Vengeful Venom V_V

Overview

The idea behind this build is to deal massive damage through the use of Counterattack. Engage the enemy on our terms and initiate an enemy attack with Toe to Toe, and then strike back with Counterattack and the 5 damage from Toe to Toe.

Inviting all of this punishment onto ourselves is not sustainable in and of itself. We will die very quickly. We will therefore be needing to recover our health quite a bit, but unlike Gambit, we do not have a single big attack use card like Charged Card, so Moment of Triumph is probably not the best here, although it can pair nicely with Savage Attack. I did not want to be boring this time round and use cards like Down Time and Endurance either. So instead, we are taking the thematic approach and opting for Symbiote Suit.

The suit does so much for us in this deck. The increased health is going to allow us to utilise symbiotic bond and Spider-Sense more frequently. Boosting the entire stat-line is going to pair excellently with all the readying up we will be doing via Run and Gun and C.I.T.T. Bumping our health up to 22 means that even with two uses of a basic recovery and Project Rebirth 2.0, we heal for a whopping 16 health, which is simply fantastic, and something you want to be doing, unless you are planning to defeat the villain on your next turn, in which case save your activations for attacking and draw the extra cards with Project Rebirth 2.0. True, drawing the extra encounter card can be disastrous, especially on harder scenarios and/or using harder encounter sets, but the small silver lining is that any extra attack encounter cards that are dealt out can be mitigated with Grasping Tendrils or used to generate extra value with Spider-Sense.

With all of the readying up in our arsenal, Jarnbjorn becomes an excellent addition and can really make the difference in getting lots of damage instances in. . Ideally we want to be using our basic activations for attacking. This is why "You'll Pay for That!" is a helpful inclusion for additional thwarting. Once Jarnbjorn is in play, the deck has 8 cards which can trigger symbiotic bond during the villain phase. 3 copies of "You'll Pay for That!", 3 Counterattack and 2 Grasping Tendrils. This ensures that we will almost always have a card at the ready to generate maximum value out of symbiotic bond, which is absolutely something you want to be doing.

We are making good use of Face the Past and "Bring It!" to draw at least seven cards when paired together. Dealing with the Enraged Symbiote minions can be problematic, but the Counterattack and Jarnbjorn combo can clear 2 of them during the villain phase, if your basic activations, paired with Jarnbjorn as well as Multi-Gun somehow fail to do the job.

Toe to Toe as mentioned pairs well with Counterattack, but also with Spider-Sense, turning Toe to Toe into a pseudo 1ER card, which is insane value. Toe to Toe is also very good in that it allows us to make use of any villain phase event cards we happen to have in hand during the player phase ("You'll Pay for That!" and Grasping Tendrils).

Audacity is a card I feel is really underappreciated. I can understand if an aggression deck is running aspect locked double resources, but I have seen aggression decks that just run the big three double resources without Audacity and it does baffle me a little. Especially on some of the harder scenarios where villains like to toughen themselves up regularly, having a resource that can ping the tough status card off, is huge. Even without that factor, pinging for 1 damage is not something to be underestimated, especially in long, drawn out encounters where Audacity may be used multiple times in a scenario.

Between Armed and Ready, Locked and Loaded, and the two player side schemes, we have four ways of potentially searching out Multi-Gun. Getting Multi-Gun onto the table is absolutely our top priority as a standard mode of operation. Without it, and/or both copies of Venom's Pistol cards in play, Run and Gun is extremely suboptimal. Even with just Multi-Gun in play, Run and Gun is in my opinion, borderline acceptable to use, given that it is 4ER to ready 2 cards, this is about on par with cards like Ready to Rumble and Limitless Stamina, and those come with activation restrictions in place. Having said that, early game Run and Gun is certainly not using the card to its full potential, and I would likely rather be using my cards in other ways, than paying for an early Run and Gun.

C.I.T.T and Jarnbjorn make for excellent resource dumps. In certain matchups, Venom's resource specific events can be less effective (minion light scenarios, villains with steady / stalwart) so having alternate ways of utilising cards in hand, ties in very strongly with Venom and his thematic of being highly resourceful.

Heroic Exclusions

We do not use Return on Investment (ROI) / Value over Time (VOT) cards like Avengers Mansion and Helicarrier as these cards are too slow tempo on heroic difficulty. Instead, "Bring It!" and Spider-Sense serve well to generate value, while being low costing cards.

Conclusion

Blast the villain into oblivion, with well timed counterattacks, ensuring we manage our health so that we do not die in the process.