Paging Captain Danvers - Spider-Woman (Undefeated on Expert)

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Calling All Cards! - Ready Spider-Woman and Captain Marvel 2 0 0 1.0
Spider-Woman Collector Tuning 1 1 0 1.0
SpiderWoman - Potenciar a Carol - Juncal - [LMDT] 66 50 3 2.0
Spider-Woman - The Mighty Avengers Duo 3 1 0 1.0
Spider-Woman - Lead/Prot - All Out! 0 0 0 1.0
Spider-Woman (Duo with Cable for Ultron Cpt. Marvel) 0 0 0 1.0

lupercal30 · 975

Recently I have been setting myself a challenge of building a deck for a hero and taking them through every Encounter on Expert difficulty with the recommended Modular set. Mostly, I end up drawn to my favourite aspect, Aggression. It has been a fantastic way to learn about deckbuidling, new heroes, and new cards. Usually losses in certain scenarios lead to alterations and a fine tuning of the deck. But this week I found myself returning to an archetype I've been tinkering with on and off since the release of the Rise of Red Skull set. Enter Captain Mar. . . errr, Spider-Woman and her undefeated run through every villain.

Higher, Further, Faster Baby

The crux of the deck is getting Captain Marvel ally into play as early as possible, buffing her basic powers with upgrades, and keeping her in play for the whole game by healing her. Several cards in the deck are key to this strategy and the Ant-Man pack tipped this deck over the edge;

Call for Aid: This card is the main reason I wanted to return to the deck. One of the weaknesses of the deck prior to Ant-Man was consistency. Sometimes Carol is stubbornly clinging to the bottom of your deck and you are forced to watch forlorn as you draw your upgrades with no superstar to play them on. Other times an encounter card can force you to discard Captain Marvel from the top of your deck or with the arrival of Kang, from play. Call for Aid fixes this issue. By ensuring that the good Captain is the sole Avenger ally in the deck, Call for Aid is guaranteed to find her whenever you play it. Needless to say, with so much of the deck focused around one card you should aggressively mulligan for it. With the inclusion of 2 copies of Call for Aid the probability of Carol (or a way to find her) being in your opening hand (assuming you mulligan your entire first hand if this isn't the case) is ~67%. Two thirds of the time you should see the card your deck hinges on turn 1, but if you are unlucky enough for this not to happen then the chances increase to ~82% turn by 2, ~92% by turn 3, ~97% by turn 4, and an impressive ~99% by turn 5. This consistency however comes with a price, often you will deck yourself the turn you play Call for Aid if not very shortly after. An extra encounter card is a price I'm willing to pay for the impressive Captain Marvel.

Inspiring Presence: As magnificent as Captain Marvel is the deck doesn't really gain momentum until you can get her activating multiple times in a round. Captain Marvel's ability to draw synergizes with this event to give you a 2 THW or 2 ATK activation and allows you to cycle through cards you don't need right now to find additional combo pieces.

Med Team: This is your prime combo piece, without a copy of this on your board your turns can feel glacial. To steal a phrase from a prominent community member without the healing this card offers Captain Marvel becomes merely . . . "An Avenger's Mansion with uses." This support offers 6 Captain Marvel activations and 6 draws to keep your engine going.

Inspired: Raising Captain Marvel's Thwart to 3 allows her to deal with the majority of Side Schemes in solo.

Power Gloves: Coupled with Inspired, Power Gloves makes Captain Marvel's activations incredibly versatile. Threat piled up on schemes but you need to remove a 1-2HP minion, no problem. Power Gloves helps to push Captain Marvel into your late game closer. The fact that damage from Power Gloves isn't an attack allows you to get around one of her weaknesses, retaliate.

Reinforced Suit: As said previously, giving Captain Marvel more activations is key to the success of the deck. This card is pretty straight forward, for 2 resources you get 2 additional activations and 2 extra draws. But this card also can act as a HP buffer for encounters in which the Villain or minions have retaliate, and more crucially against encounter decks containing the Under Attack modular set.

Sky Cycle: Outside of some Strength In Numbers / Earth's Mightiest Heroes combo decks I have never really liked this card. For 2 resources you get 2 activations out of your ally at the price of your board presence. Outside of multiplayer efficient ally healing is non-existent for Leadership, but all that may change with the introduction of United We Stand, so I may return to this card in other decks. Spider-Woman's ability to run Sky Cycle and Med Team in the same deck makes up for this downside and with both cards on your board your tempo accelerates to a pace the Villain can struggle to keep up with. A combination of 2 3-4 power activations and 2 card draws every round is fantastic. Increasing the draw from Captain Marvel boosts your chances of seeing the next copy of Med Team and keeping your momentum going.

Don't Get Dead!

The rest of the cards in the deck, along with some of her signature cards, are dedicated to keeping Spider-Woman from being defeated by damage and to make up for the loss of tempo in the early game because you are either waiting for Carol to answer your page or are assembling her Voltron gear.

Note that none of the allies in the deck have the Avenger trait. Clea is the cheapest Protection ally and used simply as a small activation and a defense. I very rarely shuffle Clea back into the deck with her ability as she slows your ability to draw the combo pieces you need, but sometimes its the right call. Ironheart and Maria Hill are both incredibly cheap defenders and add to your ability to cycle through your deck. The only downside to Ironheart is that she isn't an aspect card for Spider-Woman's ability. I've tried several allies in the Lockjaw slot, but the deck needs what the best boy has to offer. Every few games or so you can find yourself in a position where you haven't locked the round up with status cards, your HP are too low to defend, you have no ally in hand, and you cannot quite remove enough threat to risk an alter-ego turn, enter everyone's favourite teleporting pooch to save the day. Having a defender on call can be clutch, even it takes a lot of your turn to make happen.

