Finding Fury's Pager

With the next big release a while out, I've been thinking about cleaning out my MarvelCDB inventory and share some decks I've been sitting on for a while. If people are interested, I'll try and share some of what I've been tinkering with over the next number of weeks. If you're interested, please feel free to let me know in the comments below or with a like on the deck.

Main Goal: Triggering Captain Marvel's Response for ATK3 + Stun

In my opinion, the single most powerful ally available in the card pool right now is Captain Marvel in leadership. If everything falls right, she'll do an ATK3 and stun an enemy upon entry. Then she can do another activation immediately afterwards. That's 6 ATK and a Stun which is essentially like a Heroic Strike with Captain America. And then, you still have activations left for the next turn.

The only problem is the cost... dropping 6 ER is pretty steep as it'll cost you your entire hand!!

But what if you could reduce the cost of playing Captain Marvel? Regroup and Med Lab are decent ways to recur a character, but you'll still need to spend a pretty penny to play her every round. However, the damage and stun triggers off of a response when she 'enters play', so she doesn't need to be 'played' - - so, she can enter via Rapid Response. Rapid Response is a much more efficient way of paying for her, as it'll cost only 3 ER and this is amazing value for a character that may end up doing 9 damage and a stun over the course of playing her.

Timing and Damage

In fact, if you time it right, you can do this 9 damage and a stun each and every turn you have a Rapid Response down (after the initial turn you play Danvers). With the double consequential damage for attacking, you can ATK3 to finish her off, trigger Rapid Response, put her back into play and hit her triggers for ATK3 and stun, and then activate her again for ATK3 to get her back down to 1 HP. That's incredible. We just need a character that can play Rapid Responses reliably...

... which leads us to Black Widow. Not only can she play Rapid Responses for free with her Black Widow's Gauntlets, but she can even find Rapid Responses from the discard pile using the Safe House #29. If you're in a place where you can flip every turn, you can pretty much guarantee that 9 damage and a stun every turn. Heck, she even does another ping damage for Rapid Response triggering (and this is a good place for a friendly reminder that you can only use Rapid Response in hero form)

But, this only works as long as you pack your deck with lightning resources...

All The Lightning Resources You Can Find

So this deck uses as many lightning in Leadership and Basic as we can find to ensure that you hit your triggers every time you play Captain Marvel. This is the most crucial part, as there are 26 cards in this deck with lightning resources, so you have strong odds of hitting 2 of every 4, especially when the Safehouse, Gauntlets and some Prep cards are staying on the table.

So first of all, the Avenger allies are all excellent at buying you time to set up, and they play really well with Mighty Avengers - which actually can boost Captain Marvel to ATK4 if it's in play! They all are reasonably costed allies, even if you're just going to use then for a block while you get set up and search for Danvers in your deck.

With all of these possible Avenger allies out, Earth's Mightiest Heroes is a good addition, because you can use one to ready yourself for another swing. This works especially well if you have Captain Marvel sitting at 1 HP left and you don't have a Rapid Response on the table yet (assuming your aren't flipping every turn - if you can flip every turn, you can pretty much always guarantee you have a Rapid Response on the table using the Safehouse). With Widow activating at ATK2 or THW2, this can be an efficient card and is a solid lightning resource to add, especially at 0 cost.

Speaking of 0 cost cards, another solid lightning resource card is Teamwork, as you can also use this to squeeze extra value from Captain Marvel while waiting for another Rapid Response. Another particularly awesome combo is to use Teamwork with Ronin, who becomes ATK4 if he can get Inspired (ATK5 when Mighty Avengers is in play) which is amazing value for a single card.

If you do indeed end up getting a decent number of allies out on the deck, Lead from the Front becomes a pretty decent card. Actually, even if you don't have a single other ally out, Lead from the Front is still viable if you have the Synth-Suit on. You can activate Widow herself with +1, and then use Marvel with a +1. Then when you Rapid Response, Widow will ready on her turn so she can activate again with a +1, and Marvel has one last +1 activation too. Spending 3 ER for 4 different +1 boosts is quite reasonable, and only gets better with more allies to activate.

Joining Forces?

The most interesting card to use may be Joining Forces, which is one of the notoriously bad Alliance cards. (If you are playing solo, I'd recommend swapping this out for Morale Boost. You aren't likely to play it, but you'll want to keep as many lightning resources in your deck as possible.) If you're playing multiplayer, Joining Forces allows you some flexibility with the single biggest challenge you have - being able to afford to play Marvel's initial upfront cost.

As mentioned earlier, at 6 ER, this will cost an entire turn (although you get great value on that turn) but you may not have a 6 card hand the turn you find her. If you have Joining Forces though, this would cost a collective 5 ER total from the table, and would put Widow (plus a Guardian) into play, and your teammates can help pay. It doesn't trigger often, but is worth it. Even if you don't have a Guardian to play, this costs the same as just playing Marvel straight up, but now the costs can be split among the group to make it easier for you to get started.

In fact, playing Captain Marvel at higher player counts is pretty ridiculous with how she can block. If she has already stunned a villain upon entering play, you could block with her on the villain turn for the 2nd player in hero form, and then have her stun the villain for the 3rd player when she enters play again after Rapid Response. It's pretty sweet being able to block 3 villain activations while also doing some damage along the way.

Strategy

The single biggest piece of strategy advice is to do everything in your power not to lose Captain Marvel when you don't have a Rapid Response on the table. Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Teamwork are actually quite good cards here, as you'll get really solid value from just exhausting her when she's at 1 HP.

This deck absolutely sings when she is around, but if you can't keep calling her back into play, it's a whole lot less useful. You'll also want to keep track of where your 3 copies of Rapid Response are at all times, as you may pass through some every time Marvel discards 4 cards. If they end up in the discard pile, the Safehouse becomes a solid play, but you need to be able to flip. Fortunately, Widow has access to confuse with Covert Ops.

Wrap-Up

Thanks for taking time to read this one. It's a pretty long write-up, but hopefully I've explained most of the major parts of the deck and how it's intended to be played. There are a lot of subtle nuances here to get the most value you possibly can, but regular Widow players are already familiar with needing to keep track of all her triggers and the best timing possible. If you have any questions or comments though, please feel free to add below. I always love to hear what people have to think.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do! Until next time Champions...