Unflappable Spider-Gwen

Hello!

About me:

I started playing almost a year ago and while I dont play a lot of solo games - as I mainly play duos when I play by myself - I still try to build my decks so they can stand on their own without having to rely on other players. But usually I play with a full party of 4 players :) That being said, it means that my decks might not always be 100% optimised for solo games, but I'll try to give suggestions on how to adjust the deck if I feel it might be lacking in a certain area. So I hope you gonna stick around till the end :)

This is gonna be my second deck that I publish after you guys encouraged me to publish more. So I hope you will like this just as much. This deck will come in a pair as I am also publishing my Aggression version of Gwen :)

Aggression Version

I have to say I never really enjoyed playing Protection much until I held Gwen Stacy in my hands. At least in multiplayer I always felt like it was lacking something. It could never hit as hard as Aggression or thwart as much as Justice. Obviously those aspects are designed to do just that, but even Leadership could block attacks almost as good as Protection while also being more flexible by using your allies for whatever else is needed. Protection never really felt good to use on the broader spectrum except for a very few niché builds, imo. (totally open to the idea that I am wrong though!) But over time, Protection got a lot of really good cards that may have flown under your radar! They definitely flew under mine :)

About the deck:

The idea behind the deck is not really ground breaking. Obviously, we wanna abuse her hero ability Dizzying Reflexes as much as possible. That means we want a lot of Interrupt or Response events in our deck in order to ready her again and also draw some cards with Web-Bracelet :) Lucky for us, she already brings a bunch of strong ones with her hero kit.

Ghost Kick is incredibly strong for just a cost of 2 it deals 6 damage to an enemy. That means it doesn't have to be the enemy that we attacked with our basic attack or defended against! It also triggers our hero ability and let us draw a card.

Phantom Flip is a response that thwarts for 5 after using our basic power. Which is a very good value!

Pirouette and Punch let's us deal with any annoying encounter card and even damages the villain.

Web Binding is also a really great card. Especialy in multiplayer where you can just cancel the villains activation, even if they doesn't activate against you!

So why choose Protection? Because Protection gives us the most options to choose from for response/interrupt events :) While she does come with a value of 3 DEF right out of the box, you might think she doesn't need more. But(!) while enhancing her already strong defense we can now make sure to practically always trigger our protection upgrades. And that's when everything get's really interesting.

So lets talk about upgrades first:

Electrostatic Armor is basically a +1 retaliate after defending (using our 3 DEF for example).

Flow Like Water adds another damage after playing a defense event. Note that using only your base power does not trigger this upgrade! That's why I tried to include as many defense events as possible, so you'll aways have one at hand :) Or George 's hand :D

Hard to Ignore is a very strong upgrade that allows you to keep the main scheme in check. Especially in solo play. Unless something really goes wrong.

Unflappable gives you another card draw. In combination with Web-Bracelet you gonna draw a lot of cards even during the villain's phase. It allows us to go through our deck quite fast.

Ticket to the Multiverse while this is an upgrade and feel like the use effect is more like a niché. I am gonna be honest I'll usually use it as a double resource and try to shuffle it back into my deck if I get the chance.

Armored Vest because we can :)

Next up, allies:

Hobie Brown - I always call him Bobby. While we do like to do the defending ourselves, Bobby can either block a second attack from the villain, minions or defend another player. His interrupt can be very strong and helps us dealing damage to the villain!

Peter Parker - Anyone ever build a web warrior deck without Peter? Peter can help a lot during our own turn. We had to defend twice during the villain's turn? Peter can make us ready, again! We had to recover in our AE-Form? No problem! He can make us ready, again! (Well as long as you can switch back to your Hero-Form xD) He can also help us out thwarting, if needed.

