Venom Up Close and Personal

Summary

This deck maximizes use of Venom's Symbiotic Bond, which can be used for both the player phase and the villain phase. This deck shines in a multiplayer setting since we'll be stunning, confusing, cancelling attacks, and defending enough to neutralize multiple activations per round.

This is an "almost perfect" defense build. Early on we might take some damage, but can easily heal back up. We want to stay in hero form as much as possible so we can generate value from Symbiotic Bond and our numerous upgrades. Unflappable and Spider-Sense are particularly noteworthy.

The key to playing this deck efficiently is estimating how much you need to defend to take exactly zero damage. We're running several events that let us react after seeing the boost card, which makes it much easier to dial in the right amount of defense.

Allies

Venom is the star of the show, but we do have some help.

• Black Widow - Get Out of Jail Free card against dangerous encounter cards. Symbiotic Bond guarantees the mental resource.
• Jocasta - Reuse powerful defense events (including Grasping Tendrils).
• Rocket - Up to 12 damage against minions.
• Starhawk - Powerful and versatile. He's also a great resource dump if we find ourselves with a hand full of unused defense events.

Player phase events

Venom's kit comes with a healthy serving of high quality events, so we don't need many more.

• What Doesn't Kill Me allows us to heal and ready at an efficient rate, allowing us to stay in Hero form longer. Symbiotic Bond covers the physical requirement. Being able to ready during the player phase is especially helpful if we want to recover with Project Rebirth and attack/thwart with our pistols on the same turn.

Villain phase events

The main idea behind this deck is squeezing extra value out of Symbiotic Bond during the villain phase. We're loading up on defense events to ensure we have one available almost every round.

• Grasping Tendrils is by far our strongest option as long as the villain can be stunned. Blocking two activations for 3ER is bonkers. This counts as perfect defending as well.
• Desperate Defense allows us to stack our DEF up to a maximum of 7 (combined with Vest and Pistols), although we should calibrate based on our knowledge of the scenario. Assuming we don't take any damage, we get to ready and trigger Unflappable. If some damage might sneak through, our other events will save us.
• Preemptive Strike - Prevent damage, deal damage, and trigger defense without exhausting. We can use this to defend for another player without using our basic activation (as long as they haven't already become the defender). If we have this in hand, we also know exactly how much we need to defend since we can just cancel the boost icons.
• Side Step - Blocks a whopping 3 damage after we know how much we're taking. This also counts as defending for Unflappable purposes.

Support

• Helicarrier - Reduce costs by 1, which makes the conditions on Venom's kit easy to cover with Symbiotic Bond. The only downside is we can't use it during the villain phase.
• Night Nurse - Status management and extra healing.

Upgrades

• Armored Vest, Booster Boots - Improve our ability to perfect defend.
• Electrostatic Armor, Flow Like Water - Do damage by defending.
• Unflappable - Draw cards for defending. Considering running an extra copy for consistency.
• Enhanced Physique - Helps guarantee full value from Grasping Tendrils. This card is slow, but is worth its weight in gold when we need it.

Honorable mentions

• Jump Flip - Similar in purpose to Side Step, but Side Step prevents more damage and pings off a tough. The thwarting from Jump Flip won't always get value in a multiplayer setting.
• Hard to Ignore - Potentially helpful if we need more thwarting, but that's neither our strength nor primary duty in a multiplayer setting.