Decking out Captain Marvel is not a new idea in Marvel Champions. But, here I will attempt to update this archetype for the current era and present some fresh ideas as well.

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Deck Concept

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The core of the deck is to use Captain Marvel to draw as many cards as possible. We use a suite of Sky Cycle, Command Team, and Inspiring Presence to ready her as much as we can; and Med Team, Innovation, and the aforementioned Inspiring Presence to heal her. I love that both Spider-Woman and Captain Marvel are on their bikes! Inspired gives her extra value, while Reinforced Suit and Team Training give her extra longevity before we draw into our heals. With this line-up, Captain Marvel will have 6 hit points, with the possibility of activating 2-5 times per turn, drawing that many additional cards, and thwarting/attacking for 6-15.

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Unflappable Synergy

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To complement the card draw from Captain Marvel, we are also running Unflappable. One of the weaknesses of Unflappable is the reliance on spending cards out of hand in order to guarantee the trigger, negating its benefits somewhat. Spider-Woman can get around this! With Armored Vest she will be going into the villain phase with 3-6 DEF, something other heroes can't boast. Contaminant Immunity provides a tough to guarantee Unflappable and she can easily tank minions in a pinch if her stats aren't there. Having a 5 card hero hand turn into a 9-10 card hero hand after Unflappable and 3-4 activations of Captain Marvel is sweet!

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Unique Ways to use Allies

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Spider-Woman mitigates one of the Voltron archetype's weaknesses. Normally, drawing the upgrades before your main ally can be a bother. But here, Spider-Woman actually likes being able to put upgrades on weaker allies just for the stat boost! We get combos like Sky Cycle + Brother Voodoo to get the most out of his thwart or Reinforced Suit + Starhawk to get additional activations before bouncing him or gear him up to take a larger hit. The +1 to stats means that she doesn't take as big of a tempo hit in this regard. This changes the math on what otherwise would be sub-par plays.

Starhawk is just a great, multifaceted ally who creates juicy choices and smart plays. On the basic level, his ability to come back to hand can help pay for an expensive card (Captain Marvel) or guarantee a Protection card play for +1 stats.

Where things get more interesting are Starhawk's interactions with Team Training and Reinforced Suit. Being able to mess around with his hit points widens the range of attacks he can block. When we pair this with Double Agent to check what the villain's next boost will be, we can make sure he has the exact hit points necessary. No more guessing between thwarting or attacking, or hesitating to block with him for fear of whiffing his effect.

Kaluu and Brother Voodoo help us reach our off-aspect cards more consistently to put together those big +4 turns. Once Captain Marvel is out late game, Call for Aid searches for these two who in turn can find you the missing aspects you need to put the game away. Call for Aid into Brother Voodoo into Venom Blast or Inconspicuous is +3 with very little effort! Since we are getting two cards for free, this combo is only 5-6 ER, easily playable with only one generator out, just be careful not to discard your off-aspect cards (Double Agent can help!). If we've already maxed your stats, don't overlook being able to pull Self-Propelled Glide is a great cheap blocker, especially since we want to keep aspect cards in the deck.

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"Defending" True Grit

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True Grit is a card that is often overlooked, but that Spider-Woman can make great use of. Imagine this: we've boosted our statline to 5/5/5, we attack for 5, we defend for 5, and we play True Grit to thwart for 5! Obviously that's the best case scenario, but since this deck will be defending a lot to preserve Captain Marvel and capitalize on Unflappable, we will be meeting the requirement of True Grit quite often! With most heroes, True Grit is a 2-1 or 2-2 trade, not very good. But here, it starts as a 2-2 and only gets better! Remember it instantly increases our thwart value, guaranteeing it hits for 2. It is our 3rd and 4th copy of Inconspicuous, though occasionally removing 4-5 threat for just 2 ER! At the moment, this is unique to Spider-Woman.

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Let Loyalties Lie...In the Discard

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True Grit also serves as a counter to her obligation! Exhaust to defend builds are incredibly weak to Uncertain Loyalties, where the only remaining option is to add 3 threat. Often times this can be an instant game-over, especially in Protection. True Grit removes threat before pulling Uncertain Loyalties, so we can safely add the 3 threat to the main scheme unscathed.

