I have seen it mentioned a few times that people were trying to figure out which 1/3/5/7 Basic cards they were going to include in their Spider-Woman decks, since Double Agent lets you build with two different Aspects, but they have to have an equal number of cards. Thus most discussion seemed to be about including 12/10/8/6 of each of the chosen Aspects when building to 40 cards.

A thought just occurred to me, though: I wonder if we'll end up building 41-card decks for her more often? Certainly more often than for other Heroes, I think. Granted there are plenty of good Basic cards to include in just about any deck, but you could also choose 13 cards each of two Aspects and arrive at 41 cards without any Basics. For example, you could run two copies both "Power of..." instead of having the three Basic Resources (Energy, Genius, Strength) and arrive at a similar place Resource-wise, but still get an extra Aspect card of each (11 Aspect + 2 "Power of" x2, vs 10 Aspect x2 + 3 Basic Resources).

Also, I wanted to go ahead and put a thread together for my Discussion Threads idea, and ahead of The Rise of Red Skull. So here we are. What do you think?

41 is possible and the ratios of drawing X card(s) at certain times are barely different from 40. That said, I consider the starting point Basics for most decks to be Energy/Genius/Strength, 1x Avengers Mansion, and 1x Helicarrier so that's five cards right there. At five Basics you get 20 Aspect cards to play around with, of which ten of each seems solid. As intrigued as I am by her deck-building possibilities, I'm waiting to get my hands on the product so I know what all her Hero cards and pre-constructed deck comes with before I dig into customizing. I greatly enjoy deck-building and try to keep a deck for every Hero pre-built so she's probably going to start off as my home for janky combos between Aspects using cards that would otherwise mostly sit in the pile of extras (Enraged + Med Team? Sign me up!). First Aid and Honorary Avenger are the main Basics that jump out at me as being useful enough in the right builds to justify running fewer Aspect cards in an Ally-focused build. Nick Fury and Mockingbird are great but might not make the cut there as neither of them are the kind of Ally that needs to stick around for best value.

The "Power of" cards probably don't find a home in my Spider-Woman build since the targets to provide double resources will be noticeably fewer than in other decks. Assuming a 10/10 split in her, do I really need to have a pair of "Power of" cards for the 10 (8 plain Aspect cards + 2 of her Hero/Aspect) other cards of that Aspect in the deck? If I'm running a lot of expensive stuff in an Aspect then I'll consider one or two of the "Power of" for that Aspect but I highly doubt I'll ever play enough expensive stuff to justify E/G/S and four "Power of" cards. Seven cards that only provide resources can make for some ugly hands when too many of them show up together, which is why I usually cut the "Power of" cards from resource-rich decks like Black Panther and Captain Marvel. I believe we still have yet to see if Jessica has a unique resource card along those lines and I wouldn't be surprised to see if she has her own version of a "Power of" that makes double resources for any Aspect card. Even if my hunch is a bust, we probably don't want more than one copy each of two different "Power of" cards unless the deck also really wants Wild resources to fuel cards like For Justice and Relentless Assault.

Would a power of card used for payment (eg. used as a wild) be consider as playing that aspect card?

Thank you.

1 hour ago, vmoss said:

Would a power of card used for payment (eg. used as a wild) be consider as playing that aspect card?

Thank you.

Pretty sure it isn't.

Checked the rule Reference:
"Playing a card involves paying the card’s cost and placing the card in the play area."

You're not paying the cost of the cards you use for payment so they are not played, merely used.

3 hours ago, BCumming said:

41 is possible and the ratios of drawing X card(s) at certain times are barely different from 40. That said, I consider the starting point Basics for most decks to be Energy/Genius/Strength, 1x Avengers Mansion, and 1x Helicarrier so that's five cards right there. At five Basics you get 20 Aspect cards to play around with, of which ten of each seems solid. As intrigued as I am by her deck-building possibilities, I'm waiting to get my hands on the product so I know what all her Hero cards and pre-constructed deck comes with before I dig into customizing. I greatly enjoy deck-building and try to keep a deck for every Hero pre-built so she's probably going to start off as my home for janky combos between Aspects using cards that would otherwise mostly sit in the pile of extras (Enraged + Med Team? Sign me up!). First Aid and Honorary Avenger are the main Basics that jump out at me as being useful enough in the right builds to justify running fewer Aspect cards in an Ally-focused build. Nick Fury and Mockingbird are great but might not make the cut there as neither of them are the kind of Ally that needs to stick around for best value.

