La Danse Macabre

Way back, I created this deck envisioning Natasha fighting and grappling with the villain in a hand-to-hand fight. Ultimately Natasha turns the tables and is untouchable. That deck was pretty soon after Natasha was released, and it's dated. But now felt like a perfect opportunity to revisit, with new cards to suit the theme.

Whenever I play Natasha, I always want to prioritize Attacrobatics, Black Widow's Gauntlet, and Safe House #29. If any of them show up in your opening draw, keep them over anything else. What you mulligan for after that can be scenario dependent. Some combination of Attacrobatics, Target Acquired, and Grappling Hook give you a pretty safe board to deal with anything.

But also, for this deck, I'm looking for the defensive aids as quickly as possible. I toss away Taunt early unless I've played Attacrobatics, or something cheap like Armored Vest to make sure the attack the villain is gonna throw at me isn't going to hit hard. An early Taunt can definitely help get you setup, but I don't make it a priority.

Once you get the Preps coming, it's easy to be untouchable. With Judoka Skill , you can defend without having a defense event in your hand, because it basically modifies the attack interaction the same way as your defense events. Giving the villain -2 ATK will also help if you've spent your Attacrobatics and are facing extra activations.

What hurts the most is seeing a villain not turn up any Boost icons for Attacrobatics, or abilities to cancel with Target Acquired. In these instances, if you're engaged with a minion, use your Defensive Stance to prevent damage from that attack, allowing you to ready with the Suit. I never use Defensive Stance on villain attacks, unless it's super early in the game and that was the only Prep in my opening hand.

Once you're in the groove, you can easily dominate, defending and dealing damage back with all her Preps and Electrostatic Armor, and a convenient stun here or there with Never Back Down, 2 threat off the main scheme with Hard to Ignore, and a card draw with Unflappable.

In the hero phase, throw Taunt at the villain to trigger even more Preps, draw a bunch of cards, deal return damage, and then pay for things like Dance of Death. With that kind of card draw from Taunt and Espionage, you'll be moving through the deck swiftly.

In multiplayer, you can rely on others to thwart, but in solo, it can be an up-hill battle against some scenarios. Hard to Ignore helps you mitigate threat on the main scheme, but Advance can still be an L, so Grappling Hook that thing. Covert Ops is the only real answer for a side scheme. I use Bucky in this deck solely for his 2 THW, nothing else. You don't need him to chump block, and you don't need him to kill minions. If it's solo, his only job is THW.

Check out this game against Expert Magog!