Spider-UK - Billy is there to take the attacks from minions so we dont have to. If we have enough web warriors out he will also punish them quite heavily for daring to attack him :)

SP//dr - with the release of Spider-Ham, Gwen got herself a new favorite ally. Peni will make sure we can trigger Web of Life and Destiny more often than we have cards in our deck! She will also make the previous issue of unreliable thwarting almost non-existing once you got her out on the field. So, first we attack and then next round we gonna thwart which will deal exess damage to her. Which in return will return her onto our hand so we gonna play her again and start the cycle from a new. So just rinse and repeat. Oh yeah, and we get to draw a card! Did I mention that? :) So with the new card and Helicarrier we can basically play her for "free" each round if we choose to.

Events:

Since Gwen doesn't come with her own resource generator like the other webblings, I chose to go with cheap events so I dont have to spend a lot of resources during the villain phase. I also made sure that all the protection events that I added have the DEFENSE keyword, so any of them will trigger Flow Like Water. Not much else explaining to do, as I already mentioned they all serve the purpose to reduce the incoming damage to ensure we can trigger our upgrades :) George Stacy helps us out by holding our important events. I usually place a Phantom Flip and 1 copy of Ghost Kick on him to make sure they are there if I need them. For example to take care of an elite minion or a nasty side scheme. Pirouette and Punch is also a good card to store! BUT be very careful of your obligation! Don't place your events too soon on him. Or at least not too many. If you draw it with important cards on him, those will end up on your discard pile! So be wary of that. But if you dont have Georgy out, yet and you will draw your obligation, well then you are in luck! Cause it will make you place him to the side and you can exhaust your Alter-Ego form in order to add him to your hand. So it can actually have a postive effect for us!

Adjustments & final thoughts:

Even though Gwen isn't out for that long, yet, I had several iterations of this deck. So there are plenty of options to adjust the deck to your needs and wants.

Silk - I used to have her in the deck to get rid of any annoying treachery cards. Go for the ones that make you discard any support or upgrade if you can!

If you want to you can swap out The Power in All of Us for Meditation. I used to run it, so I that I could fully pay for my allies or Helicarrier. It also gave me a reason to switch to AE and maybe get Ticket to the Multiverse back into my deck. Also it's just super convenient to let George just hold it and wait for one of the more expansive cards.

Never Back Down is something I usually put into my deck when I play multiplayer. While we don't need (or don't want) it for solo plays, your friends will most likely welcome the stun :)

Avengers Mansion isnt really needed anymore. I used to run it before SP//dr came out, because I didn't feel like Web of Life and Destiny was really that worth it on her. Even if you included Across the Spider-Verse. Also due to Meditation it was easy to play it.

Jump Flip - I am gonna be honest, I never put it in the deck, even though thwarting could sometimes be an issue. I just found it very hard to reliable deliver the Energy resource thats needed and I didn't want to add Nerves of Steel just for that. I mean you can do that. But you probably want to get at least 6 events that costs 1. So you might consider running Preemptive Strike with Jump Flip and maybe also Never Back Down. But also with the release of SP//dr threat shouldn't be an issue. And it also doesn't help with side schemes and as I mentioned before, once Hard to Ignore is on the table, the main scheme should be under control, unless you still have some threat on it from before.

Desperate Defense might be a nice card for multiplayer. I did test in the beginning, because I wanted to be able to protect my team mates as well. And being able to defend a second or third time (if things should go south) sounded pretty neat. But in the end I dropped it because it was rarely the case and I didn't want to store it on George for too long.

Warrior of the Great Web is a great card to add. Once we have SP//dr out we can trigger it each round. If you ever wanna try out playing her with Aggression then this is the card to add. If you wanna go with this I suggest removing 1 copy of Preemptive Strike unless you wanna go with 41 cards instead. Her card draw makes more than up for it

Armored Vest is definitely recommended for expert mode. If you play standard, you probably can drop it if you want.

So that's it! I hope someone out there will enjoy playing this deck and maybe discover their joy in playing Protection :) I certainly did!

~L~