Queen in Black - Protection Gwenom: Lethal Protector

"[We] chose to be a hero. [We] let them call [us] a villain. Until [we] find a way to balance those two things, [our] life... [our] life doesn't get to be easy."

Don the Symbiote Suit and become the new Queen in Black. Gwen is arguably one of the best heroes in the game being able to provide value on both the player and villain phases.

Symbiote Suit is an extremely powerful card granting +1 to practically everything but hit points which grant +10 instead, but it isn't without its drawbacks. With just the suit alone, you are effectively playing with a hero at 2/3/4/20, 4 REC, and a 6 card hand size. To make the most of this, the suit gets abused by all the re-readies, absurd def, and counterplay.

Gwen has an amazing ability but is dependent on card activations meaning a dwindling hand size as the round progresses. The deck is designed to recuperate from the consistent heavy card usage.

The player phase is spent playing supports, upgrades, and allies that help you ramp up and establish control:

• Silk/ Noir: helps to mitigate the adverse effects of the suit by tutoring encounters/ holding treacheries. Already strong early game but even more important mid to late game. Ideally you don't activate Noir unless pushing for game or preventing death.

• SP//dr: bounces for a consistent body or potential resource and becomes free with Team-Building Exercise.

• Miles: use with Taunt for a free +2. Peter, WoLaD, and Noir will give you the condition to apply status.

• Peter: your best ally alongside Noir. Rereadies are very strong in this game and makes the most use out of the suit. Should only ever be put into play using Monster Reborn.

• Taunt: the only event you'll really be playing during the player phase apart from Monster Reborn. Can potentially turn Gwen's ability live during the player phase, an innate issue the deck has, for a +1.

• Angel's Aerie: You'll want to stay in hero as long as possible but in the event you need to recover, this card will more than make up for Gwen's poor REC.

• Med Team: only really used to heal allies like Peter or Noir who benefit from staying out as long as possible.

• Team Building Exercise: helps w/ cost curve.

• WoLaD: Gwen suffers from a diminishing hand size. WoLaD helps to recuperate some losses from allies leaving play but works especially well in conjunction with SP//dr and Team Building Exercise for a fun little engine.

• Armored Vest: You'll always be defending in this deck.

• Dauntless: conditional retaliate proc'd with the suit.

• Electrostatic Armor: more retaliate.

• Energy Barrier: This is really to maintain the effects of Dauntless, Hard to Ignore, and Unflappable but can also move damage to minions.

• Hard to Ignore: Gwen doesn't have that much thwarting on her own so anything helps.

• Spider-Tingle: A bit of a gamble but the reward heavily outweighs the cost.

• Unflappable: pairs well with Gwen's naturally high defense alongside everything else in the deck that'll help prevent damage to manage hand size.

Onto the villain phase. Almost all the events are exclusively played on the villain phase and trigger Gwen’s ability to reready after defending:

• Defiance: cancels boosts and triggers Gwen's reready for 0 cost.
• Expert Defense: 0 cost card to help proc things like Hard to Ignore and Unflappable.
• Not Today!: the deck has no problem dishing out damage because of all the retaliate-like effects but somewhat struggles to mitigate threat. Replaces Jump Flip since Jump Flip's thwart is more conditional.

Gwen is an incredibly strong hero who has amazing usability during either player or villain phase but suffers from hand size management. The goal of the deck is to make use of her great synergies with the Protection aspect but to also keep a healthy hand size. The symbiote suit helps to at least get there half way: moar defense, moar hit points, moar hand size albeit at the expense of an extra encounter card - a cost we can afford thanks to the help of a few friends.

"I never found the right band to join. So I started my own. With a few old friends. (...) You want in?"