The "Power of" cards probably don't find a home in my Spider-Woman build since the targets to provide double resources will be noticeably fewer than in other decks. Assuming a 10/10 split in her, do I really need to have a pair of "Power of" cards for the 10 (8 plain Aspect cards + 2 of her Hero/Aspect) other cards of that Aspect in the deck? If I'm running a lot of expensive stuff in an Aspect then I'll consider one or two of the "Power of" for that Aspect but I highly doubt I'll ever play enough expensive stuff to justify E/G/S and four "Power of" cards. Seven cards that only provide resources can make for some ugly hands when too many of them show up together, which is why I usually cut the "Power of" cards from resource-rich decks like Black Panther and Captain Marvel. I believe we still have yet to see if Jessica has a unique resource card along those lines and I wouldn't be surprised to see if she has her own version of a "Power of" that makes double resources for any Aspect card. Even if my hunch is a bust, we probably don't want more than one copy each of two different "Power of" cards unless the deck also really wants Wild resources to fuel cards like For Justice and Relentless Assault.

You're right about these being other Basics that are normal to include (I said as much), I was just kinda brainstorming 41-card possibilities. And I think the original idea was 1x each "Power of", but I ended up writing 2x for some reason. But depending on other resources, if she has any, and how cheap you can keep her non-signature cards (which are pretty much all cheap), it might not be unreasonable to play 3 different Aspects on a lot of your turns.

19 hours ago, ObiWonka said:

You're right about these being other Basics that are normal to include (I said as much), I was just kinda brainstorming 41-card possibilities. And I think the original idea was 1x each "Power of", but I ended up writing 2x for some reason. But depending on other resources, if she has any, and how cheap you can keep her non-signature cards (which are pretty much all cheap), it might not be unreasonable to play 3 different Aspects on a lot of your turns.

If maximizing her stats is your primary objective, Aggression and Protection seem to have the most cheap cards to play but many of Protection's would be in the villain phase so you'd really only get the DEF benefit. Leadership has some good cheap ones but they're mostly contingent on having allies in play, and the cheap allies aren't sturdy enough to take more than one hit and stick around. IMO that leaves Justice as the best pair with Aggression for this strategy.

Aggression gives you Skilled Strike, Press the Advantage (RotRS), Chase Them Down, Toe to Toe, and Jarnbjorn as main options. Maybe 1-2 each of Mean Swing, Battle Fury (a readying effect), Counterattack, and Martial Prowess to round things out. You'd likely pick the most generally-useful cards here since Justice's cheap stuff is mostly conditional to play or has other limitations. Interrogation Room, Followed, Spycraft, and Skilled Investigator (RotRS) are the 0-1 cost cards you can run and I wouldn't put more than 1-2 copies of any in my deck so this is where I start looking at more 2-cost cards. Quake, Heroic Intuition, For Justice, Surveillance Team, Counterintelligence, and Under Surveillance would mostly be 1-of in my deck except for For Justice. I haven't seen all the details for the other new Aggression and Justice Events she comes with so there's more to think about when we get that information but I think this is a pretty good place to start. For a base this cheap, I wouldn't use "Power of" cards at all and that'll give the deck more room for Aspect cards that trigger her buff. One certainly could play three different Aspect cards on good turns but that isn't likely to be the norm and only 4/40 (10%) of your deck will be off-Aspects to give you that potential +3 buff all around. Depending on how easy it is to ready her, focusing on buffing might not be the best bang for your buck. Honestly, that's why I'm more interested the the cross-Aspect combos she's capable of. There's merit in analyzing all possibilities so I hope this is the sort of fruitful discussion you're looking for.

I think 41 cards is fine. I made up a mock up deck and Nick Fury was the only Basic card I couldn't live without, so I just made a 41 card deck. It will not made a noticeable difference.

I am waiting for the whole set revealed before going super in depth but the basic gist of the pairings is this.

Aggression/Justice: Versatile but few combos, event based.

