When I left off yesterday, I’d finished tweaking darctrunks’s original character curve. The changes weren’t huge ones, but rather a focusing of the deck in the early turns to give us a solid base on which to build the more diverse, Mobilize-enabled higher end of the curve. Higher up, the changes were more a question of tweaking and trying to work around uniqueness while ensuring that we have suitable characters at each point on the curve for as many situations as possible.

Today, I’m going to look at the resources available to the deck and try to find the best balance, taking into account the current Golden Age metagame.

Search Cards

First things first: four copies of Mobilize. Since I have been building around it so far, it would be a little careless to forget to include it!

When it comes to secondary options for either direct search or card filtering, I see a few possibilities. The first is Straight to the Grave, provided we run a sufficient amount of KO’d pile recursion. The second is Worthington Industries for card filtering that is usable each turn. I’m going to run more copies of it than the one included in the original list. While it’s tempting to run fewer copies with Archangel to fetch them, this doesn’t do as much for your chances of hitting Worthington as you might hope. With four copies of Archangel and one copy of Worthington Industries, we’re actually less likely to hit Worthington by turn 3 than we are if we simply run four copies of Worthington Industries, and the same is true of every subsequent turn. The way the numbers work out, the difference between running three copies of Worthington and four essentially breaks down to missing or hitting one game in every ten. Three copies give us a 42% chance to hit by turn 3 and four copies give us 52%. By turn 4, those numbers are approximately 50% and 60%. The decision, therefore, is whether we value that extra consistency boost enough to dedicate a card slot to it.

Other cards like Time Breach, Weapon of Choice, and Secret Origins all have problems serious enough to overcome their usefulness. Time Breach can effectively search only for our 3-drop, and even then at the cost of an exhausted 2-drop and a discard. Weapon of Choice not only has a painful double-discard cost, but it is also incapable of finding that specific character we really need. Secret Origins is only really reliable if our opponent is both recruiting on-curve and has the initiative.

 
Pumps

Ah, pumps. With so many decks these days doing everything in their power to avoid combat entirely, it’s somehow comforting to sit down with a full-curve beatdown deck and think, “You know, eight pump cards feels like a really good number.” And as you all know, in the family of combat pumps Savage Beatdown is the daddy. Things are a little less clear cut when you drop down to the next tier of pumps; we have both generic (Flying Kick and Mega-Blast) and team-stamped (Turnabout, SNIKT!, and Trickshot) options to choose from. It’s at this point that we need to think about what kind of situations we need our pumps for. For example, will we be expecting to carry out crossover attacks that would push us toward Turnabout as our second pump card?

A few thoughts on the various options:

Flying Kick and Mega-Blast: Despite its lower ATK bonus, Flying Kick is the more appealing of these options. It lacks the support row play restriction of Mega-Blast and provides a boost to our beefy ground-pounders whether it’s targeting Colossus, Steadfast Protector to get more damage through by breaking up formations, or Wolverine, Logan to attack up the curve. It also provides a significant helping hand for Wolverine, Berserker Rage, frustrating any attempt to use formation to stymie his self-readying trigger.

Turnabout: The crossover It’s Clobberin’ Time!. There is probably no better pump available for sending a 3-drop or a reasonably sized 4-drop up the curve. Turnabout usually not only gets the stun, but also avoids the stun back. The only question with Turnabout is how often we’ll be able to use it, which is a question whose answer varies wildly depending on the metagame. At the moment, the most popular control decks do tend to follow curve broadly, which means that we should be able to set up up-curve attacks (and punish our opponent’s down-curve attacks) reasonably often. That said, it is situational, and we will not even be able to play it for damage against some decks.

SNIKT!: It is arguably the most powerful option available to us, but it comes at a hefty cost—the discard of an X-Men character card. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge problem, but the X-Men as a team have quite a large number of character card discard costs already. If we can fit in something to buffer those discards (Soul World looks like a likely option), then SNIKT! starts looking very attractive. While it doesn’t allow Wolverine, Logan to avoid stunbacks against 4-drops, the ability to virtually guarantee stuns on offense or defense and up, down, or across the curve is incredibly powerful.

