How to Take 56 Damage Without Dying

I built this deck for the January Monthly Challenge on the Living Card Games discord. The goal was to have Venom attack you with the highest number of boost cards and still survive. I managed to survive an attack with 44 boost cards, totaling 56 damage and having overkill and piercing; then I went on to win the game. Here's how I did it.

Choosing Aspect/Hero

My master plan was to let Venom accumulate all of the cards in the encounter deck (minus 1, so it didn't fall into the infinite-lose loop), then have a way to dodge all damage from an attack even if it has piercing and overkill.

For the first part, there was no way I'd be able to hit Venom with enough attacks in a single turn to rack up the numbers I wanted, so I needed to status-lock the villain in order to slowly rack up boost cards over multiple turns. A web-warrior Protection build was the natural choice for this.

As for actually dodging the attack, there are mostly just hero-specific cards for this, but the web-warriors who have such an ability (Spider-Man and Spider-Ham) don't synergize well with a status-lock build. However, I then realized... Git Gud exists, allowing any hero to have this ability. But it's in 'Pool, not Protection... and, come to think of it, 'Pool allows (forces) you to increase the size of the encounter deck, meaning more possible boost cards for Venom. (Incidentally, I also always chose the "discard" option when my obligation came up instead of removing it from the game, to add one more card to the available boosts.)

And along came Spider-Woman, a ready-made multi-aspect web-warrior (once she has Warrior of the Great Web), who could handle both Protection and 'Pool. Plus, she has some powerful status-lock potential in her hero kit already with Pheromones. It was made to be!

The No-Activation Setup

I filled the deck with as much stun/confuse as possible, with Mockingbird, Spider-Man, Pheromones, and Thwip! Thwip!. The last of these was especially good for when Venom reached stage 2 and gained steady. Then, Ghost-Spider, Hope Summers, Across the Spider-Verse, and especially Plot Convenience helped me make sure I could get those cards to my hand at the right time, seeing as I had to stun and/or confuse every single turn or it was all over.

In addition to blocking the villain's regular activation, I also had to worry about encounter cards that made the villain activate against you. For these, I had Black Widow permanently on the table and 3 copies of Spider-Tingle. My system was:

1. Reveal a card
2. If it would cause an activation, use Black Widow to prevent it (handily, Finesse can pay for the requirement)
3. If I had to use Black Widow, activate a Spider-Tingle before revealing the next card in case it would also cause an activation

This way, I could get away with not losing any Spider-Tingles from the table on turns where the encounter card was something more innocuous, like a minion. Healing Factor ensured that any damage I took from Thwip! Thwip! and Spider-Tingle would be immediately healed back up.

Resources and Card Milling

Since it was so imperative to have the right cards in my hand at the right time, I also allowed for a decent amount of milling and manipulating the deck. Jessica Drew's AE ability combos perfectly with Tic-Tac-Toe to basically guarantee an extra card every time I flipped up, and of course Captain Marvel helps with card draw.

But the main engine for milling cards was a revolving door of web-warrior allies activating Web of Life and Destiny. Lady Deadpool I kept permanently on the table alongside Black Widow, since her icon means nothing when the villain's not activating. Thus, there was only one extra ally slot for the web-warrior allies, and I was not shy with constantly overplaying them to trigger Web of Life and Destiny on the one being replaced.

The 'Pool resource cards helped immensely with the high-cost allies, since I was staying at full health and they were thus triple resources. Honestly, I found myself most turns having too many resources rather than not enough, with Deft Focus and Finesse also available.

Part 1 of the Plan

Before I could start accumulating boost cards, I needed the following to happen:

1. Hit both Shadow of the Past and Crisis of Infinite Deadpools so that the maximum number of cards were in the encounter deck (had to happen now, or there was a risk that those cards would be added to the pile of boosts and never revealed)
2. Have Healing Factor in play to recover from all the Thwip! Thwip! and Spider-Tingle damage
3. Have Black Widow and at least a few copies of Spider-Tingle in play to start the process of negating troublesome encounter cards
4. Not required, but ideally have Violent Tendencies in play so that each instance of damage gave 2 boost cards instead of 1

It usually took about 1-2 full passes of the encounter deck to accomplish all of this, in which time I was not allowed to do any damage to Venom, in preparation for Part 2.

Part 2 of the Plan

This is when the rule about not allowing any activations whatsoever became strict, as I started to accumulate boost cards. I made sure to deal damage to Venom only 1 or 2 at a time, to not kill him too quickly and also not discard Violent Tendencies. One funny side effect was that in many of my games (although not the final, winning one), by the time Venom reached stage 2 Tooth and Nail was already in the pile of boosts and so he wasn't able to get it out.

