Robot Taunt: The Dance Off

The story:

SP//dr is one of my favorite characters in Marvel Champions but Peni Parker isn’t really a character that I know much about. Since it is fun to have themed decks that match the persona of the hero you are using, I’m going to create my own persona for Peni. As a teenage girl I’m going to assume Peni loves dancing and since she is from the future I’m going to pretend she comes from a society that has evolved to solve its conflicts through means other than violence. So instead of trying to beat down the villain Peni chooses to solve her conflict with the villian through a dance-off.

Now if I know anything about a good dance-off (note: I know nothing of dance-offs), the most important part is engaging your opponent with a good taunt. Since Peni is an amazing dancer all of her dances involve Taunt and since she dances in a gigantic robot suit she needs to make sure All Systems Go! to complete her dances. Also as a classically trained dancer (because why not?), Peni dances within a set structure of repeated choreographed moves (this is a combo deck).

Alright, taking a step back from the story we are going to tell with this deck, let’s look at how this deck works.

The goal of the deck is to draw all (or most of) your cards and start playing a loop of cards that can be repeated until the encounter deck is about to run out.

Note this is easier to do than in the past as with the update version 1.6 of the rules reference under Player Deck on page 30:

• If a player deck empties and the player has no cards in their discard pile, the deck does not reset until there is at least one card in the player’s discard pile, then the player deals themself one facedown encounter card. 

So you no longer have to worry about losing due to simultaneously emptying your player deck and discard pile.

The setup:

In order to draw your entire deck you first need to set up your deck by getting as many cards on the table as possible to thin your deck.

First time through your deck the main focus is to get out all your interface upgrades as quickly as possible with a secondary objective of getting as many of your other player cards on the table as possible. 

Second time through the deck you most likely are going to have to keep thinning your deck by playing as many supports and upgrades as possible. 

Once you have properly thinned your deck you will try to draw your entire deck by playing multiple copies of taunt in a turn. Playing Symbiote Suit that turn, or the previous turn, can help you survive all the villain attacks. Other ways to help you draw all your cards are increasing your hand size with the Symbiote Suit and starting the turn in alter-ego; by drawing cards using your Maintenance ability on you alter-ego, Nick Fury, SP//dr Command, Avengers Mansion, Unflappable, Spider-Man’s response after playing him and readying an Tech upgrade, and/or a Specialized upgrade to draw cards: or by taking cards into you hand with  Aunt May & Uncle Ben.. You may also draw cards by having Web-Warriors leave play and activating Web of Life and Destiny but this doesn’t actually reduce the total number of cards in your combined player deck/discard pile.

Time to dance:

Once you have your entire (or almost all) your deck in your hand/on the table you can begin looping combos of cards (your dance moves).

All of these ‘dances’ center around the interaction of having all five of your interface upgrades in play and the fact that if you play Taunt, All Systems Go!, and another event you will repeat a cycle of drawing three cards, creating 5 resources (by readying your interface upgrades and the Sync Ratio ability on your hero, but honestly it will normally be 4 resources and a hero ready as using Host Spider to ready your hero is generally better than using it to generate a resource) and whatever effects your third card generates.

Let’s look at the dance move Peni can pull off!

The Stunning Dance: Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, and Web-Trap 

Here you are drawing three cards, playing three card, generating four resources through your Sync Ratio, spending those four resources to play these three cards, readying your hero with Host Spider, stunning villain and doing five damage with Web-Trap, attacking the villain with a basic attack (doing 2-4 damage depending on the upgrades you have in play), and dealing with the villain's attack with the stun. This is the simplest dance and will easily defeat any non-steady, non-stalwart villain. But if you want to challenge a steady or stalwart villain to a dance off you do have other options.

Note some of the following dances require minor alteration to the deck.

By adding Anticipated Attack (and possible Flow Like Water) you can do:

The Dance of Anticipation: Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, and Anticipated Attack

As long as you have a side scheme in the victory display you can replace Web-Trap with Anticipated Attack to gain a tough on your hero instead of stunning the villain. You also lose the five damage from Web-Trap but can gain some if it back with Electrostatic Armor (since you defended), Dauntless (if you have enough hp), and by adding Flow Like Water to your deck and having it in play as you play a defense event. One advantage of this dance is that Anticipated Attack isn’t a very good card so you probably don’t play it very often and it is always nice to defeat the villain with unconventional dance moves!

