Spider-Woman - No More Schemes

This is a deck designed around maximizing the use of Spider-Woman's aspect card bonuses while keeping her in hero mode and clearing threat all day.

Spider-Woman's 'Superhuman Agility' bonus is an incredible skill, so I decided to take a hard look at it with all the new cards available as of June 2021. There are 2 elements to consider when building for her bonuses. First is being able to play more than one aspect card per turn and second is readying her as often as possible. It should be noted that this deck was not designed to worry even a little bit about the Captain Marvel ally. I know the trend at the moment of to use Spider-Woman as basically life support for this card, which I understand, but my intention was to capitalize on what Spider-Woman does best natively.

In order to play multiple aspect cards, I kept cost low, with 28 cards that require one resource or less. This makes it possible to come out swinging on the first turn in most cases. In fact, the only card that costs more than 2 is Captain Marvel.

I selected the Protection aspect because these cards not only pump up her defense -keeping her alive in hero mode- but they also provide the most opportunity to ready her after she defends.

There are seven cards in this deck that allow Spider-Woman to ready -her intrinsic Self-Propelled Glide (3x);

Indomitable (2x)- great because you can stockpile these, then decide if you want to use Desperate Defense or Never Back Down during your defense.

Desperate Defense (2x)- great because they only cost 1 resource and give a +2 to defense. With Spider-Woman's ability as an interrupt, this card will often function as a +3.

This deck is meant to have Spider-Woman fully in the fray from the jump, playing all of -or nearly all of- her hand every turn.

Be aware, this is a threat elimination build. Spider-Woman has very little beyond her basic attack (with its bonuses) to dish out damage on the villain, so this deck is meant to be played alongside a heavy-hitter. Her remarkable range of defensive options and status effects will keep her and whomever she's defending in hero mode getting things done...you just need to make sure that someone is getting damage done. She is especially suited to keeping the villain at bay and schemes under control while a 'large engine' hero ramps up.

The central problem you will run into is that there may not be enough threat present on schemes in the early game to justify using cards that deal with it. But that just means you use those for resources. After a few rounds, the puzzle you will be solving is the most effective way to boost and ready Spider-Woman to get the most mileage each turn.

Her special ability (+1/+1/+1 for each different aspect card you play each turn) means that the fewer basic cards, the better. But since she requires an equal number of the two aspects you use, that leaves at least one card that has to be basic. Some might want to use the three double resource cards to level out the aspects, but with her two inherent resource generators combined with the fact that there is only a single card that costs more than 2 makes additional resource cards superfluous.

I view this choice as sort of the 'flavor of the day', and it is the card I most often change depending on the scenario. I went with Endurance because a 14HP Spider-Woman with Protection is REALLY hard to put a dent in, but Espionage might be a more interesting choice. Or even Cosmo, as he synergizes really well with Jessica Drew's ability.

I really like Spider-Woman as a character and I think they nailed her unique flavor with her intrinsic cards. And while part of me really wants to make a heavy hitting, heavy thwarting spymaster out of her, Black Widow sort of squashed the espionage bug in me. Forgive the terrible pun.

I have been having a lot of fun with Ant-Man as a partner with this deck, as almost any build for him still lets him wallop the villain pretty regularly.