Scarlet Witch - Damage Protection

Scarlet Witch is very fun to play but it can be hard to "connect" her hero cards and the themes of the various aspects, since her cards and her ability interact mostly with the encounter deck.

However, there is one exception: Magic Shield. This could easily be a Protection card. In fact, there are at least two protection cards that have more or less the same effect. I decided to explore this similarity by building a Scarlet Witch Protection deck.

The point of this deck is to not defend with Scarlet Witch but instead to use Magic Shield, Side Step, Energy Barrier and Preemptive Strike to prevent all damage.

When using Preemptive Strike you can even use Scarlet Witch's Crest or Scarlet's Chaos Control ability to manipulate the icon count to deal more damage back. Since Preemptive Strike is not an attack, it can bypass stun or retaliate.

Chaos Magic is a fantastic card and you should try to use it on the deck's most expensive cards: Multiple Man, Iron Fist or Quicksilver (ideally). Even if you only have 2 Multiple Man remaining in your deck/hand it's still worth to use Chaos Magic to play it.

If you have one of these cards on your opening hand, mulligan for Chaos Magic. Even if you don't see it after the mulligan, you can use Scarlet's alter-ego ability, Spiritual Meditation or Brother Voodoo to try and find Chaos Magic.

A note on the upgrades; The Sorcerer Supreme is obviously a fantastic card and you should play it as soon as you see it, even before the Crest. However, the Crest is very important for Scarlet. It makes her so much more consistent. Especially when resolving Hex Bolt, the Crest can almost always guarantee that you trigger the effect you really want, especially when paired with Chaos Control. I was a bit skeptical of its power before playing but I'm fully convinced now.

I've played the deck in the Red Skull campaign (2 players) and it did quite well, but I still need to do some more tests. I'm considering going further into the damage protection theme and remove all copies of Multiple Man to include Nick Fury and a couple of Defensive Stance. The deck could also really benefit from a copy of Nerves of Steel instead of Night Nurse.

I did not try this deck in solo.