Ghost-Spider: Ready For Anything

It took me a long time to warm up to the Protection aspect but I finally got there and have had fun in the past with heroes like Spider-Man, Captain America and Ant-Man. The trouble with so many of those Protection models is that they really rely on you being able to prevent big villain hits in order to trigger things like Unflappable/Hard To Ignore where you have to take no damage. This meant the decks were great until you got to high end villains, where so much of what I was doing would shut off. And it was also a struggle to deal with turns where villains got multiple Assault effects and extra attacks.

Ghost-Spider is the steroid-powered version of those decks. Her card draw and efficiency (Web Bracelet) isn't linked to preventing all the damage just playing responses, and because she Readies herself she can take hit after hit after hit. To be honest this deck is so effective that it trivialises a lot of the encounters I've played it in and it's been hard to imagine how you could ever lose that fight with Ghost-Spider around. You're continually readying and defending, dealing chip damage from things like Dauntless, Electrostatic Armor and Flow Like Water as well as tossing in the odd Ghost Kick. There's a steady supply of Interrupt events to keep Ghost-Spider's card drawing and readying going so you power through your deck. It's just really straightforward - draw cards with lets you prevent damage and ready and draw more cards which lets you prevent damage and ready...

The biggest claim to fame for the deck was when I played it against Venom and his Bell Tower +1 damage became active at just the wrong time and then he pulled a couple of extra attacks. Venom attacked 3 times and Ghost-Spider defended them all, dealing 25 damage back to Venom in continual chip damage as she did so... taking no damage herself in the process.

A few card choices explained:

Assess The Situation - you want to consistently draw Defense events your synergy pieces so anything that shrinks your deck and replaces itself is good. Assess also has three other roles: 1) a mental resource for Web Binding, 2) +1 hand size plays well into the turn you use Ticket to the Multiverse, 3) because you play so much in the opponent's turn you often come into your turn with little to do, so having a card that you use to pay that spare card forwards into next turn is helpful as you didn't have anything else to do with the last card in your hand anyway. I think I like Assess more than most players anyway, but I also think it fits Ghost-Spider very well.

Plan B - see the final point on Assess The Situation. Plan B is not an important card but it helps you squeeze value out of low hand size turns.

Dauntless & Flow Like Water - the continual chip damage is important to ensure you're progressing the board state and dealing with minions, not just trying to juggle an ever-increasing workload. Flow Like Water is really good, Dauntless is a luxury and without Aunt May (I used it in my Spider-Man deck) its hard to reset your health if you fall under Dauntless level. That's what Night Nurse is for but I've experimented with using Second Wind as a bigger health boost - awkward to play but when you get a turn's breathing space you can reset your health without going to Alter-Ego.

And that's it: defend, ready, defend again. Repeat. Doing so draws you cards and deals damage and removes threat. What's not to like?