Wasp: GIRL gets Goliath

This deck makes Wasp a blast to play, and it works extremely well when paired with Ant-Man (I think protection works best).

Let's unpack this deck philosophically.

I begin with a question. What makes a hero compelling? To me, a hero is most interesting when it stimulates the imagination with potential synergy, by which I mean combos with outside cards (not internal synergy). For this reason Hawkeye is my least favorite hero, and Ms. Marvel is one of my favorites. Hawkeye has a 15 card deck and you slap on a 25 card deck and the two deck have zero synergy between them. Ms. Marvel inspires nearly infinite possible deck combinations.

Think of a card like Gamma Slam. Immediately that card begs you to build around it. And a hero doesn't need many of these mechanics, only two or three is plenty to get the wheels turning. In fact, sometimes less is better. When you look at Wasp you find that she has almost no synergy potential, just one ability. I am referring, of course, to her AE G.I.R.L. ability. Fortunately, that's really all she needs.

The GIRL ability is elegant game design at it's best. With a very simple rule it establishes synergy with a particular resource type that opens up a ton of combinations. It is neither heavy handed nor over powered. Most of the time I would rather draw a card than add something to my deck. Yet it presents us with a totally unique opportunity to explore.

So, what's the best approach? Some people have gone with Multiple Man, so you can have an endless supply of cheap chump blockers. Personally, I am not impressed with this approach because Multiple Man works better when he is simply reshuffled normally. GIRL doesn't really do that much, and even when the combo works as intended it prohibits other allies.

There are other approaches. You can just fill your deck with tons of mental resource cards, especially allies, and shuffle back whatever you want or you can just ignore outside synergy by building a great deck, using GIRL on Pinpoint Strike, Giant Help, and Genius. All these are viable.

They are viable, but not the best. I play a lot of Ms. Marvel and one of my favorite decks with her is just a solid aggro deck with two copies of Drop Kick. Often those will be the only event cards I add to the entire deck, because they're all I need for stun lock. That approach is most often far better than filling the entire deck with events. Why not take the same approach with Wasp?

At last we get to the deck. The purpose of this deck is to play and activate Goliath as many times as possible, and to ready him with Inspiring Presence when possible. The first step is to use Call for Aid to get the big man. The only other Avenger is Ant-Man. After that all the most important cards have a mental resource, including Make the Call and Inspiring Presence. With tons of resource accelerators and card draw you should eventually be able to recycle Goliath 2 or 3 times each deck cycle. He should usually do 10 damage each time he's played, finishing the villain quickly.

Everything else, including Wasp, can just defend and thwart. Wasp can flip between giant and AE each round.

And that's it. Several cards could be good, like Moxie and Last Stand, but I wanted this list to be laser focused.

I hope this list inspires you.