Think Tank: I Set 'Em Up

"Agent Drew. Take Fitz-Simmons and find The Raft. Liberate the facility and it's tech storehouse. Make contact with an Asset, and prepare to receive prisoners. - Fury"

S.H.I.E.L.D is fallen from within; the cancer of Hydra which was festering for decades has shattered the organization and cast it's noble mission into chaos. Good agents and traitors alike are in the wind, and Nick Fury is famously and publicly dead.

But the scrap left for Jessica Drew at Safehouse #751 indicates that he still had a plan to salvage this mess. Along with an Asgardian amulet, a series of sigils from Valhalla, and a bit of Guardian comms tech give Spider-Woman some ideas about how to accomplish the late Nick Fury's last directive. And though she's never visited The Raft, Drew has sent plenty of hostile operators to be incarcerated there. So she packs what Fury left for her and grabs the keys to her motorcycle, intent on bringing some order to the chaos.

Situation Report

This is a paired deck, meant to be played two-handed solo, duo, or multiplayer alongside an Asset (a minion-slaying hero that benefits from engaging and defeating minions each turn). Three notable suggestions would be:

• Thor: I Knock 'Em Down. (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/49168/i-knock-em-down-1.0)
• Rocket Raccoon: I Knock 'Em Down (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/49166/i-knock-em-down-1.0)
• Valkyrie: I Knock 'Em Down (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/49167/i-knock-em-down-1.0)

Fury's Directive

Fury tasked S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Jessica Drew and her Think Tank with securing and overseeing The Raft, and contacting an Asset to maintain order by keeping The Raft full of minions. The Asset gains significant card draw and bonuses from engaging and defeating minions, so an overflowing Raft is actually beneficial to the Asset. Spider-Woman should prioritize playing the Raft first deck pass (while the Asset is building up) so that it can be ready to receive the minions.

Raft Shenanigans

The Raft receives minions that are defeated after they hit the encounter deck discard pile (so no "Victory" traited minions). It does thwart equal to the minion's scheme stat to a scheme of your choice. I thought this would end up being a lot, but the thwarting is more like a side-dish. This action is a Response, which means we can pick and choose which minions are sent to the Raft, and which return to the discard pile. Store more than 4, and random minions from the Raft are delt to players of your choice until only 4 remain.

The Raft can therefore be used in two meaningful ways: It can hold 4 strong or nasty minions (like Madame Masque, Supergiant, or Scorpion) out of play for the remainder of the game, or it can hold many lesser, weaker minions in rotation that you defeat over and over and over again, dealing them back out each turn.

Because the Asset will benefit from engaging and defeating minions, we're going to go for the second strategy with this deck. We don't want big health minions in the raft (because each minion delt out is artificially inflating the villain's health pool, competing for your damage output) and we don't want minions with bad When Revealed effects (because we will be revealing them over and over. Strangely, Spider-woman's nemesis set (The Viper and 2x Hydra Regular). is wonderful for this (whod've thought locking up Hydra in the raft would be a winning strategy). As an added bonus, Hail Hydra! only searches the encounter deck and discard pile, so these minions won't be released from the Raft by a bad encounter card.

Of note, Shadow of the Past only searches the Set-Aside area, so it will be a surge if a nemesis minion is in the Raft. But Pursued by the Past just says "Find them and put them into play" so it will pull your (or your Asset's) nemesis minion from the Raft if they're incarcerated there.

Asset Coordination

Jessica Drew can take the heat from her Asset in a couple meaningful (but indirect) ways. First, with her access to protection tech (more on that in a moment), she rarely needs defensive help herself. Her capacity to stay in hero form is pretty high once set up, and this can mitigate threat on the main scheme. Because she's got lots of defensive power herself, she can often use her allies (like Agent Coulson and Monica Chang) who are meant to be constantly in rotation, to block for the Asset so they can continue minion-slaying.

Specialized Training can give the asset Combat Specialist (for Valkyrie or Thor) or Surveillance Specialist (preferred by Rocket). Jessica will usually want to take Surveillance Specialist for herself, but if Rocket wants that training, Front Line Specialist can be nice to have for Spider-Woman.

Think Tank Tech Team

With Agent Drew having the S.H.I.E.L.D. trait on her Alter-ego side, she can play Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons at a great discount. With Fitz ability to tutor a Tech card from your deck, and Simmons ability to discount it, it's not actually that hard to put Forcefield Generator or Energy Barrier into play for a song. Keeping these out on the board, if you can, will enable Spider-Woman to Repurpose this tech to keep it in rotation and get some big turns of her own (using her ability to grow her stats by playing aspect cards, and her 3 copies of Self-Propelled Glide). This is also the reason Spider-woman loves zero-cost aspect events, so it feels natural and easy to include 3 copies of Repurpose and Homeland Intervention.

Because so many of her cards carry the Superpower keyword, Deft Focus should be included with her deck. And with so many S.H.I.E.L.D. cards included, Government Liaison usually has something to discount. Monica Chang and 3x Surveillance Team are always a good time, and allow plenty of targets for Homeland Intervention (note that The Raft itself doesn't need to exhaust to function, so it is always one of the 3 S.H.I.E.L.D. cards you'll exhaust for thwarting power)

Playtesting

47 cards is a lot to include in a deck, but Jessica Drew's alter-ego ego hand size of 6 becomes 8 when you factor in Jessica Drew's Apartment and Leo Fitz, who can pretty consistently draw you extra cards.

Because of Pheromones (which is busted value) and Sonic Rifle, villains that weren't stalwart didn't seem to stand much chance. I defeated expert Crossbones, expert Ebony Maw, and Expert Tower Defense easily the first time.

Expert Thanos proved a much larger struggle. Playing him with the recommended encounter sets, I lost the first 5 games. He hits like a bus, and the threat threshold on the main scheme seems generous until you find yourself saying things like "I must flip to alter-ego or I'll die".

Originally I only included Monica Chang as an ally... and this worked fine for non-stalwart Villains, allowing me to thin the deck down some. But for Thanos, I needed more blockers, and included Coulson and Quake.

Even this didn't help, though. I proceeded to lose 2 more games against him, and then realized that there weren't enough minions in his encounter deck Thanos has no minions in his cards, and the recommended modulars only include 5 total. Which is how many I had in the raft. So the Space Stone kept adding acceleration icons, and minion-summoning cards became harmful dead cards to have in hand. So I switched out Children of Thaons and Black Order for Band of Badoon and Marauders and had a great time. I won the next few games, using each of the assets in turn.

So the goal of the game is to have fun, and I found I wasn't having fun when there weren't a lot of minions around to stomp. I've found that even Stalwart Villains can be fun to defeat with this pair of decks, as long as you use modular sets that include 5-6 or more minions into the encounter deck. This style cannot beat every Villain with every modular, but if you play with a high-minion modular set, you'll probably have a good time. I sure have.

I tried including Martyr, since this is a minion-slaying pair and it wouldn't be hard to hit her "kill a minion to get a tough" trigger. But I found that on harder scenarios, she wasn't on Tempo to play, and on easier scenarios, she wasn't needed. I dropped her for an extra Med Team