Aggression/Protection: Most aggressive, cheap cards for ability, event based

Aggression/Leadership: Combo based deck using allies and cheap Leadership events. Mixed event/ally based

Justice/Protection: Very control heavy. Can go event or ally focused.

Justice/Leadership: Can operate out of AE well, ally based, very strong thwarting.

Leadership/Protection: ally based deck using med team and replaying Iron Fist a lot.

I forgot that rapid response Iron Fist is a combination that can happen. xD

Sigh, I really wish Spider-Woman didn't remind me of Lola Hayes from the Arkham Horror LCG. The multiple roles seemed like a lot of fun at first. Than I realized she often ended up being useless in many situations and was more of a hinderance.

Spider-Woman seems like a lot better version of Lola but it is hard for me to shake those thoughts.

I'm curious what her preconstructed deck will look like. I don't think I heard anything about which aspects she or Hawkeye will be using. I've only seen a handful of spoilers.

I'll probably go with Aggression and Justice when try her out. Really like the idea of being able to eliminate enemies while lowering threat.

45 minutes ago, TechnoGolem said:

Sigh, I really wish Spider-Woman didn't remind me of Lola Hayes from the Arkham Horror LCG. The multiple roles seemed like a lot of fun at first. Than I realized she often ended up being useless in many situations and was more of a hinderance.

Spider-Woman seems like a lot better version of Lola but it is hard for me to shake those thoughts.

I'm curious what her preconstructed deck will look like. I don't think I heard anything about which aspects she or Hawkeye will be using. I've only seen a handful of spoilers.

I'll probably go with Aggression and Justice when try her out. Really like the idea of being able to eliminate enemies while lowering threat.

All her stuff has been spoiled as of this evening so at the risk of ruining a tiny bit of the surprise, I think you'll enjoy her pre-constructed deck.

As someone who's never played Arkham Horror, what made Lola not work out?

On 8/31/2020 at 4:52 AM, BCumming said:

I believe we still have yet to see if Jessica has a unique resource card along those lines and I wouldn't be surprised to see if she has her own version of a "Power of" that makes double resources for any Aspect card. Even if my hunch is a bust, we probably don't want more than one copy each of two different "Power of" cards unless the deck also really wants Wild resources to fuel cards like For Justice and Relentless Assault.

Well you weren’t far off, with her essentially having 2x Eye of Agamotto, but only usable on aspect cards. So I can see some big turns, and also she’ll consistently get the kicker on cards which want you to pay with a specific resource type.

3 hours ago, BCumming said:

All her stuff has been spoiled as of this evening so at the risk of ruining a tiny bit of the surprise, I think you'll enjoy her pre-constructed deck.

As someone who's never played Arkham Horror, what made Lola not work out?

She has to take 7 cards from 3 different roles (Arkham's version of aspects) and she can only play neutral cards and cards from a chosen role; she can change her chosen role once per turn. So I'm assuming it's getting stuck with bad hands where you want to play cards from multiple roles.

However, I don't think they're really comparable; Spider-Woman's restrictions are purely deck side, once you're playing her you can play anything freely; the only real conflict you might have is being more limited in playing the 'Power of' cards, but that's something that can be addressed with deckbuilding (e.g. not playing them, or running a high cost aspect with low cost support).

Anyway, seeing Spider-Woman's kit, she's honestly kind of ridiculous. She's got pretty much everything; damage, threat removal, the ability to generate all three status effects, economy and readying. All of her cards are pretty cheap. She'll pretty much always have at least 2/2/2 stats, often 3/3/3. And that's before even getting into her having access to two different aspects! Maybe she doesn't play as well as she looks, but right now it seems like she's going straight to the top of the class.

23 hours ago, BCumming said:

All her stuff has been spoiled as of this evening so at the risk of ruining a tiny bit of the surprise, I think you'll enjoy her pre-constructed deck.

As someone who's never played Arkham Horror, what made Lola not work out?

Not 100% positive on the details since I'm going by memory.

You would build her deck using 3 roles (think aspects). You had to have 7 cards from each role.

During your turn you pick a roll and can only play cards from that. You can spend one of your few actions to change your role.

On paper she was very versatile but in play she was often extremely limited in what she could do.

