy tiles
3* DD - stun and enemy tile destruction with damage
3* Doc Ock - bonus when you match away those enemy tiles and attack tile destruction
5-star Strange’s Purple at LVL 5 gets rid of everything (traps included) at the rate of one per turn, and it’s very difficult for non-tile moves to remove.
5-star Thanos stuns the Teisatsu smoke makers provided you kill off someone else first, or have his purple out when they die. Just be aware that in any wave node, your other characters will be taking some serious damage. Either that, or sacrifice a couple of 1-stars as cannon fodder.
5-star Black Widow can get rid of countdowns with her purple.
Prowler can steal the enemy tiles once you match them.
As someone mentioned above the nice thing about wave nodes on a 7 day event is that people misjudge the time it takes to complete them so it’s a bit easier to place higher. I always try to start a couple of hours before end of sub to make sure I can clear and then go back to get a few points here and there as needed. The points I don’t get is more then made up by actually doing 7 clears each time.
My champed 5* star roster isn’t big but it is definitely the right one for waves. I brute force the waves using either HalfGladiThor/Okoye/JJ if there are tile movers on defense or HalfGladiThor/Gritty if just ninjas/goons/etc. Either one does the job.
I forgot that I’m supposed to clear all the wave nodes in the first main Node and I was boot out of top 10 when I last saw my placement.
However, when the dust was cleared, a number of top scorers also forgot to clear the wave nodes in main node. As time passed, I was back into top 10.
Wave nodes + Attack tiles + underestimation of clearing time of competitors = good stuff. 
Definitely not just you. I’ve been ending my subs around 10th place but because of top players missing the first wave, I’m 3rd overall at the moment. Kinda feel bad… 
Be glad you didn’t play the first run of this event then. There was a bug in that 5 wave “Black Hole” node, where completing the fifth wave would just send you back to wave 1 immediately. You had to die or retreat to escape.
I had forgotten about that. Was that the same run where the points were so screwy that the 4E on one sub was a wave node which counted for almost as many points than the rest of the sub combined? I could have sworn that happened once before, but my memory is foggy…
America Chavez - Boost her AP, and she’s a tank. Pair her with a battery like Vulture, and you can ride to victory, especially if there are no tile movers she’ll be facing.