Venom & Honed Technique: Symbiotic Perfection!

Intro

This is my first published deck, but I've been enjoying this one so much I just had to share! Yeah I know, it's not exactly the new hotness...

I've recently been getting a lot of enjoyment out of Honed Technique but it can sometimes be tricky to get into play efficiently. I initially built this deck for War Machine but he was forever waiting for Quincarrier and struggled to pay for everything. This lead me to think about which hero it would best pair with and Venom was the one that stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Honed Technique Venom's resource makes it much easier to meet the conditions required to get the card to the table, and also ensures you can trigger it at least once per subsequent round. Add into this that he is guaranteed to start the game with a weapon in hand then Fusillade becomes your most damaging event. Almost every card has been chosen for its resource to help with this and to potentially open up multiple uses of Honed Technique per round. 3 copies reduce the risk of seeing it discarded during setup and increases the odds of getting it in hand early. It helps that it also has a so the extra copies aren't 'wasted'

Good Economy Venom's resource, Helicarrier and Martial Prowess provide good cost reduction. Bear in mind that Martial Prowess won't help pay for Run and Gun, sadly. 2 x The Power of Aggression help with the more expensive aggression cards, most notably Honed Technique of course!

Great Damage Once Honed Technique is on the table, Fusillade will hit for 7, Clobber for 5 (and return to hand if played correctly), Melee hits for 6 and 6 though this is dependent on at least 1 minion being on the board. Not usually an issue in multiplayer.

Not really phased by Exhaust effects So many events in this deck provide the majority of your damage, so having your identity exhausted is pretty trivial. In fact I often defend with Venom against the harder hitting villains. Having 4 DEF with both pistols on the board is hard to break through, although you will of course be slowly damaging yourself over the course of the game to pay for these events. Luckily he has...

Great Healing Ability Project Rebirth 2.0 is amongst the best alter-ego supports currently in the game (in my opinion). Being able to heal for 6 without even exhausting your identity is an ability many heroes would be jealous of. Let's not mention Peter Parker Precision Strike is also available for some conditional spot healing. This condition is made slightly easier when boosted by Honed Technique. One iteration of this deck did contain Moment of Triumph but I found it to be overkill.

Good Card Draw Spider-Sense and No Quarter provide ample card draw. When powered up by HT, No Quarter will hit for 6 damage making it much more likely to cause excess damage. The potential to draw up to 5 cards is very nice! Venom has the rather unique ability to adjust his ATK from 2 to 4 so it's quite easy to line up a minion with 1 remaining HP. Project Rebirth 2.0 can also draw a card as an alter-ego action although it's more likely you'll use this for healing. A turn 1 Project Rebirth 2.0 is a solid start though, who would turn down an 8 card starting hand?!

Consistent ways to mitigate 'Tough' One of the saddest times is having massive damage potential in your hand, but your target is tough. Multi-Gun and Bug provide easy access to "ping" damage. The fact that Venom will likely be making basic attacks a lot will help to keep Bug in the game

Decent Thwarting Capability With both Venom's Pistol on the board he can thwart for 3 and the Multi-Gun for another two every round. Behind Enemy Lines will also remove 3 threat and can potentially confuse the villain. If you're wanting to play this deck solo against a villain that schemes hard you could swap out Clobber for Into the Fray, although this only works on the main scheme and is dependent on a minion being in play. Angela can help drag one out of the encounter deck.

Board Control Venom has fairly easy access to both the Confuse and Stun status effects. In fact Grasping Tendrils is more like laying down two Stuns, it's so good!

Mulligan Priorities I would generally mulligan hard for a Honed Technique and the means to pay for it. Honed Technique and a copy of The Power of Aggression is the dream opening hand. There are some cards I would never throw away though...

• Any of Venom's weapons, particularly Multi-Gun
• Project Rebirth 2.0. Trust me, you will notice the huge difference between having this in play and not.
• Spider-Sense, unless it would be impossible to pay for in favour of any of the above.
• Helicarrier - same conditions as Spider-Sense.

After that it really doesn't matter. The deck is so consistent there is hardly a time when you cannot do something impactful on your turn.

Closing Thoughts This isn't intended to be the most insanely damaging deck out there, but in the many games I've played it has been the deck that has been able to easily get Honed Technique to the table and consistently trigger its effects., and it's a LOT of fun to play.

It doesn't really have any weaknesses but if I had to list one it would be the initial set-up. It's a sad day when you see all three Honed Technique cards discarded before you hit a weapon, but even then it's not the end of the world. You will still be able to do plenty of damage.

I've listed this primarily as a multiplayer deck as it will struggle against villains that scheme hard, but playing it solo isn't beyond the realms of possiblity!

Now if only Venom had the Aerial keyword. To have Dive Bomb... sigh

Edit:- if you want to test this deck out solo, I'd recommend playing against Magog from the Mojomania set. No-one cares when he threats out, right? :-)