Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Woman Defeats Expert Campaign

Spider-Woman (SW) is an incredibly strong hero, certainly one of the most powerful that's been printed so far. This is the deck I built and piloted through the RoRS expert campaign to a smashing success. I'll keep this spoiler-free, but suffice it to say that Jessica crushed each scenario handily. (And she can crush scenarios 4 and 5 with no campaign buffs at all, even if Red Skull starts the game on his 2nd scheme!)

This deck is super fun! You have tools to handle every situation, you will very regularly raise your ATK and THW to 4, 5, or 6, and you'll often swing with them multiple times! SW is basically our first 3 THW hero, except she regularly has more than 3, and more than 3 ATK... you'll feel powerful playing this hero. And if that weren't enough, she's casually the first hero to allow you to deck-build with more than 1 aspect. Wow!

Below I'll describe my deck-building choices, a brief guide for playing the deck, and finally some "honorable mentions" that I didn't play, but could have!

BUILDING THE DECK

A note on my aspects: For what it's worth, I do not think this is the strongest possible aspect combo for SW. I put this together... because the pre-con had them? the colors match? it feels good to have attacking and thwarting both well-handled? who's to say? In any case, rest assured that this aspect combo can certainly handle Expert difficulty, if not beyond.

BASIC

Basic cards need to be really really good to get a slot in SW decks. The double-resources are definitely power cards, and I did opt for the classic Endurance and Down Time pairing, although if you wanted to cut those for 2 aspect cards I wouldn't blame you. I will note that Endurance feels especially forgiving in the Expert campaign rules, where your remaining HP at the end of each scenario carries over.

JUSTICE

My justice half is 10 permanents. I thought for awhile about running Clear the Area, but I figured that my native Inconspicuous plus all of my other thwart sources would be more than enough, and they are. Playing permanents makes your deck thinner and more powerful. Thinning is especially important with SW, as your signature pool is full of very powerful non-permanents that you want to draw and play as often as possible.

You want your cost curve to be pretty low in order to more easily play multiple aspect cards each round, so as allies only Quake, Agent Coulson, and Jessica Jones make the cut for me. I run a Counterintelligence to make Coulson extra cost-efficient, besides being a solid card (and a permanent!). Heroic Intuition, Under Surveillance, and Skilled Investigator are all in for basically the same reasons, just being powerful permanents. The real standout for me was Skilled Investigator- there's a very real sense in which a 0-cost blank permanent would be more than playable here, and this card is quite excellent beyond that. If you're playing with friends I'd bring even more copies. (Jessica and Under Surveillance are some of the first things I'd cut.)

A big question for me when building this deck was, despite wanting to keep my cost curve very low, "are 3 copies of Beat Cop too good not to play?" The answer is "yes." There's not much to say about this card that hasn't been said before, having multiples out thins your deck, trivializes risk management in general, and you'll be surprised how painless it is to drop these on the table once you've got a Finesse or two in the mix.

AGGRESSION

Tigra and Spider-Girl are some cheap allies! Jarnbjorn, Combat Training, and Hall of Heroes are excellent permanents! (Seriously Hall of Heroes is a POWER CARD here. Do you want to play all 4 aspects and swing multiple times for 6 atk in a turn? This is how you do that.)

Part of my original idea for this deck involved using Finesse to pay for the trigger of Jarnbjorn. Since it turns out to be quite unclear whether that is an intended interaction, I never used it in this manner and didn't hurt for it. Since your deck isn't excessively full of physical resources, Jarnbjorn becomes a much more flexible slot, although it's still rather playable as a cheap aspect permanent.

The remainder of your Aggression half is a flexible roster of attack events. You can really play whatever cheap events here you like based on the scenario and your preference. I opted for 2 Relentless Assault and 3 Press the Advantage. Relentless Assault is still one of the most efficient aggression cards in the game (and easy to kick with Finesse) and Press the Advantage is a solid include as well. It's easy to draw a card off of it thanks to Spider-Girl and Pheromones, but even if not it's a nice bit of chip damage when you need it.

PLAYING THE DECK

The basic game plan is obvious and simple: in hero mode, play multiple aspect cards a turn (ideally in a manner that directly addresses the situation(s) at hand), and swing your huge ATK and THW (maybe twice or more!).

In the early game prioritize playing permanents in order to set you up for a powerful late game (you can eventually get far, far ahead of the encounter deck in every RoRS scenario). Jessica Drew's Apartment and Finesse are POWER CARDS that you really don't want to skip playing if you can help it. Self-Propelled Glide is powerful as well, but since you've got 3 copies of it you can very easily discard it as a resource very often, especially in the early game. You want to play Beat Cop almost whenever the board state allows you to.

Pheromones is one of the most powerful cards in the whole deck, and probably has the biggest impact on your play patterns. As a general rule I would never ever discard either copy, even taking inefficient turns in order to keep an unused copy in your hand between rounds. The breathing room this card affords you is unreal. Because you have such easy access to it, there's really no reason to ever end in Alter-Ego unless your villain is confused. This card may feel slightly less impactful in multiplayer but it's still incredibly powerful, easy access to Confusion especially is very very nice to have whenever you can get it.

I actually almost never played Captain Marvel from hand because she is so expensive and I therefore had better plays very often. She's a strong card but don't lose sight of how efficient playing multiple cheap aspect cards can be with this hero.

Your obligation and nemesis sets are each complete pushovers, usually barely even a speed bump.

Keep track of what cards and abilities you can use in hero-only and vice-versa. your stats only increase when you're in hero, and most of your events are hero-only, as well as triggering Finesse and Skilled Investigator. Drawing off of Jessica Drew's Apartment and Hall of Heroes only happens in alter-ego, so only trigger them on turns when you're ending in alter-ego if you have something you can play with the cards you draw (namely, any of your permanents). Drawing on turns when you start in Alter-Ego, then flipping and doing work, is of course amazing and I highly recommend it!

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

I kept this decklist true to what I beat the campaign with, but honestly Hulk is a solid include, over Tigra or Jarnbjorn or an event. He's solid as a cheap meat shield (often tanking 2 attacks). I'd never blindly activate him unless you've peeked with Jessica Drew and can do so safely.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes - this card is insane, and playing it with SW (and Leadership) is probably the most broken she can get. This deck already has 3 avengers in it, 4 if you include Hulk, so Earth's Mightiest Heroes is beyond playable, i regret not slotting it in (not that I was hurting for it...).

I would include 1 Counterattack in non-campaign play. It's a nice finisher, makes Agent Coulson slightly more efficient, and is a cheap aspect permanent. I only didn't include it because the expert campaign rules incentivize you to end with full HP.

You wouldn't be going wrong with a Martial Prowess (especially if you run some 1+ cost attack events, like me) or 1-2 Battle Fury either. They're powerful permanents and the later gives you yet another way to activate SW multiple times.

Like I mentioned you can play a handful of different attack events if you want. The free Get Over Here! is a pretty solid include if it turns out that Finesse can pay for Jarnbjorn triggers. Toe to Toe and Piercing Strike are solid contenders here as well. (I didn't include Toe to Toe for the same reason as Counterattack, it feels very easy to slot a few in for non-campaign play)

If you hate the idea of the 3 Beat Cop, you can play Clear the Area in that slot pretty easily.

THE END

Thanks for checking out this very long write-up! Let me know if there's anything you agree or disagree with, and tell me about your own SW brewing! Next I'll be trying to break the game with a full Earth's Mightiest Heroes abuse version. You can find me on Discord if you have any questions or suggestions, or especially if you're curious about any campaign-specific notes I didn't mention here.

Peace!