While accumulating boost cards, I also needed to prepare for the Big Attack, most obviously by getting Git Gud into play, but also accounting for all the boost abilities that would trigger on that attack...

Boost Abilities

Since I was planning to get basically every card in the encounter deck as a boost, I needed to have an answer for any boost abilities in the deck, in addition to Git Gud for the direct attack. For this challenge, we were using the Band of Badoon modular set, so I factored those in as well as the 'Pool encounter cards and my nemesis set.

Some of the boost abilities weren't a big deal, giving the attack overkill/piercing/ranged (which is why I couldn't just use a tough card or chump blocker), or revealing attachments that just added to his ATK. I identified 14 cards with potentially troublesome boost effects:

• 6 minions which put themselves into play (3 Enraged Symbiote and 3 Badoon Grunt)
• 2 copies of Badoon Sentry, which gives the villain tough
• 1 Webbed Up, which stuns you
• 4 boosts affecting the chime counters on Bell Tower
• 1 copy of Lashing Out, which deals 2 indirect damage

It didn't occur to me until my third attempt at this game, but the minions were actually the biggest problem. This is because I planned to switch to AE with Git Gud on the villain's attack-- but then each of these minions would come into play and activate while I was in AE, meaning they were going to scheme. Interestingly enough, these minions scheme for a total of 9 threat, which is just 1 away from causing the main scheme to max out.

That meant that there needed to be 0 threat on the main when they started activating, although it happened after step 1 of the villain phase when the default threat is added. And, even worse, by the time the Big Attack happened, I knew there would be a ton of acceleration tokens because of the ever-dwindling encounter deck starting to run out over and over. This is where Not my Responsibility came in. When the default threat would be placed, I simply took it as damage instead, since I was about to take a lot of damage and trigger Git Gud anyway. I just had to make sure I didn't reach a number of acceleration tokens where this would actually kill me before the attack even happened!

The Enraged Symbiotes posed an additional problem, in that they have guard. When you add to this the fact that I'd be stunned by Webbed Up, I knew that I wouldn't be able to rely on my own attack(s) to defeat the villain after the Big Attack. Plus, at least one ally attack would be needed just to knock off the tough added by Badoon Sentry. So, I made sure to charge up Tic-Tac-Toe prior to the Big Attack so that I could trigger it to do 7 damage-- it's not an attack ability!

The boosts messing with the chime counters weren't too concerning, since I was just ignoring the Bell Tower for this game and leaving it on the Quiet side. However, it did mean that each of the 2 copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls would deal me 1 damage during the boosts, separate from the attack damage. So, I had to make sure that I still had at least 3 HP by the time I started resolving boosts. Additionally, Lashing Out would deal 2 indirect damage, but that was pretty easily soaked by an ally.

Side Note: Dreadpool

When I said that the number of boost cards I would have is the full deck minus 1, that was actually a lie; it's minus 2. This is because, as far as I can tell, you can never have both Dreadpool and Anti-Regeneration Ray as boosts at the same time. This is because Dreadpool deals himself back to you as an encounter card instead of entering the encounter deck/discard, and the only way to prevent this is to blank his text box. In turn, the only way to blank his textbox is putting the Anti-Regeneration Ray on your identity (for example, Vivian can't blank elite minions); but once it's on your identity, Anti-Regeneration Ray can no longer be removed.

So, this meant that when it came time for the Big Attack, I only had 3 options:

• Dreadpool already engaged with me
• Dreadpool as a facedown encounter card
• Anti-Regeneration Ray on my identity

If it was the 1st option, Dreadpool would also need to be confused. This is because the minions scheming for 9 that I mentioned above don't include Dreadpool, so if he also schemed for 2 I would lose the main scheme.

Part 3 of the Plan

So, for those keeping track at home, here were all the requirements I needed before finally allowing the Big Attack:

• In hero form so the villain would actually attack
• Dreadpool confused, OR facedown, OR Anti-Regeneration Ray on my identity
• No other minions in play
• Exactly 2 cards in the encounter deck/discard pile: 1 for the default boost card, and 1 to prevent an infinite loss condition
• Not my Responsibility in my hand (I arranged this with Plot Convenience)
• Git Gud in play
• My HP at least equaling 3 plus the number of acceleration tokens in play
• At least one non-stunned ally in play (to knock off the tough)
• An ally with at least 2 HP in play (to take the indirect damage)
• Tic-Tac-Toe with damage on it equal to at least 1 less than Venom's HP (or some other way of finishing him off)

Once I was able to arrange all of this, I simply stopped stunning Venom, and on his next turn he did the Big Attack that would count for the challenge. I flipped down to AE, nearly dead, and let Mockingbird and Tic-Tac-Toe finish Venom off.