Spider-Man Taunts the Villain

NOTES

• Jump Flip is a placeholder for Taunt until it's released with the Angel hero pack (9/22/23 in the US). I built this deck to test Taunt by proxie.
  • Taunt is a 1 cost event with the resource and the following text: "The Villain attacks you. Other characters cannot defend against this attack. Draw 3 cards."
  • In this deck Taunt is an enabler. It combines other draw effects and several resource generators to dig for and cheaply play Swinging Web Kick and Webbed Up.
• Not Today! is good for the threat removal and has a resource to help pay for Moon Girl, but Never Back Down or Desperate Defense can be swapped in if you prefer those effects.
• Expert Defense is also here for the resource, but Defiance is better against scenarios with lots of (or really bad) Boost Effects. That said, with the number of resource generators available in this deck, you might replace this with one of the other 1-cost defense events listed above instead.
• Jocasta can be replaced with Brother Voodoo if you want to dig for an extra event, but I "whiffed" with him a few times in testing, and Jocasta can retrieve a Backflip, Expert Defense, or Not Today! from discard (remember, Jump Flip is really Taunt).
• Between Spider-Sense, Moon Girl, Nick Fury, Ironheart, Taunt, and Unflappable you'll draw plenty of cards, so you go through the deck pretty quickly...
  • If you want to see more copies of your defense events despite this, you can replace Assess the Situation and Meditation with third copies of Expert Defense and Not Today!.
  • I usually prefer allies which stick around and do a lot of work, so this deck had First Aid in it for a while. But I've shifted to "activate once and block" because the deck cycles so quickly, and when you have allies to defend, you don't need as many defense events. Save them for when you can't block with an ally (like when you play Taunt).

Mulligans

You can only play Moon Girl, Ingenuity and Meditation in Alter-Ego, so I'll usually mulligan for one of them, but I always keep a The Power in All of Us because it plus Peter's Scientist ability will pay for Moon Girl with max card draw. I also like to keep a Web-Shooter, Armored Vest and/or Unflappable because Peter's Scientist ability will pay for one of them. I typically dump Swinging Web Kick and Webbed Up because the deck cycles so quickly and I'll see them again soon.

Taunt

Taunt has been really good in Spider-Man for four reasons:

• Resource Generators: He has two copies of Web-Shooter in his kit, and easy access to Quincarrier and Ingenuity (one version of this deck also had a Helicarrier). This means you'll almost always have at least one of them in play to pay for Taunt.
• Spider-Sense: After playing Taunt from hand for "free" with a resource generator it's immediately replaced with Spider-Sense.
• 3 DEF plus Armored Vest lets you Defend for 4, which might not soak ALL of the damage, but if it does you draw another card with Unflappable.
  • You might throw another card at it (Backflip instead of defending, or Expert Defense / Not Today!) to ensure you soak all of it, in which case Unflappable just replaces that card.
  • You may decide to just take the damage, which is easily healed with 3 REC + Aunt May. I've done this several times when I had Moon Girl or Ingenuity in hand since I was going to need to flip down anyway to play them.
• It helps dig for Swinging Web Kick and quickly cycle the deck (to see them again faster).

Thoughts

I like Taunt a lot in Spider-Man!

I can imagine (as others have pointed out on Facebook) that Drax and Colossus would make good use of this as well, and with several growth counters Groot might like this card a lot too. But I think (I could be wrong since I haven't tested the others) that this is best in Spider-Man for the four reasons I listed above.

Is it great against every villain? Certainly not!

• Some villains hit a LOT harder than others
• Some villains have really bad attack interrupts / responses / abilities
• Some villain have both going for them!

But I think that in a deck built to mitigate / negate damage AND play Taunt for "free" AND replace it with a draw from Spider-Sense AND help you dig for one of the best attack events in the game, it's still pretty good!