Note on defensive dances: if you want to gain an extra resource in a dance involving a defense card you can add Defensive Energy to the loop. For example if you use Defensive Energy it to pay for Anticipated Attack, you will draw another card keeping the ratio of cards going into/out of you deck/discard pile equal, again a resource, and be able to use Web-Fluid Compressor to get +2 attack instead of as a resource. 

If you don’t mind dealing with the villain attack with a basic defense instead of a status card you can add Desperate Defense to your deck to do:

The Desperate Dance: Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, and Desperate Defense

Your defense will mostly be high enough that you won’t take damage so you will ready with Desperate Defense, you can then attack and since you only need three resources to play this loop you with be able to use Web-Fluid Compressor to get +2 attack and Host Spider to ready so that you can defend the next villain attack. This dance also allows you to possibly take advantage of damage from Electrostatic Armor,  Dauntless, and Flow Like Water.

If you add in What Doesn't Kill Me you can do:

The Dance for Health: Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, and What Doesn't Kill Me

This dance has cost four resources so you can use Host Spider to ready give you two readies one of which you will need to use to defend the other of which you can attack with. Unfortunately your defense might be a little low (but we do have ways to fix that problem that we will get to later) so you might end up taking some damage which would offset the two damage you heal but if you end up with a net healing this is a good way to get Dauntless going or to deal with retaliate if it is causing you a problem. 

Adding in a dance partner.

If you add Spider-Man into your dance and have Web of Life and Destiny in play you can go from playing three cards each time through your loop to four or five (with one of the added cards being Spider-Man). To play five cards in the loop you need to ready a tech upgrade with Spider-Man to draw a card (sorry no Host Spider but this will also give you another resource through Sync Ratio) and attack with Spider-Man causing him to be defeated due to consequential damage which will draw you a card with Web of Life and Destiny.If you prefer to ready Host Spider with Spider-Man you will only gain one extra card in your loop (due Web of Life and Destiny if you attack with Spider-Man) and will not gain another resource (so the extra card must be a zero cost card or it will cost you an activation with.Host Spider). So with this in mind let’s look at some more complicated dance moves that we can pull off. One small downside to using Spider-Man is since you can only have one copy of him in your deck you may end up having him in your deck or discard pile when you want to play him so you occasionally have to do an abbreviated version of whatever dance move you would like to use. This usually isn’t a problem with other cards in your dance moves as you will usually have multiple copies of them and always have one in hand.

The Keep Getting Stronger Dance (My personal favorite dance!): Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, Repurpose, Spider-Man, and Electrostatic Armor (if needed or gain +2 attack or +2 defense from either Web-Fluid Compressor or Speed-Metal Alloy).

In this dance you send five cards to your discard pile (the four events in the loop and a tech upgrade discarded to Repurpose), draw five cards (three from Taunt and two due to Spider-Man (one from readying a tech upgrade and one from Web of Life and Destiny after he attacks and is defeated), generate five resources from Sync Ratio (or four resources while using an interface to gain a stat bonus), ready twice (once with Repurpose and once with Host Spider), make a basic defense, attack with your hero, and attack with Spider-Man. 

Notes on this dance: The first time you do this dance move I suggest using Repurpose to add to your defense which should make it highly unlikely that you will take any damage while making basic defenses for the rest of the round. Once you get your defense high enough that you are no longer worried about taking damage you can increase your attack each time you use this dance causing your hero to hit harder and harder. You will most likely have a few Energy Barriers on the table that you can discard to Repurpose the first few times you play this loop so you won’t need to play Electrostatic Armor those times through the loop and can use an interface upgrade for a stat boost. Once you have run out expendable tech upgrades you can play and discard Electrostatic Armor so your attack will just keep growing and growing.

By adding Desperate Defense and Defiance to your deck you can perform the:

The Safety Dance Looping Taunt, All Systems Go!, Desperate Defense, Spider-Man, and Defiance

This dance allows you to make a basic defense with a healthy defense value and discard the villain's boost card pretty much eliminating all danger of the villain attack gained from Taunt. You don’t need the resource from Host Spider so you will be able to attack and then ready.