The Night Nurse and Energy Barrier offer hero form healing and damage prevention. The main benefit of these cards is that they keep you in the game whilst also allowing you to advance the board state to one that favours you. The damage from Energy Barrier can lead to situations in which you defeat a minion before it can attack you, tidying the table and preventing more damage. Between Energy Barrier and Power Gloves this deck has a surprisingly straight forward time against Ultron. Night Nurse's ability to remove negative status effects can keep you in the early game against villains like Crossbones and Zola when you can be more reliant upon your Spider-Woman activations.

Contaminant Immunity, Pheromones, and Self-Propelled Glide all give you the ability to take attacks directly with Spider-Woman, which can provide you the much needed breathing room to build your board and assemble your combo pieces, or on turns when you cannot find a defender or your HP total is looking ropey.

I've Been Fighting With One Hand Behind My Back!

The deck has an incredibly strong end game through a combination of multiple Captain Marvel activations, Venom Blast, Spider-Woman's ability, and Self-Propelled Glide. The majority of games were finished by taking the Stage II villain down to 1-2HP and then defeat Stage III on the next turn.

Anyway, there you have it, this is the first deck I have published, and it has been as enjoyable to write about as it has been to play. Hope you enjoy it. If you give it a go leave a comment and let me know how you got on.

11 comments

Feb 22, 2021 flakbait42 · 14

Insane that this deck isn't getting more attention. I normally hate playing against Ultron, just because he feels like a chore more than a game, but I handled him without much trouble with this deck. Took it through the campaign and handled it with grace, even Zola who I thought would be more trouble. I really enjoy this deck.

Feb 23, 2021 lupercal30 · 975

@flakbait42 Thank you for the praise. Glad you enjoyed the deck. I did find Ultron easier than usual with this deck.

Mar 01, 2021 szuper · 1

Hey, after two games I just realized, that the Inspiring Presence card works only in Hero form. For this reason maybe a Honorary Avenger would be a good idea? I know the point is to avoid being in alter-ego, but anyway. Also even though I played only twice, and the odds therefore are not represantitve enough, but sometimes I had very unfortunate draws like: Call for Aid and two/three resource cards, while basically had nothing to play beside a 1 resource cost card. I know for this situation Lockjaw is in place, but it was also not available. I am wondering, would it worth to cut one resource card for a high cost ally, which could be usefule also in late game. Like: Iron Fist; Spider-Man or the good old Nick Fury, who could help draw more if needed. So maybe cut 1 call for air also?

Mar 01, 2021 lupercal30 · 975

That kind of hands can feel terrible. The odds of drawing 4/7 resource cards (including CfA) in a hand are slim however. I haven’t had this occur to me, but it isn’t impossible. Unless it happens in your opening hand, you always have Carol to draw you into playable options. Inspiring Presence being hero only isn’t particularly a huge problem as you will always be in hero form at some point in your turn. There could be a situation in which you have 4 basic cards and an inspiring presence on top of your deck for the apartment after changing to alter ego. But I would honestly just keep it in hand at the end of the turn, as Carol makes it so valuable.

Nick and Miles are fantastic allies, and Iron Fist wouldn’t be a bad choice, but it can really mess with your aspect card ratio for the deck building restrictions. Personally I couldn’t see myself ever cutting Call for Aid as the deck is too all in on Carol not to see her early or play her exactly when you need to. But I know others have had success without it.

Hope the odds are more in your favour next time.

Mar 02, 2021 szuper · 1

I was reffering to a sitation after a few successful turn, upgrades/allies were on the table already. This way it has a much higher chanche. Anyway the deck is viable, I will do a few more games. Also as I found out, there are other variants, focusing on protection much more (like Unflappable). Why would you have only one draw engine, when you could have two?

Mar 02, 2021 flakbait42 · 14

I could see dropping something for Unflappable. Maybe Clea? I think I find that I use Clea and Night Nurse the least, which is saying a lot because those are both really good cards. I find it a pretty tight deck and I don't think I've run into the problems you're having.

I considered Iron Fist, but two 4-cost allies is too many for me personally (making allowance for Lockjaw, obviously).

Mar 03, 2021 lupercal30 · 975

Night Nurse is the card I would switch out for Unflappable if you want to try it out. My personal issue with unflappable is that on average you are 3 def with Spider-Woman so you aren’t guaranteed to draw from a Defense action. Which then leads you into wanting to cut more cards for def boosts to get unflappable to trigger more. I tend not to defend with Spider-Woman unless it’s a last resort as the 3 atk or thw the following turn is too valuable.

Mar 10, 2021 szuper · 1

After a few more games I also changed my mind regarding Unflappable. In most cases there is a stun or a tough on Spider Woman, so it simply does not work. In the other hand, I tend to def a lot, however 1-2 damage might gets through depending on the villain, and therefore again, the % is not really worth it.

May 13, 2021 takabrash · 1

This deck is an absolute beast- thanks!

Feb 07, 2023 pawel123mage · 1

Hey cool deck. Any deck changes in 2023? Looking to take it to heroic! Ty.

Feb 26, 2023 Xikitins · 1

Incredible powerfull deck! @pawel123mage for sure. Sidearm and command team are very good additions