Nattie's Always Ready for a Fight

This deck uses Black Widow's unmatched ability to recycle Preparation cards to allow her to flip to alter-ego every turn without letting the villain scheme.

It works well in solo, and in two-player you are flexible enough that you can support whatever your partner needs. Your thwarting, damage, and ability to protect them are not as strong as with a deck dedicated to either of those, but Black Widow's kit is fairly flexible. You're weakest at doing damage, so you probably don't want to pair with a deck that doesn't have at least a partial focus on that.

This is not a strong deck for three or four players. It can hold its own in damage, thwarting, and protection, but it's not going to bring enough for the whole table. Some of your Preparations can be used to help other players (notably Attacrobatics and Widow's Bite), but not Grappling Hook which would be the most useful one. You can help clear out minions with Dance of Death or keep down threat with Covert Ops, but that's help on the margins in a big game.

The key card in this deck is of course Ready for a Fight. For most characters this is a solid card, but only Black Widow can reliably use it every single turn.

The interaction that allows this is that her Safe House #29 can pick it up from her discard pile, and her Black Widow's Gauntlet can generate a Wild resource to play it. Once those two cards are in play, she can end every turn in alter-ego with Ready for a Fight in play so she's ready to interrupt the villain's scheming.

The rest of the deck is built to support this play. This is done in two ways: Keeping her alive agianst the villain's attacks, and having enough thwart and damage that she can remove side schemes, eliminate minions, and ultimately defeat the villain.

This requires a highly control focused play style, where you slowly build up your board while managing crises. Your Preparations help you handle the things the encounter deck throws at you, while your Supports and non-Preparation Upgrades make you stronger in the long run by building your economy and survivability.

The deck only has a few allies, and they serve very different purposes.

Spider-Byte is a cheap throw-away blocker who can give you a quick two thwart or ping in a point of damage. Since you have a lot of tech, she's usually free.

White Widow is the opposite. She's expensive, but once you have her in play you should be able to keep her around for the rest of the game. Her ability to heal off of your Preparations means she can easily go down to one health and be fully recovered by the next time you need to activate her. Don't throw her away on defending against the villain unless absolutely necessary, but if she needs to stop a minion attack that doesn't defeat her that can be a good use of her. Primarily, she's there to keep threat under control.

Martyr is also expensive, and depending on how your plays turn out you may or may not be able to keep her around for the whole game. If you get your Med Team out in time and don't need it for yourself, it can increase her lifespan considerably. The important thing is to try to use her to take out minions that have been weakened by Black Widow's Widowmaker ability so she can get her Tough card. After that she can be used to block an attack from the villain or a beefy minion. (Note that if she already has a Tough card, her ability won't trigger if she makes an attack, since she will discard her Tough card instead of taking consequential damage.)

Angel's Aerie and Crew Quarters both give you a little bit of healing every time you flip down, which should be every turn once you have the core combo in play. One point of health here and there may not seem like a lot, but it helps and it's reliable. Med Team can be used in an emergency, but it's more useful for keeping your expensive allies in play.

Quincarrier, Jemma Simmons, and Leo Fitz all help your economy. The carrier is the most expensive since your alter-ego gives you the rebate for FitzSimmons, but it's also more reliable. You'll almost always have a tech card in your deck for Leo to find and one for Jemma to play, but they can occasionally miss.

Energy Barrier both helps you survive damage spikes and wear down the villain and stronger minions.

There are a couple of timing issues to keep in mind. The description below is my best undrstanding of how the interactions work, but I may be wrong.

The most important one is that your Widowmaker ability and the readying from your Synth-Suit will not be able to trigger off of Ready for a Fight (or a Practiced Plan picking it back up), because both of them trigger off of the triggering of a preparation and when it triggers you are still in alter-ego form. (Compare with the wording on White Widow, whose ability triggers after the ability is resolved.)

The sequence here goes like this, assuming you are in alter-ego:

• The villain tries to scheme.
• You trigger Ready for a Fight, discarding it.
• Widowmaker can't trigger because you don't have that ability in alter-ego.
• The Synth-Suit can't trigger because you're not in hero form.
• Optionally, you trigger Practiced Plan, with the same conditions as above for Widowmaker and Synth-Suit, bringing Ready for a Fight to your hand.
• You flip to hero form.
• The villain attacks you.
• You handle the attack.
• Ready for a Fight has finished resolving, so White Widow's healing ability can trigger.