Cheesemaster (Heroic Taskmaster Solo)

The goal of this deck is to unfairly maximise the use of captive allies to kick Taskmaster's butt. It's probably not perfect but it makes Standard Heroic 1 pretty trivial. Expert Heroic 1 and Standard 1 Heroic 2 are doable but luck-reliant.

KEY POINTS

• One Way or Another is where all cheese is born. It allows you to pull Captured by Hydra from the encounter deck to get those precious 0-cost allies, and be rewarded for it by drawing three cards. If you don't have it in your hand : hard mulligan. If you have two or three : hold on to the extras if you can. You're in a race to get all schemes out before they potentially get discarded as boost cards, so don't hold on to any other card. The more allies you free in your first encounter deck pass, the easier everything will be. Luckily, Heroic difficulty increases the chances that you will draw these organically. When you have freed all allies, Taskmaster's Training Camp is still a good target for OWOA since you can just thwart it away immediately with Jessica.

• Your ideal first turn will consist of playing One Way or Another, putting Captured by Hydra in play, thwarting Hydra Patrol, searching for a Hydra Regular and either defeat the minion or the scheme depending on your hand.

• When Captured by Hydra is out, your best option is generally defeating it, if able, unless you're at direct risk of a loss. It gives you an instant free ally and gets the deck into a faster gear.

• Make the Call adds a extra layer of cheese as you can just bring 0-cost allies back from your discard pile for 1ER. You can't use the kicker, but it's still a "free" ally with awesome stats. Sometimes it's a good move to let your ally die from consequential damage and bring them back immediately, especially White Tiger and Elektra since they both bring the big numbers.

• Regroup is more situational. It's for those times when you're anticipating multiple attacks from minions (or extra encounter cards). Let your allies be damage sponges, and bring them all back for free on the next turn to get rid of the minions. At this point the smell of cheese becomes overpowering.

• Eros, Maria Hill and Stinger are there to get punched in the face and not much else.

• Deft Focus will break even easily if you can play it early. An earlier versions of the deck included Quincarrier instead, to pay for kickers, but it never got any play time.

• Some identity cards are useless in this context. Captain Marvel is useful for kickers only. Venom Blast shouldn't get too much use either.

• When you're out of cheese, you can play regular Jessica stuff, increasing your stats and readying. Finesse helps with your economy and should be played early enough. It will facilitate playing the excellent Pheromones which gives you a lot of extra space, allowing you to flip when necessary. Readying Jessica will allow the occasional big numbers, but this deck is not specifically optimized for it.

• After phase 1 of the villain's turn, it should be safe to take the threat rather than the damage. You don't want to go to AE unless Taskmaster is confused or you really need to heal. Contaminant Immunity will help with durability.

• Taskmaster will activate a lot in Heroic 1, as you will often be facing three encounter cards (damn you, Hydra Soldier!). Make sure you have enough chumps available.

• He will also pile up ATK bonuses quickly. I wouldn't mind the attachments, except maybe Taskmaster's Shield because Retaliate will be irritating. Consider getting rid of it if comes out early.

• Photographic Reflexes and Hydra Soldier always seem to come out at the worst time. It can't be helped. Prayer doesn't work, I've tried.