By Chris Renshaw

To be honest...

I was a little nervous/excited to break out the Black Widow deck. Not only because she was the first pack to come out since the pandemic put everything on lockdown, but also because she was the first deck I did a preview of. Now I get the chance to look at the preview and see what I got right and what I got wrong in that preview (which reminds me, I still need to do previews of the Rise of Red Skull campaign box & the just announced Kang scenario pack).

Also, it’s going to be hard to keep this in until later so I’ll just TL;DR right now: I LOVE THIS DECK. I’ve only played it once and she is already a top contender for one of my favorite heroes. 

Playing both sides…

One thing I really enjoy about Black Widow is that both of her abilities are really helpful, unlike some I’ve recently played. Of course you’d want to be on the hero side so that when the preparation cards activate you can deal some damage to the enemies. However, whenever you are hurting and need to flip back and heal/avoid attacks, her Mission Prep ability helps you get some more cards that you can set up for future turns.

Let’s talk about some of those prep cards. I had assumed in the preview that Widow’s Bite would be one of my favorite prep cards, but as I stated before: the Rhino scenario is not really “minion heavy” when you play solo. In fact I had 2 widow’s bites sitting out waiting to trigger for several turns before they actually got used. Also, I had thought that Counterintelligence would be not as good because it was a one off card...Not. True. I didn’t realize how easy it would be to get prep cards out of the discard pile so I ALWAYS made sure to have one of these babies on tap when it came time for the villain turn.

NOPE!

That brings me to the core of why I love this character: she feels like the “NOPE” card in Exploding Kittens, just one big counter to the villain. If you can get enough prep cards out, then when the villain turn comes, you have complete control. You get to decide what triggers and what gets cancelled based on what is going to be more beneficial to you. And Black Widow’s Gauntlets and Safe House #29 really helps with this. For future plays, I will always mulligan my hand unless I get at least one of these cards in my opening hand, for it really helps get that cancelling engine going.

Once you have two gauntlets out, Counterintelligence now costs you zero to play and the Safe House means that once it goes off, you can flip back and get it whenever you need it. Plus, you have a built in combo because once you play the card you just grabbed, you’ll get a free card from the Mission Prep ability.

Synth-Suit and Dance of Death were two cards that I didn’t really take advantage of in my Rhino Solo play, but I could see them being really helpful in multiplayer. Especially if you have a couple of players with Minions, Dance of Death could potentially help clear up some players and allow them to go hog wild on the boss. Synth-Suit allows you to step in and defend without worrying about it hogging up your turn by being exhausted.

You’re Never Alone

Confession: a lot of times, I don’t fully utilize allies as much as I could. Many times, due to their high cost, I’ll use them as resources to play more hero-specific cards. I justify this by saying those hero cards are more helpful in the moment. Black Widow got around this problem - mainly because when I drew Winter Soldier I had 4 prep cards in play, making him free to play. With a health of 4, it meant I could get some solid attacks or thwarting in before he goes away. Coulson helps with thwarting as well, plus gives you the bonus of helping you get more prep cards back from the discard (or one you haven’t seen yet). I’m still curious if prep cards are going to be a bigger deal for other heroes, as I couldn’t see putting Coulson in a non-Black Widow deck.

Once again, I didn’t draw my obligation in this solo game, but given all the ways that prep cards can get pulled out of the discard pile I’m not concerned about this one at all. I’d be hard pressed to not just throw away a card and then pull it back out instead of having to be exhausted. We’ll see how this works out when I play her in multiplayer.

Conclusion

Like I said up front, I LOVE this character. I’m starting to think that I am more of a Justice player as this deck and my Iron Man/Justice deck are going to be my go-to decks right now. Probably due to all the setting up and letting the engine go when you have it just the way you want it. However, each deck still gives a very different way of playing that role, which ties into the awesome replay value of this game. Have you had a chance to play Black Widow in multiplayer? Let me know how your experience has differed from mine in the comments below, or on Twitter / Facebook.