Of the major affiliations that debuted in Marvel Origins, the X-Men is the one that really hasn’t seen much competitive play—that is, until Eugene Harvey came along. Eugene, along with his affiliates on Team TOGIT (a gaming store based in central NJ), designed what some are calling the most innovative deck of the tournament, an X-Men control deck. I had a chance to sit down and talk with Eugene after his round 1 win.

Patrick: How was this deck originally designed?

Eugene: At first I wanted to build a discard deck, and the X-Men were the best choice because they have a lot of characters that cause discard, plus they are very good at staying alive because of all the recovery effects. The deck originally revolved very heavily around recovery effects until I realized that the really powerful aspects of the deck were 4-drop Rogue and 7-drop Professor X. The recovery aspect of the deck was minimized, although Children of the Atom is still in there. Basically the goal of the deck is to stall out the game until you win with Professor X, World’s Most Powerful Telepath and a bunch of copying effects, or you can combo them out.

P: What’s the combo?

E: Basically, you have to play Jean Grey, Phoenix Force when you have the initiative. Then that turn happens, and the next turn your opponent has the initiative and has to build first. Then you use Jean Grey and play out your characters on an empty board. This is generally enough to win the game.

P: How are the popular matchups?

E: Common Enemy is a very good matchup. If they try to go and make their biggest drop every turn, this deck can easily handle that with a combination of stall and better late game characters. Teen Titans is about a 50/50 matchup—it depends on the draws, quality of player, and what their specific card choices are. It isn’t that great against aggressive decks like Brotherhood because the deck can miss its early drops very easily.

P: What are the other problems for the deck?

E: It’s weak to really strange cards, such as anything that can shut down activated abilities, like Sentinel Mark II. Ka-Boom! out of a beatdown deck is also a big problem. And any deck that tries to win by something other than damage or attacking, like Rigged Elections, is almost impossible. Besides that, the deck is really solid.

Through the first two rounds of the tournament, Eugene is unbeaten at 2-0. Most of the other TOGIT’ers playing the deck are 2-0, while some sit at 1-1. Stay posted to the coverage to see if the deck can live up to the early hype it has received!