Taunts, Techniques, and Practiced Plans

Silk's pack gave Nebula some great toys! I've often found Protection (minus Repurpose) to be a tricky aspect for Nebula. She wants to flip to AE to benefit from Cybernetic Upgrades. But flipping means she can't benefit from protection's defensive events or upgrades that trigger from them. Taunt helps, but sometimes I would still find myself stuck in AE, facing more threat, holding useless defense events unless I also had taunt.

With Ready to Rumble and Practiced Plan, this is no longer a problem! With 3x Taunt and a copy of Bait and Switch, we can use those powerful defense events and synergies at any time. These can be quite powerful. Riposte, Electrostatic Armor, Armored Vest, Flow Like Water, and "Stop Hitting Yourself" can combine to deliver 10 dmg to an enemy on either the player or the villain phase. That's before we add in any copies of Weapons Master for additional retaliate. This may seem like quite the combination of cards to play, however, 2x copies of Defensive Training and Jocasta means we have good control over which cards make it to our hand. This is also an exceptionally cheap deck, with the cards averaging less than 2.2 effective resources. Add in Cybernetic Upgrades, Nebula's Ship, Helicarrier, and card draw from Taunt and you can afford a lot of cards. If you like playing lots of cards in your card games, this might be the deck for you.

Some notes from testing: Allies' usefulness varied a lot across scenarios, but the three listed here tended to be most useful. Rocket Raccoon was great in scenarios, like Expert Klaw, which had many high hp minions and frustrating side schemes. In other scenarios (Expert Draang), with less resilient minions, they were too slow and I mostly got use from Professor X for his high thwart and confuse while Nebula handled the minions. Early builds had copies of Dauntless and Endurance, to squeeze in one more retaliate, but it ended up being similarly too slow. Dr. Sinclair also obviated the need for allies, as I could heal up early damage when I was lacking key defense upgrades (mostly Armored Vest to hit perfect defense thresholds more consistently).

This deck also changed how I view Nebula's technique upgrades. Wide Stance and Weapons Master defensive synergies took on new-found importance and I found myself needing Cutthroat Ambition a bit less as the villain schemed less often.

I know 45 cards is a bit higher than the 40-card gold standard, but I found this mixture of events and upgrades provided consistently strong hands. This deck shines the most when it draws Taunt and Riposte together, but it also has good allies and Nebula is rarely unhappy to draw and play more Technique upgrades. On the "big" turns, it's a lot of fun to puzzle out how many cards you can play.Combat Ready's recursions combines great with the deck's defensive recursion options, so you're frequently playing your best cards.

Got the deck idea when a friend and I challenged each other to make decks for a character we like in an aspect we thought would be challenging. I enjoy playing Nebula, so I chose protection for her, with the added challenge of not making a Repurpose deck. Pretty happy with how this turned out! A surprisingly aggressive feeling deck, even though Nebula is mostly defending.

I always welcome feedback on your thoughts on these new toys from Silk. I hope you enjoy the deck!