Road To Valhalla

Introduction What If... the Black Widow was chosen to become a Valkyrie?

In an alternate universe, Natasha Romanoff grew tired of SHIELD and left with Thor to live in Asgard. After the untimely death of Brunnhilde, she volunteered to take on the mantle. But it won't be easy to convince Odin of her worth...

The idea for this deck came up while talking with one member of my game group. He wanted a deck with "a strong hero, in a bad aspect". Black Widow is one of the most interesting and unique heroes in the game. but I thought she wouldn't synergise with Aggression due to her defensive, controlling play-style. So I cobbled together a simple deck based on adding preparations and generally doing black-widowy stuff.

Boy, was I wrong. I liked this deck so much that I run the Rise of the Red Skull in expert mode and cleared it without too much trouble (paired with Protection Iron Man), as well as Expert Rhino (not an easy fight for BW) and expert Risky Business. It's a fun and consistent control list that plays differently from many other aggression decks.

Core concepts and general strategy

The beauty (or flaw) of this deck is that it doesn't play much differently from what you'd expect from any Black Widow deck. You're still rushing to get out your suit and traps, while controlling the villain and accumulating slow residual damage. The devil is in the details, however, and piloting this Asgardian spy requires some finesse.

The core strategy is to control the villain through preparations, stuns, and Covert Ops, while slowly but surely setting up the board. The list has 5 traps designed to kill minions, which means you can one-shot almost any minion that enters play after Widowmaker (sometimes you might need to use a basic attack, or smack it with your axe). Defeating minions will feed your trophy rack, and with your natural thwart and Looking for Trouble, you should find ample opportunities to flip down to reload your traps and set up big turns. Once you are ready, switch to "Go" mode and nuke the villain with Dance of Death, Drop Kick, axe blows, and a beefed up Machine Man.

You can either control the villain, or nuke him/her, but not both at the same time, so knowing when you can kill finish the villain off is critical. Also, you have to constantly prioritise targets: is this minion worth a Lie in Wait? Should you Covert Ops to flip down and draw cards, or stun the villain and deal damage? Can you afford to get smacked so you can trigger Counterattack and retaliate? All these considerations, together with a versatile kit and strong control, make this deck a joy to play.

Critical cards and synergies

• Preparation toolkit: this means Synth-suit, your gauntlets, and your preparations. All your extra red preparations cost one, making them cheap to play with gauntlets. Synth-suit increases your survivability, but more importantly allows you to ready. Remember that its effect can be used even in your turn (provided it is not exhausted). Use a basic power, play Angela or Looking for Trouble to pick up a minion, burn it with a trap, ready yourself. Smooth and effective.
• Alter-ego supports: Hall of Heroes synergises with the entire kit, allowing big turns and further increasing the value of all the minions you fetch and murder. You won't always have the opportunity to wait for 6 counters, so 3 is good enough to flip down. Safe House #29 is just as useful here as in any Black Widow deck, allowing you to recur traps and gain economic advantage. Crew Quarters mitigates your frailty by giving you a free REC of 2 every time you flip (use it, ready, use it again before you go up). It's not as important as the other two, but getting it out early will allow you to maximise the value of your AE flips.
• Defensive toolkit: this includes all your allies, Drop Kick, Covert Ops, and defensive preparations. You're frail and not really suited for the pains of Asgardian combat, so use your events to deny as many activation to the villain as you can. Sequencing is key: time your confusion so you can flip down and draw from Hall of Heroes, and use the drop kicks on the way back when you can't hide in the shadows. Your allies are there to keep you alive in the early game: they are all cheap and/or have defensive abilities. Grappling Hook is a blessing against nasty treacheries like Advance and that pesky Taskmaster.

Deck vulnerabilities (and how to mitigate them)

• No burst: the deck lacks huge attacks like Supersonic Punch or Swinging Web Kick to quickly burst down the villain. That is not to say that it lacks damage: you're going to accumulate large amounts of damage over the course of the game (especially if you factor in minions), but it will be through a thousand little cuts. As such, you might be in trouble against very beefy minions, or villains that can outpace your control. If you need more damage, you can side in extra attack events (see below).
• Stalwart base 9 health point is pretty rough, and at high level play (read: expert) Synth-suit can't quite keep up with the villain's attacks. You need stuns and confuses to control the villain activations - villains with stalwart will rain heavily on your Valhalla parade. If the stalwart can be removed, do everything you can do so. If not, prepare for a rough ride and maybe side in some additional, small allies for defense.
• Lack of minions (somewhat): this is not as bad because most of your kit doesn't actually require minions. You can redirect everything at the villain and still provide damage and control for your team. But a lack of small minion to pop preparations on can be problematic.
• Collector I: yeah, don't do that. It's a VBI - Very Bad Idea. Unfortunately, that alone almost disqualifies the deck from running Galaxy's Most Wanted - although the same can be said for most Black Widow decks.

Sideboard and other options The deck is very versatile and self-contained, but you have some wiggle room in the form of the two Counterattacks. While they offer a lot of burst damage for 1 effective resource (ER), they are also dangerous and sometimes too risky. You can consider switching them out for one or more of the following:

• More damage: Surprise Attack, Clobber, even Uppercut is a possibility is you are desperate for burst (consider that it is only 1 damage less than your best card, Dance of Death). Reckless Assault could work but I would rather stick to a for better Drop Kick and Jarnbjorn consistency. Combat Training is also possible, but I find myself most of the time either thwarting or defending with Black Widow's activation. If you have a strong Justice support in your wings, you can considering taking a more hands-on approach.
• More allies: cheap allies are essentially stuns on legs (overkill notwithstanding). You can't go wrong with Blade or Marvel Boy. Spider-girl and Hulk are better and more synergistic, but they also disrupt your package, so consider whether they are worth the risk of missing Drop Kick.
• Espionage and Target Acquired: these alternative preparation offer you additional interactions with the villain deck, at the cost of a bit of burst. If you know you are coming up against a villain with a lot of surge, or with nasty boost icons, they might be worth the slot. I find espionage to be too inconsistent for the main deck, but starting a turn with 7-8 cards is quite fun.

Conclusion

I recommend this list if you are looking for control build that is very versatile and thinky. It will take a while to get used to the sequencing and setups, but after that you'll notice that there is very little that you can't deal with, and that victory is inevitable once the preparations start rolling in.

Feel free to comment below any changes or suggestions for the deck. And if you enjoy this list, do check out my other decks below:

Thor, King of Asgard - https://marvelcdb.com/deck/edit/275323

Stef