Her base stats were average across the board. In multiplayer another player word normally do a vastly superior job at anything you were trying to do.

She was an interesting concept but only seemed to make the game harder.

Okay, so Lola and Jessica are similar in broad strokes while Jessica wins functionality hands-down. Guessing roles in Arkham are more strict than they are in Champions? I like how Justice decks can still sport a few Aspect attacks and contribute that way while Aggression can help out a bit with threat management. Leadership obviously does both well anyway while Protection can't do much to help with threat in-Aspect but the very nature of it leads to less scheming and has a few ways to deal damage.

Neat to see SW's got her own pseudo-Eye, and a pair of them at that. Hawkeye will be nice to have but Jessica looks a lot more fun to build and play with!

In this game, Jack of all Trades do better than specialized characters.

In an event based, low cost deck, SpW can get 3/3/3 pretty consistently unless she played Captain Marvel or something.

And once set up, 4/4/4 or 3/3/3 + ready isnt hard (along with any permanent stat buffs she may have).

I'm kinda worried that Spider-Woman is going to be another Cap/Doc Strange level character.

My presumption was that the double aspect gimmick would be really fun because not only can you create cool combos of cards, but because you have to include even amounts of each aspect and probably want some basics, you have a really tight selection to make (say, 8-10 cards per Aspect) and that would make for tight deckbuilding tradeoffs.

I think that'll still be the case, but seeing how good and versatile her 15 cards are, I think most of those 'tough' choices won't be tough in practice.

On 9/2/2020 at 2:06 PM, Deadwolf said:

In this game, Jack of all Trades do better than specialized characters.

I think that really depends on player count. Solo, or even two players, it's good to be able to do a bit of everything. But with three or four, specialized characters can really shine, because you don't have to worry about trying to do something that your deck doesn't do well.

2 hours ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I think that really depends on player count. Solo, or even two players, it's good to be able to do a bit of everything. But with three or four, specialized characters can really shine, because you don't have to worry about trying to do something that your deck doesn't do well.

I think the major issue for 'specialists' is that they aren't quite good enough at their specialisation compared to more generalist characters. E.g. Thor is a 'damage guy'. He has a big damage card (Hammer Throw), but it's basically in line with other characters. e.g. Spidey has similar damage, Cap gets a weaker version but it's got a stun, Spider-Woman gets a weaker version but it's cheaper, Strange gets a weaker version with a random bonus. So in a lot of cases, the generalist can do 'almost' as well as the specialist, while having other options. Granted, expect we will see some rebalancing to address this; possibly bigger numbers but also just giving them more copies of cards etc would go a long way to making them stand out.

And just to clarify, when I say specialist I'm still talking about a fairly general 'role' (e.g. damage dealer, thwarter, defensive) rather than a more specific niche (e.g. Thor having a AOE/anti minion niche).

Played a few solo games with the pre cons after getting the box last night. Jessica is crazy good as expected. First turn in the first game was playing three aspect cards for an attack of four. Basically never got less than +two to her stats. The last game I finished out due to drawing two of the Self Propelled Glide's and still being able to play two aspect cards; she already had Combat Training in play for twelve damage. Pheromones is just ridiculous, at least in solo.

And that's the precon that basically just wants to punch/thwart, rather than a deck that actually really tries to take advantage of her double aspects.

2 hours ago, Abyss said:

Played a few solo games with the pre cons after getting the box last night. Jessica is crazy good as expected. First turn in the first game was playing three aspect cards for an attack of four. Basically never got less than +two to her stats. The last game I finished out due to drawing two of the Self Propelled Glide's and still being able to play two aspect cards; she already had Combat Training in play for twelve damage. Pheromones is just ridiculous, at least in solo.

And that's the precon that basically just wants to punch/thwart, rather than a deck that actually really tries to take advantage of her double aspects.

I think both her and Hawkeye can scew things a bit in true solo, as they both have a reasonable damage output and good ability to dish out control effects like conditions. I could certainly see something similar to the Stun lock Captain America deck that was popular for solo when he card out being a thing.

Ive mostly been playing them 2-handed though where stunning the villain frequently only gets you so far, but they’ve both proved very effective even with the pre Con decks.