Being able to keep an obligation in the encounter deck is very powerful. I am always looking for ways to take the non-remove from game option just to keep the free flip to alter-ego in the deck, something that high pressure encounters don't usually allow. Godlike Stamina countering Thor's obligation is another example, but True Grit is a pretty indirect counter for Spider-Woman's when she is running defend-based Protection.

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How Much More Can I Possibly Write About True Grit?

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Lastly, I appreciate that True Grit preserves her thwart even if she gets hit with an exhaustion effect, a niche but not uncommon effect. Maybe she was exhausted on the previous turn and couldn't thwart, or after using True Grit we draw Exhaustion and thank our lucky stars that we were able to thwart while we could. A little extra exhaustion resistance is something I appreciate. We can even remove threat from a hazard side scheme BEFORE it would deal you the encounter card. Even more niche, it can remove a confuse status on the villain phase. This makes Inconspicuous always playable, important because our off aspect cards are our only way to get to +3/+4! Even MORE niche, removing the confuse on the villain phase protects us from a surprise damage from Psionic Ghost or a surge from False Alarm. I'm definitely stretching the use cases here, but once I noticed them I couldn't help but include them!

Consider this the deepest dive on a niche card!

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Cost Curve and Card Economy

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You might be thinking "but True Grit doesn't help us boost our stats for the next hero phase". You are right, but we have no shortage of Protection cards to alleviate this along with our card draw + cost curve. We are running 1 0-cost aspect card, 13 1-cost aspect cards, and 11 2-cost aspect cards. With even one Finesse out, we have a good chance of being able to play any card that Captain Marvel/Kaluu/Brother Voodoo draws us, even if it is the only card in hand. The cost curve is so low, I even considered dropping the doubles, but they're too necessary for getting out Captain Marvel.

Our economy, outside of the card draw, consists of Quincarrier, Deft Focus, and x2 Finesse. One economy card for each aspect! Deft Focus has 11 targets in this deck, while Finesse has 24! Unfortunately, neither of these help for Captain Marvel or Self-Propelled Glide, which is why we are running Quincarrier as well. It is not unheard of to pay for an entire hand just with a double resource and our generators. Considering the card draw, we can reach +4 stats consistently, likely ending the game within a turn or two.

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The Remaining Cards

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The Night Nurse helps us not waste those big plus turns on a stun or confuse. Indomitable is a 4th copy of Self-Propelled Glide that we can use Finesse on. Nice to slap down for cheap and giving us extra coverage for our Unflappable and True Grit plays. It might be the first cut, but I'm not sure what other Protection cards I would want.

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Mulligan

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If we get Captain Marvel great! If not, that's okay, sometimes we don't even want her early if we can't support her. Quincarrier is our primary build card for it's flexibility, then Finesse, then Deft Focus. After that, Team Training, Unflappable, and Armored Vest can help keep us safe while we set up.

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Weaknesses

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Minions with high hit points (6+) This deck only really has 3 sources of damage: Spider-Woman, Captain Marvel, and Venom Blast, each with its own weaknesses. The main solution is to use the minions as Unflappable batteries, but if more than one comes out it can get dicey. This deck would pair nicely with an Aggression player focusing on minions, especially since it handles threat so well.

Retaliate

We don't want to waste Captain Marvel or our tough statuses from Contaminant Immunity on retaliate. Getting rid of those effects is a must, especially if there is no threat for Captain Marvel to target.

Beguiled

This can be an instant loss card when facing Loki or using the Enchantress modular set. Honestly might be worth substituting Black Widow just for this one card!

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Other Options

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Air Supremacy is another useful source of damage that gets around retaliate. Captain Marvel with Sky Cycle means we will always have at least one instance of 3 damage on hand, and this deck can get up to three aerial characters in play.

More Command Teams were run in earlier builds, but really, how many extra cards do we need?? I ended up dropping the second copy for Call for Aid.

Enjoy!