Trickshot: I’m surprised to be considering it, but it’s actually quite a solid pump. It’s essentially a discard-free (although less powerful) SNIKT!. At the moment, I’m hopeful of being able to manage the discard cost, so I’m going to put this one on the back burner for now.

Recovery Effects

These are something of a specialty of the X-Men and there are a quite dizzying number of them available to the team. Thankfully, we can pare them down quite quickly. We aren’t running enough duplicates of characters to fuel Phoenix Rising efficiently. With no 1-drops in the deck, Angel of Mercy becomes a worse Children of the Atom. Ultimate Sacrifice, too, is much less powerful in a curve deck. Rebirth is interesting but relies too much on our opponent cooperating with us when choosing the order of his or her attacks. The original list contained Children of the Atom, which is pretty much the benchmark for recovery effects in general, and the location Harry’s Hideaway. I don’t have any serious problems with either choice, but I do think that it’s worth considering Muir Island over Hideaway. For only a slightly more restrictive discard cost (particularly with Soul World looking increasingly likely to make the final list), Muir Island will do its thing more than once and should allow us to keep a full board across multiple turns.

Other Resources

There are a few more resources that I want to consider, some of which were already mentioned earlier and some that weren’t. The first addition is a card I’ve referred to quite extensively, Soul World. The deck, you may have noticed, is already quite heavy on X-Men character card discard costs, from Gambit, Remy Lebeau and Sunfire, Shiro Yoshida’s activation costs to Children of the Atom and SNIKT!. Coupled with that, we have the deck-filtering of Worthington Industries and the discard of Mobilize; it’s starting to look likely that we’ll have trouble keeping our hand size up, especially if we need to play plot twists from our hand at some point on a tricky turn. What this means is that we certainly want to run one of the available locations that let us pull characters back from the KO’d pile. The only question is whether we run Soul World or Slaughter Swamp, and the deciding factor is whether we value hand size more than endurance. For now, I’m comfortable with Soul World, but if Golden Age starts to swing back toward more aggressive decks, then Slaughter Swamp will make a fine substitute.

There were two copies of the next card up for consideration in the original list, which—if anything—was selling it short. Fastball Special essentially allows your two smallest characters to team attack your opponent’s largest and take it down guaranteed without stunning back. That feels like it’s worth a card. The fact that it can snipe out otherwise problematic characters like Sinestro, Green Lantern of Korugar or reach into the hidden area is a nice bonus, particularly if you’ve had to recruit a character that’s not great for the matchup (Gambit against a curve deck, for example). One thing to note: remember that Fastball Special can be used during an attack. If you swing your 6-drop into your opponent’s 6-drop and he or she threatens to brickwall you, Fastball Special can leave your opponent gasping.

There are two more cards in the original list, Betrayal and Bamf!, that I won’t be including in the final cut of the deck. Betrayal is likely to become increasingly hard to resolve. With innovations like Thanagar in addition to regular Team-Ups in decks running Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose; Doom decks splashing off-team characters but running Crisis on Infinite Earths; and mono-team aggro decks like TNB enjoying a resurgence over High Voltage, Betrayal has lost a lot of its shine. Bamf!, on the other hand, is more a case of a “win more” card. We’re already running oversized aggressive characters like Wolverine and Colossus; we can already do direct, out-of-combat stuns with activated powers and Fastball Special; and we already have recovery effects for when things go wrong and we end up getting multiple characters stunned. While Bamf! will make you feel a lot safer while planning out your turn, I think you’ll find that things won’t get as bad as you’d expect if you stop using it. Where Bamf! is a bit more tempting is in a swarm deck running Blackbird Blue, where you would expect multiple characters to get stunned every turn and would have trouble keeping up with just recovery effects.

