Team Covenant · 5187
After exploring the depths of double Leadership to finally overtake Rhino Heroic 3, we needed a palate cleanser from our standard 'control' strategy centered around Leadership and Justice. We decided we really wanted to try to make Aggression and Protection work and after our first attempt against Wrecking Crew Heroic, Steven was fascinated with building a viable Thor deck. So, I started looking for heroes that could pair with Protection to best facilitate Thor's Aggression game.
Having played Thor during our first session against Wrecking Crew, I knew one of the biggest downsides was his low hand size and the restrictions that come with it. He's capable of having big damage turns, but he rarely has the resources to put allies into play. This often leads to turns where he has to decide between blocking to have enough health remaining to stay in hero mode or take a big hit from the villain, forcing him back down to Odinson.
My search led me back to one of my favorite, early hero-aspect pairings, Spider-Man Protection. Out of the core box, I was surprised at how much fun I had with this pairing. With Spider-Man drawing a card every time he is attacked and his natural defense of 3, he's easily one of the best Protection heroes in the game.
With our focus on heroic during the past few months, it had been a while since I had looked at building Spider-Man Protection (or really, anything Protection). You can imagine my excitement when I really looked at Desperate Defense and Unflappable for the first time! These cards, combined with new allies like Clea and Iron Fist, took what I already thought was a good deck to an entirely new level.
In Heroic, I always gained even more appreciation for a card I always generally liked - Aunt May. When you're playing standard mode, it's possible his natural defense paired with the ability to recover or play Protection cards to heal is enough to make Aunt May overkill. In Heroic though, you're going to take damage and you're probably going to take more attacks than your allies can block. This turns Aunt May into one of the best, if not the best, cards in the game.
The value in the card is quickly revealed if we compare it to a card like Down Time, which grants an alter-ego +2 Recovery. For the same cost, she allows you to drop down to alter-ego (while you're already exhausted) and heal 4-damage. On the subsequent turn, she allows you to recover 4-damage again without exhausting and then you can flip back into Spidey mode already ready.
If any card cost 1-resource read 'Heal 8 damage from an alter-ego', it would be in every deck it possibly could be. Down Time itself would only heal you for the same amount of damage if you spent 4 activations exhausting to recover. All that to say, this is probably the most important card in the deck. When you see this card, play it. If anything would discard it and you can stop it, stop it.
It can be unintuitive at first, as this deck will often play out a lot of cards during the villain phase. Paired with Aggression, this is even more unintuitive because it can feel like each player is playing on a different side of the fence. If you're interested in seeing the deck in action, you can watch this deck (with Steven's Thor deck) against Wrecking Crew Heroic on this video. I linked the video to the start of our last game against Wrecking Crew.