Nova Justice - Expert Campaign Venom Goblin Solo

This deck was built specifically to defeat Expert Campaign, Expert Difficulty Venom Goblin in Solo play and was successful in its effort. I've written the following summary as a guide for playing this deck against this fight.

Note: The same deck would work just as well in team play, but there is less room for error in solo so a few of the choices might be overkill in a team game (ex: 3x Under Surveillance) while I found them to be necessary when taking on the fight solo.

To set the scene, I had full health from the previous fight when I got to Venom Goblin. I also had 21 reputation, which gave me the following perks:

-Extra mulligan

-Enhanced Impact-Dampening Suit

-3x Dive Bomb (crucial for removing Advanced Glider)

-Planning Ahead: Moon Girl put into hand after mulligans

-Helicarrier in play

and gave VG the following perks:

-Tracking Display, Arm Cannon, Kinetic Armor

-1 extra threat on Midtown Manhattan

-Enraged Symbiote in play

-Festering Mass in play w/ 1 extra threat

Mission setup also brought in the following:

-Public Outcry w/ Hazard Icon & 3 Notoriety Counters

-Smear Campaign treachery shuffled into the encounter deck

-Vulture, Hobgoblin & Kraven minions from Sinister Assault modular shuffled into the encounter deck

-1 threat on each main scheme

-2 encounter cards dealt to me

The plan was as follows:

-Mulligan goals: Genius (or other mental resources), wild resource, thwart event, ally

-Turn One: Use wild resource to play Supernova Helmet, flip to hero form and use Helmet + Genius to play Moon Girl to draw 3 cards. From here, use most efficient route to remove the side scheme & minion from the board (leaving 1 Notoriety Counter on Public Outcry) and use leftover resources to play setup cards or thwart Midtown Manhattan.

-First Villain Phase: Survive the bombardment of 4 encounter cards, hopefully seeing 1 minion or side scheme along with some bomb attachments. Avoiding surge here is critical to survival.

-Turn Two and beyond: Remove Public Outcry ASAP. Maintain threat levels, clean up villain's board while playing permanent upgrades/supports, prioritize keeping a Dive Bomb or Stealth Strike in hand until both Advanced Glider AND Remote Navigation are in the discard pile, keep allies on the board for blocking, and work toward applying Confuse status with Sonic Rifle & Professor X. Alter-ego turns where VG is fully confused will be the best source of momentum for Nova. Pot shot will be your most efficient source of damage on the villain, but only consider doing this if all other problems are taken care of already and you have resources left in hand. When VG's 3rd form comes into play, he will deal out 3 encounter cards and become stalwart with permanent retaliate so do not flip him if you are working toward a confuse. The best time to move to VG 3 will be directly after a turn where he was fully confused and unable to activate.

A note on the Glider Counter

Turn one, the Glider Counter will move to Upper Manhattan if no threat is removed from the main scheme. This will discard a card from hand after each villain activation. This will inhibit our ability to remove Public Outcry and build our board on the following turn, so we will try to move to Midtown and take damage instead. After the first turn, we will avoid Midtown until we have Down Time / Crew Quarters in play so we can recover quickly. Whether we spend more time in Upper or Lower Manhattan will be determined by our board. For example, if we get Avengers Mansion down quickly we will spend most turns in Upper which will allow us to flip down more often (threat should be at or near zero to flip down, unless VG is fully confused). On the other hand, if we get multiple Under Surveillance out quickly, we can spend more time in Lower Manhattan and take advantage of the extra card in hand. Deciding which main scheme to thwart is critical to success in this fight, so consider your situation before doing so each turn.

...and hope for some good luck!

This was the formula that I used to successfully defeat Venom Goblin in Expert Difficulty using Expert Campaign rules. I hope you found this guide to be helpful in your attempts to defeat one of the toughest villains this game has to offer.