In place of Bamf!, I’m going to add a card that should give the X-Men curve a lot more oomph, Total Anarchy. Anarchy plays extremely well with both Gambit and Sunfire, for a start, allowing you to deal with Dr. Light, Master of Holograms permanently (with the even initiatives, you can restrict the good doctor to a single activation). In addition, Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner’s inability to be stunned and Wolverine’s sheer size mean that you can often flip Total Anarchy earlier and simply out-muscle opposing 2- and 3-drops without losing board position. Without Total Anarchy, I think the deck would have serious trouble dealing with the control decks packing Poison Ivy, Deadly Rose; Dr. Light, Master of Holograms; and the other usual suspects, but Anarchy will be a big help in keeping the little guys under control. Also, remember that you don’t have to flip Anarchy. Sometimes, it’s better to get board advantage the old-fashioned way while leaving your smaller characters around to, say, exhaust for Fastball Special.

Final Build

I’m going with SNIKT! over Turnabout for its greater flexibility, as well as the option to simply “go to the face” when racing. This is also at its heart an aggressive deck; don’t let Gambit and Sunfire fool you into thinking that this deck is designed for an X-Stall-style long game. The core game plan is to curve up with the X-Men’s finest aggressors, tearing up your opponent’s board with crossover attacks and KO’s from Total Anarchy. Given the aggressive nature of the deck, the presence of Total Anarchy, and the direct stuns available from characters, I’m going to cut the 7-drop Wolverine, Berserker Rage for a second copy of the 4-drop Gambit, Remy Lebeau; there won’t often be anything left for Wolverine to ready against, and in today’s Dr. Light–crazed times, Gambit seems like the most likely candidate for “most frequently recruited 4-drop.”

I’m also cutting the 6-drop Emma Frost, Headmistress of Xavier’s Academy for a second copy of Rogue, Powerhouse. On initiative, we’d rather have Rogue’s flight and auto-KO ability, and we will be choosing evens to give Gambit the best shot at neutering Dr. Light (among other things). Off initiative, Storm’s potential to steal the initiative outright gives her the nod, leaving Emma—as has happened in the past—as a good card with no real niche to fill.

The last tweak will be a slight reorganization of the 2-drops. With a greater number of copies of Fastball Special and Soul World to minimize the cost on her payment power, Shadowcat, Katya’s stock rises considerably. She can duck into the hidden area on turn 3 or 4, meaning that you can keep her around unstunned until you can pull off a back-breaking up-curve Fastball. Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner, on the other hand, is left a little weaker by our preferred choice of even initiatives; he’s usually particularly effective on turn 3, when Nightcrawler and Wolverine can stun a 2-drop and 3-drop respectively, often with neither stunning back.

Here is the final build.

Characters

4 Jean Grey, Telekinetic Fighter

4 Shadowcat, Katya

2 Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner

4 Wolverine, Logan

3 Sage, Xavier’s Secret Weapon

2 Gambit, Remy Lebeau

1 Professor X, Headmaster

1 Rogue, Power Absorption

1 Havok, Critical Mass

2 Colossus, Steadfast Protector

1 Sunfire, Shiro Yoshida

2 Rogue, Powerhouse

1 Storm, Weather Witch

1 Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath

1 Jean Grey, Phoenix Force

Plot Twists

4 Mobilize

4 Total Anarchy

4 Savage Beatdown

4 SNIKT!

3 Fastball Special

2 Children of the Atom

Locations

4 Soul World

3 Worthington Industries

2 Muir Island

Hopefully, I’ve at least inspired you to take a second look at one of the most venerable teams in the game. The X-Men in Vs. System have for so long been most successful as a controlling team that it’s refreshing to be able to build a deck with them that can just beat down—and hard.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s Clinic, the last one of the year. I’ll be back in the new year, but until then, I hope you enjoy learning the ins and outs of Legion of Super Heroes and taking a fresh look at some of the teams that maybe didn’t quite cut it in the past. If you hit on anything interesting that you’d like a little extra help with, go ahead and submit it to the Deck Clinic. My email address, as always, is vsdeckclinic@googlemail.com.

Tom Reeve is a member of the Anglo-Canadian Alliance (like the Rebel Alliance, but with public transport instead of X-Wings) and would-be professional layabout from London, England. While his love of all things ninja has resulted in an arguably unhealthy affinity for the League of Assassins, that particular quirk turned into a healthy plus with the birth of the Silver Age deck Deep Green, with which teammate Ian Vincent took home the Pro Circuit San Francisco trophy to dear old Blighty.