Venom Super Thin Ally Lite

Venom has no friends Venom needs no friends.*

This deck is designed to thin down to a minimal size then replay Venom's really strong events over and over. I was interested in a thinning deck and Venom fits the bill with good events and a decent 5 Upgrades/Support. Protection is the aspect with the most cheap permanents that actually do some work so fit right in. Venom is good in protection as he has solid threat control with the Multigun and Behind Enemy Lines. He also thwarts for 3 when set up which is just great.

The deck was intended for 2 player use hence a few duplicates but I have actually only played it solo where it works very well.

The early game consists of gradually deploying your mass of permanents. You use Behind Enemy Lines and Grasping Tendrils to take away villain activations and your innate good stats to deal with minions and side schemes. You have very high basic power with a pistol or two or supplemented by Multi-Gun.

The end game has you with a sub 20 card deck drawing 8 cards a turn. This lets you play your key events every turn and completely control the game. The theoretical minimum deck size is 15 cards (13 in MP) but more realistically it ends up at around 18. It does put you in "Heroic 1/2" mode as you tear through your deck.

Most of the cards stick around on play which is why there are few allies as they always seem to throw themselves in front of angry villains.

The ideal end game set up in Hero mode has you with 5 cards in hand including Grasping Tendrils. The villain attacks you and triggers Spider-Sense. You play the Grasping Tendrils cancelling the attack and stunning the villain. You trigger Unflappable for another card (7 drawn less one played & one used for resources). In your turn you draw an 8th card with Avengers Mansion and start your turn with 6 cards and a stunned villain.

If you end in Alter Ego, because the villain was confused by Behind Enemy Lines, you start with 6 cards then draw 2 more with Project Rebirth 2.0 and Avengers Mansion giving a full 8 to start out with.

This means you will see all your cards ~every other turn, or slightly less as you might hold onto one or two, which is inefficient but you don't really need efficiency when you are in complete control.

After more plays I found Red Skull posed an interesting problem. The extra resources required to defeat a side scheme every turn on top of 2-3 encounter cards meant I got to a position where I was treading water. I needed to make a conscious effort to bust out of this cycle. Usually it just sort of happens - the board is stable and I have spare resources to pile into damaging the villain.

Why these cards?

Resourceful and Enhanced Physique provide resources to help proc the riders on Venom's events. This is especially key for Grasping Tendrils as in theory in the endgame the only resource with a fist on it would be the other Grasping Tendrils. They both thin the deck too but get used up. (Edit: this is not true with the actual cards, just the ones on MCDB. It's still handy to have more fists in the deck as you cannot use Helicarrier in the villain phase.)

Booster Boots and Energy Barrier both give pseudo defence increases which helps to proc Unflappable and Hard to Ignore. They also help with survivability against minion attacks. Energy barrier does deplete un-thinning the deck but less so later on when the villain cannot really attack. Venom is very good at defending. With all his kit out he has 3 defence +2 for pistols and can stop another 3 with these cards, though usually one or fewer is needed. Multi-Gun lets him effectively act in the next player turn still and that's without Run and Gun giving him a full turn.

The rest of the cards should speak for themselves given you are trying to thin the deck.

Groot is an ally who can stick around, especially with a 7th HP so helps the thinning. He is slightly hard to play out and largely not needed and while he sometimes comes in handy more often he feels like a bit of a win more, since if he is not tanking minions he is usually not doing very much at all. Rocket Raccoon and Gamora would also be worthy additions or substitutions if you felt so inclined.

*Venom's kit is full of pretty busted cards and his innate ability to generate resources is also exceedingly strong. These first few are merely good-excellent. In increasing bustedness;

• Locked and Loaded helps set up a little but is dead late game.

• Savage Attack is like the best aggression attack card. Being slightly harder to trigger overkill is offset by the fact it can target the villain.

• Run and Gun readies Venom and all his weapons, this is really expensive early when he is unarmed and wants to set up anyway. Late it's very solid rather than amazing (it adds about 2 threat removal and 4 damage). If you just want damage Savage attack is 5 - one less for one less resource.

• Spider-Sense feels great when you have it out but it takes a fair while to pay off. Usually that is; I recently got attacks 4 times in one turn by Taskmaster and it let me draw into a life saving Grasping Tendrils and 3 other cards.

• Project Rebirth 2.0 is a good hangout card. These are all very strong of course and this is right up there with the likes of Steve's Apartment. This is improved by Venom's access to confuse which means he can flip to alter ego more often.

The next few are really outrageous.

• Venom's Pistol is ridiculously good value boosting all three basic powers for less than the cost of a card that boosts one. It has a drawback in that it taps which is only relevant when you have regular readying. This is offset by the fact that he has 3 copies of Run and Gun.

• Behind Enemy Lines is OK or great if you kick it >> Concussive Blow for comparison and that card is playable. I assume you will always kick it. Having confuse in your basic kit is rare and powerful.

• Multi-Gun is an excellent card. It functions pretty much like a ready effect for a 2 2 2 stat hero. That is enough to tip you from OK to really strong. As a bonus it has the third mode aka bursting down Ultron's drones which is pretty situational but great when it comes up, like against his cool but underwhelming Nemesis set.

• Grasping Tendrils makes other control effects sad. It has the same cost as the awesome Pheromones but needs to be played in the villain phase. This means it sometimes costs effectively 3 as you usually hold it, though one of those 3 is a bargain point of damage. Even so the first effect cancels an attack, which is better than stunning, and gets round all the new anti stun silver bullet techs. This deck will, eventually, let you play this card every turn which is more than you may need. The resource requirement for the kicker is a significant issue. You get one for free from his symbiont but you need to make sure to have access to Fists to get the other. Still a minor issue with a card that simply outclasses Webbed Up. The resources for the other events are not such an issue as you have Helicarrier and usually more cards at that point in the turn.