The Emerald Witch

Flows Like Water

Since the announcement of Flow Like Water in the Vision pack, I've been super excited to see how it can impact the Protection aspect. The ability to add an extra damage for every defence card used entices a deck to be built around using as many defence events as possible. With the current release of Vision, there are now a significant card pool of defence events available, with Desperate Defense, Expert Defense, Never Back Down, Preemptive Strike, Shield Spell, Side Step and the newly added Defiance. Furthermore, Jump Flip in the upcoming Sinister Motives set adds another card to the pool.

These cards can be broken down into a few rough categories:

• Cards that require you to exhaust: Desperate Defence, Expert Defence and Never Back Down

• Cards that target boost cards: Defiance and Preemptive Strike

• Cards that prevent or reduce damage: Side Step, Shield Spell and Jump Flip

Strategy

Packing a deck with these cards then gives a ton of options regarding how to deal with a villain attack. I find it helpful to think of damage from the villain now as coming in two parts: the main attack and the boost card. If you have a card that targets a boost card, you know going into the villain attack that all you need to do is deal with the villain's' attack value. This could be handled using a basic exhaust, or perhaps with a card that prevents damage. If you don't begin your turn with a boost targeting card, then a card that boosts your basic defence is a good choice, and damage preventers can be used to deal with the uncertainty of the boost. For those who like a puzzle of choices, this is a deck for you!

Who's The Best Choice?

So obviously, this deck proposes the idea of perfect defence so that you don't take any damage. The question then was which hero would fit with this strategy? Although I think this can be done with other characters (Spiderman, Captain America, Venom...), one of the more interesting choices is the Scarlett Witch, which is a very uncommon pairing. A quick search of cards in the database reveals only a handful of decks for Scarlett Witch with protection cards.

However, her abilities to both re-draw boost icons (don't forget this can be done on both the hero and villain phase!) and alter them with her crest makes her the ideal character to manipulate a perfect defence strategy. If you don't begin your turn with a boost cancelling card in your hand and you get an attack that is just beyond your defence, you have the choice to play an extra card (like Side Step), OR you could pull another card using Chaos Control, OR you could use her crest. She provides a huge amount of flexibility, but also things to think about. In addition, she comes with 3 built in damage prevention cards in the form of her Magic Shields, which can be conveniently stored until needed.

Examples

Personally, I try to not exhaust to defend, so I can use the Witch's 2 THW on her turn. Therefore, most turns I'm hoping to play 2 defence events as part of the villain phase, one to deal with the boost, one for the base attack. With the Electrostatic/Dauntless/Flows Combo Down, those will do 4 damage every turn.

Suppose you get Side Step and Preemptive Strike in your hand. If the villain base attack is 3 or less, use the Side Step to negate that part (and you could direct the damage anywhere if you hit the kicker) and know that the Preemptive Strike will take care of anything the boost throws at you. In fact, you're hoping for a big card. I've even used her Chaos Control when I draw Advance here to get a better boost card. There's even the rare situation where you can use the Crest to increase the number of pips on a boost card :) (Note: Probably not worth doing this if you have a Hex Bolt in hand though...) Anyways, in this case, you'll probably hit the villain for something like 8 damage here, which is effectively a Swinging Web Kick worth of retaliations!

If you get a starting hand that includes something like Never Back Down and Defiance, you could play the Never Back Down to cover a villain base attack of up to 4, throw that boost card right in the discard pile where it belongs and avoid any bad stuff (hope it's an attachment!), and then stun the villain. Plus, this scenario would still hit for 4. Note that Never Back Down has less value in solo, as you probably don't want the villain stunned once you get set up.

Even if you only draw a single defence event (of any type), but you have some Magic Shields down, you'd still likely be able to cover the villain attack, and still get your card draw from Unflappable, plus trigger Electrostatic/Dauntless/Flows.

Often though once you have Sorcerer Supreme and some of your upgrades out to thin your deck, you'll have 3 or 4 cards defence cards in your starting hand, and you'll get to choose from the above options. This is a great deck for those who like choices!

The Rest of the Deck...

The rest of the card choices are all based around hitting the villain back during their activation as much as possible. I've already mentioned above that Electrostatic Armor should be guaranteed to ping the villain for 1 each round, and Dauntless (with Endurance for a buffer) should do another. Unflappable will allow you to draw another card after your defence, and Sorcerer Supreme puts your hand size up by one. With these last two cards you should be looking at an effective hand size of 7 each turn in hero form, although you'll be spending most of your cards on the villain turn. I personally prefer the Quincarrier to Nerves of Steel myself, just so it can be used on the hero turn (especially on turns you play the Shield Spell and don't require any resources for defence events).

What Hero Turn?

That's probably the biggest shift in mindset to consider here: it will be very common that you'll be spending most of your cards on the villains turn, so be prepared to often have very little to do in the hero round.

There will be times that you draw a hand with more defence events than you will need to deal with the villain activation. If you are playing multiplayer, this really isn't a problem, because now you can defend for another player, and retaliate against the villain even more. On hands that you draw into Hex Bolt however, you may want to save your leftover events to use as payment when your turn comes around. Spiritual Meditation can also help with this, hoping to draw into something else and discard a useless defence event, but it is often the case you just draw back into more defence events you can no longer use. It happens...

Draw-Go

I hope you'll have as much fun with this as I have testing it out over the last months using proxies. But be warned, as this one really requires a different game plan than normal. It may help to think of there as only being one phase - the villain phase - making this a Draw-Go deck of sorts (and who's more appropriate for this than the Scarlett Witch?). I still try and play Hex Bolts when I can make it work, but Molecular Decay is generally reserved to burn down the last ~10 HP or so. Don't forget that you don't even have to finish off the villain on your turn, because your defending on the villain turn will likely end the job.

For this posting, I ended up using Desperate Defence (3), Never Back Down (3), Preemptive Strike (3), Shield Spell (1), Side Step (3) and Defiance (3) as the events for this deck, but I fully expect to change out the Desperate Defences for Jump Flip once it becomes available. As more get added to the card pool, these should be changed out depending on the scenario, but you'll probably want about 15 or so defence events in your deck so you are typically drawing at least 2 per turn.

Conclusion and Credits

Special shout out to @schmitty for help in testing out the deck as well as the inspiration for the awesome name. If you haven't seen my lastest deck, Brute Force Arrows, please give that one a look. Until next time Champions!