There are certainly other dance moves that Peni could create (if you can think of any fun ones please share in the comments)  and you can always mix and match dance moves like performing the Keep Getting Stronger Dance to first increase your defense then doing the Dance for Health to increase your hit points if something like retaliate is taking a toll on your health or you just want to be able to benefit from Dauntless.

If all this dancing is too structured for your tastes you can always go free-form style, play with more events, and just look to perform a OTK by increasing your attack with Repurpose multiple times in a turn and as well as reading with other events. If that is more your style here is a link to a deck that I built with that goal in mind. Robot Taunt Free-form Style

Alright enough dancing, let's take a look at the deck list and card choices as I have mentioned cards that can be added to the deck but you should probably take out a card for every card you add.

Allies:

Spider-Man is necessary for several of your dance moves and must have for the deck.

Nick Fury is great at helping you set up quickly and getting down to enough cards to start dancing.

Spider-Man isn’t absolutely necessary but provides great value and can be very helpful in helping you survive to the point at which you can start dancing.

I really wanted to keep the number of allies low as I wanted to get them in play and have them sit in play to help thin the deck as well as keep the cards in the deck limited to 40. Ghost-Spider is great and I have often included her in version of the deck and having a 4th ally would be a problem as you don’t really need to thin Spider-Man out of the deck as he allows you to draw a card as he enters play but I wouldn’t really want to add more than one or two allies to the deck. Spider-Man and Silk are also really solid additions if you need more help surviving to the point where you can start dancing.

Events:

Taunt is the key to the deck, you want all three copies. Even if you don’t want to dance with Peni, Taunt still works really well with the SP//dr suit as you are resource rich and card poor as a hero so drawing cards is awesome and SP//dr suit really doesn’t mind defending for itself.

Repurpose is needed for my favorite dance, The Keep Getting Stronger Dance, but if you want to focus on other dance moves feel free to cut it.

Other events should generally only be added if needed to perform your dance of choice but I find it helpful to add two copies of any event you add to use in a dance move just to make sure you always have one in hand when you want to play it. Across the Spider-Verse is the one event I’d consider adding just to help me survive.

Here is a recap of event I suggest you may want to add: Anticipated Attack, Desperate Defense, What Doesn't Kill Me, Defiance

Player Side Schemes

Superpower Training is great for grabbing Host Spider.

Specialized Training  isn’t necessary but really nice to have.

Others could be included but these aren’t even necessary unless you want to be able to play Anticipated Attack.

Resources

I don’t have any as I really want to be able to thin the deck as much as possible and with Sync Ratio All Systems Go! is the only ‘resource’ you really need. Adding in double resources might allow you to set up fast but would make it harder to thin the deck.as mentioned earlier Defensive Energy can be added to create more interesting dance moves if you would like.

Supports

Web of Life and Destiny is great with Spider-Man and an auto include. 

Avengers Mansion this deck loves drawing cards.

Any other low cost supports such as Crew Quarters, Angel's Aerie, The Night Nurse could reasonably replace some of the unnecessary cards.

Upgrades

Unflappable, Armored Vest, and Endurance are cards I can’t image removing

Symbiote Suit is great to drop the turn before or even on the turn you plan to start dancing and maybe worth it to play earlier depending on how much risk you are comfortable to play with but it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Energy Barrier could be removed if you aren’t planning on using Repurpose 

Electrostatic Armor could be removed if you aren’t planning on using Repurpose or defending.

Dauntless is unnecessary if you don’t plan on defending or don’t think you can get health up.

Down Time and Hard to Ignore are unnecessary and mostly just there solid deck thinning options.

Flow Like Water should be added if you plan to dance with a defense event. 

Target Acquired could be a solid deck thinning option that could be used in emergencies.

Warrior of the Great Web could be placed on Spider-Man if you want to use Spider-Man leaving play to increase his attack so he can do one great attack!

This deck works fine in solo but shines brighter in multiplayer as it can do big damage and achieve a OTK when Peni starts to dance. It also pairs well with decks that can help you draw cards or decks that can stun the villain making it easier to deal with the multiple attacks the villain gains from Taunt.

Please let me know in the comments section if you have any questions about the deck, if you come up with new dances, have any feedback on the deck, or other thoughts related to the deck.