White Ops (Black Widow Alternate Pre-Con)

This deck has a few design goals in mind:

— Limited card pool: This deck only requires Black Widow, the Core Set, and three expansions from the current wave: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Silk, and Winter Soldier, plus whatever pack gets you Energy Barrier, so either Ms. Marvel or SP//dr.

— Alternate pre-con: I asked myself the question, what if Black Widow’s pre-con was Protection instead of Justice? To that end, the deck includes full 3-card playsets of every card (except Preemptive Strike since it comes in the core, so as pre-cons do, I only included 2 copies), limited allies, and a very focused game plan. In some universe, this could be her pre-con.

— New cards: I specifically wanted to try out all of the new cards for her from Winter Soldier’s pack, so we’ve got White Widow, the team-up, and Ops Room.

One thing I found extremely fun was pulling attacks with Preemptive Strike to cancel the boost, and canceling most or all of the rest of the damage with a combination of Ops Rooms and Energy Barriers. It was cool being able to do this as well as basic defend and cancel boosts with Attacrobatics as normal.

Don't forget that Ops Room can work on White Widow! So if she's defending an attack, you can use alert counters from Ops Room to prevent some of that damage — hopefully she heals the rest when you trigger your preparations and does it again next turn. Perhaps a Reinforced Suit from a friend would help soak hits with damage she can heal later, too!

And lastly, I'm just going to copy-paste my primer from another Black Widow Protection deck on how Ready for a Fight works with her:

1. When the villain schemes (against any player), you may trigger Ready for a Fight. Place it in the discard pile and begin to resolve it.

2. Since Ready for a Fight has just been discarded, you may trigger Practiced Plan, returning Ready for a Fight to your hand and triggering Black Widow's Widowmaker — but only if you are in hero form at this point, which is unlikely.

3. Then, flip to hero form (if you weren't in hero form already). The villain attacks you. You may exhaust to defend, etc. (It's quite possible that during this attack you may use something like Attacrobatics, which may be a better target for Practiced Plan.)

4. Now, Ready for a Fight will have finished resolving, so you may use Widowmaker to deal damage and Synth-Suit to ready if necessary.

Edit: In the style of any pre-con, you may want to make adjustments or add cards. I think a great trade could be Quincarrier OUT, Nick Fury IN. Additionally, I don't know that I would drop anything, but it could be fun to add a single copy of Unflappable (if you expect you will defend perfectly) and Change of Fortune (if you expect minions and no custody battles).