Pounding the Pavement

"Yep. I have certainly kept this investigation under control." - Jessica Jones

Jessica has always been something of a loner, but today she's using her investigative journalism to support her fellow heroes, and hey, maybe they'll help her out in return. This is a multiplayer deck that focuses on a couple of tools that make Jessica unique when it comes to helping out the table.

Jessica is one of the few characters with the Civilian Alter-Ego trait, but she's also the only character who can consistently get access to her AE without getting locked into that form for the whole turn. But why does that matter? The Civilian trait doesn't really do anything for us.

In walks that resource you forgot about oh so long ago, Everyday Hero. You can spend it on any player when in AE, and it heals that player for 1-HP when you do. That alone is pretty nice, but now let's take a look at Dr. Sinclair. Any player can spend a mental resource to heal based on your REC stat and toss a status card. What that means is that if another player is in AE when you flip down, you can spend a copy of Everyday Hero from your hand to activate Dr. Sinclair for another player, healing them for their REC +1 and removing a status card when applicable. This can be a huge boon to supporting other folks at the table, although obviously you'll end up spending this on yourself too.

You may wonder, then, why I included Crew Quarters here rather than Down Time, and it's simple; you may not always have the resources for Dr. Sinclair, you may not be able to afford to heal yourself over a teammate, and you never want to exhaust to heal if you can manage because your basic activations are so valuable. So, Crew Quarters provides a consistent point of healing every turn, regardless of all those other factors. I also didn't include Toughen Up for that same reason; you don't really want to REC, so it wouldn't trigger very often.

Joys of Life is a funky card in that regard, and more often than not, you'll want to use this to ready your own identity rather than someone else's. Jessica has great stats and gets counters each time she activates, so she wants to be activating a lot. Army of One, Desperate Defense, Indomitable, Ready to Rumble, and Stand Alone all work to provide her readies, but this is another way to help her out when she's in a pinch. And hey, if someone else may have a better opportunity to activate for more value, you can always exhaust yourself to help them out, then flip up and ready with Ready to Rumble, no big deal.

You may notice a lot of defense-related skills, which seems weird since Jessica has such low DEF. That's because her jacket gives her +2 DEF and makes it so she gains an additional counter every time she defends. This is huge, as the extra counters can heavily boost her counter generation, so you want to prioritize that early so you can make use of her various defensive tools to bulk up Alias Investigations.

All of the included cards are exceptionally low cost, with Dr. Sinclair being the only 2-cost card added. Because of that, we don't really need double resources, as you'll end up pounding the pavement well enough without them.

Alright wannabe investigators, let's hit the ground running and see if we can keep all these "superhero" bozos alive!