Expert Campaign Multiplayer Perspective: This card's best usage is in a 3-4 player game where the group is bringing a considerable amount of player side-schemes. Generally, most player side-schemes don't make it to the table at my sessions due to the amount of investment it takes to clear them. At best, 1 or 2 hit the board early-game and then players have to start spending resources building their own boards and managing the regular problems that the scenario throws at you. Containment Strategy allows your team to load the board with player side-schemes and all but guarantees they are defeated at minimal cost. It changes the outlook from "I'll play this side-scheme and hope the team has enough wiggle room to get the pay-off" to "I'll play this side-scheme and I will 100 percent be getting 20 thwart, 20 damage, a specialization, or 4 free supports for 1-cost".

Now just because this card's best usage is player side schemes doesn't mean that's the only situation its worth playing in. In multiplayer, side-schemes are far more common due to the amount of encounter cards drawn each turn and their threat values are fairly high. There will be many situations where your team doesn't have an efficient way to deal with them. Enter Containment Strategy. Some people will fall into the trap of thinking that because this card can single-handedly deal with a scheme over several turns, that's what has to happen. In reality this card only needs to remove 2 threat to put it on par with For Justice and Crisis Averted from a thw/resource standpoint. Containment Strategy is especially useful when needing an extra chip to get rid of a Hazard Icon on a scheme. When paired with cards like Indomitable and Desperate Defense, Containment Strategy all but guarantees the table won't be seeing an extra encounter card. An encounter cancel for 1 cost is on par with Dr. Strange's Protective Ward.

This card is quite strong and should see play in many perfect defense style decks at at least 1 copy, but Cable deserves a special shout out. Askani'Son already incentives Cable to play defensively and the defense archetype has some inherent synergy with Cable due to cards like Desperate Defense having energy resource or cards like Back-Flip/Side-Step requiring energy resources for their full effects. Cable can run all of the player side schemes for this card to attach to and this card is an Upgrade. Upgrades and Events are extensions of a player's identity and thus the removal from Containment Strategy is treated as Cable's removal regardless of who defends. Cable's ready ability is once per phase so Containment Strategy is another method of triggering Cable's ready and can help with consistently clearing Technovirus Purge turn 1.

Wasp's ability to ignore guard and patrol and crisis icons is really niche, but it actually saved me in a game once. But the only reason I put her in the deck in the first place was because I was building a Champions theme deck - outside of that, I would never consider her ability to be worth it when I could play a more impactful card, unless I know I'm going to have trouble with guard/patrol/crisis against the villain I choose to play against.

I think one thing that would increase this card in value is if it had a resource instead of a resource, to synergize with the all-important Champion ally Moon Girl. That would definitely make me consider playing Wasp more, but it wouldn't push her into being an ally I'm enthusiastic about playing.

Update: This might be a hot take, but I actually think this ally would still be fair if it didn't have its trait restriction. If you look at what they did with Sunfire a few years after they printed Wasp, it looks like they're not afraid to put niche but potentially villain-breaking effects on allies and not restrict them by trait. Not only that, but as of this writing there are only four Champion heroes, and none of them seem like they're hurting for an ally that can ignore guard/patrol/crisis, as they all encourage you to play events to solve your problems. But I'll be happy to be proven wrong on this point.

Multiplayer Perspective: I’ve been stuck debating how good this card is since its release. The most common arguments for it are Hero synergies (Spiderman, Spiderham, Drax) and enabling the usage of defense cards on your own turn. These are good reasons to use the card but I think this card’s true strength lies in accelerating build-out.

The perfect defense strategy revolves around flooding your board with lots of key upgrades that trigger effects on the villain’s turn (Electrostatic armor, Dauntless, Hard to Ignore). These upgrades are incredibly cheap and efficient but it can take a full deck cycle to get them all out on board. Taunt helps you hit them faster via drawing 3 cards and giving you a reason to flip down. Flipping down will give you access to even more resources accelerating build-out further. Using this play style I’d argue Taunt’s synergy extends beyond the select few hero abilities, to any hero with impactful Upgrades, Supports, and Alter-Ego abilities.

I often find myself struggling to play this card amidst all the flashier moves I could make. That being said there definitely is a consistent value that this card offers. The most ideal usage of this card is preventing a complete miss with Hex Bolt. If you land a “Remove 2 Threat” while there is no threat you can modify that effect to suit your needs. Really the ability to modify which effects go off at all is great, but preventing a miss is the best. On turns where you know you won’t have a Hex Bolt to play the next best application is damage mitigation. If you are playing multiplayer (and if solo-play will allow) Scarlet Witch likes to flip down. Her ability allows you to discard 2 to draw 2 which is super useful for optimizing turns and hitting your priority cards. Having access to damage mitigation that doesn’t require exhausting to defend encourages you to face tank hits and flip more frequently. All in all Scarlet Witch’s Crest is a solid card that you should feel good about getting out.

This is one of the few cards in the game that has real game-breaking potential. This is due to the fact that from a value perspective allies as a card type outclass every other card type in the game, and this card allows you to cheat in allies ignoring their cost. Due to this you are going to want to deck-build around high cost or high impact allies such as: Giant Man, Beta Ray Bill, Nick Fury to name a few.

Let’s evaluate those allies based on the best things they can do, ignoring their ability to block (except for Nick). If Summoning Spell hits Giant Man you’ve spent 2 for 8 damage and 4 thwart. If you hit Nick you’ve spent 2 to draw 3, thwart 2, and block. If you hit Beta Ray Bill you’ve spent 2 for 12 damage and 8 potential threat removal. Swinging Web Kick is considered to be a standard for damage comparison at 3-cost 8 damage. Not particularly impressive compared to what allies can do.

This card is trait-locked and limited to 1 copy as an attempt to gate some of its power, but 3 out of the 4 Mystic Heroes all have methods of fishing this card back out of the discard pile: Sanctum, Quantum Magic, and Magik’s alter ego ability.

During deck piloting you will want to be actively tracking what allies are left in your deck, but that’s a small chore for the results this card yields. Assuming you’ve deck built correctly, playing this card will be the best thing you can do almost every turn.