Professor X Speed Dial (Expert Magneto defeated!)

If I could turn into a giant mass of living steel? I'd want to be in charge! Enter Colossus in Leadership. Only this Colossus is really clingy and can't stop calling up his professor!!

This deck is built primarily for solo play but has been played multiple times at 2-player with excellent results. As an all-rounder, this deck will perform well at 3 and 4-player too. It has defeated Expert Magneto solo among other scenarios.

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Having played Colossus extensively over the past couple of weeks, I have come to settle on Leadership being his best aspect in solo play.

Colossus wants three things at any player count:

1) Card draw to find Iron Will as soon as possible
2) Coverage for his terrible threat control (starts with 1 THW, has no thwarting event)
3) Way to protect/gain Tough status cards to enable his awesome events

Leadership provides all three - even handling threat just as well as Justice, in my experience. Your card draw is steadier and doesn't rely on schemes, and you have a plethora of fleshy allies to stop your shiny metal skin from getting scratched!

What synergy does Colossus have with Leadership, you ask? Physical resources. Enter Adam Warlock who can provide 12 threat removal (16 with Team Training). (More on this later.)

He also benefits more than all the other X-Men from playing Professor X. Not only can our towering steel warrior use the frail Professor to defend himself and preserve a Tough status card, but Professor X provides a hefty chunk of threat removal and can confuse the villain. Confuse helps Colossus go alter-ego - and Colossus really likes going alter-ego since he has a great alter-ego ability, a great alter-ego support, and gets +2 to his hand size in comparison to hero form.

Any aspect can play Professor X, but only in Leadership can you get his phone number to Make the Call.

If you like this deck, feel free to give it a ❤ ! Thank you so much!

Steel-Forged Strategy

The aim of this deck is to do as many Colossus things as you can, we are simply using Leadership to enable it.

In short:

• Find Iron Will as soon as possible
• Use allies to control the threat and preserve your Tough status cards
• Use Professor X and Steel Fist to confuse the villain to go alter-ego as much as you can
• Destroy your enemies

Step 1: Smelting the Ore

Iron Will is your best card by an absolute landslide, and if you see this card you need to play it at almost any cost. Only in situations where you would lose the game if you didn't remove threat - or something similarly perilous - would I not play it.

When you draw your initial cards/mulligan, Iron Will is your top priority. Team Training, Titanium Muscles, and Deft Focus are the next most important cards. And, lastly, The X-Jet. If you don't have any of these in hand at first, ditch them all and redraw 6 new ones. Even if you don't draw one still, you are now 6 cards closer to drawing one!

Your setup ability means you usually start with an Organic Steel in hand. While it's often good to play it, sometimes - in the early game - it's also fine to spend it as a resource. If it means you can get any of the above named upgrades/supports out that you wouldn't otherwise be able to, I'd do it.

You are also aiming to have an ally out on turn 1 to help preserve your Tough status card. Ant-Man, Ironheart, Kaluu, Maria Hill, Mockingbird, and White Tiger are ideal candidates.

In short, at the end of Turn 1 we ideally want to see the following on our board: 1 or 2 key upgrades and a cheap ally.

We should also use Assess the Situation whenever we would otherwise end a turn with a card in hand, or have an inefficient way to spend our cards. Assess the Situation helps us dig deeper into our decks for Iron Will and other vital upgrades, and later on, helps us find more of our hero cards to pile on the damage!

Step 2: Take an Iron Grip

The early game consists of controlling the board in your hunt for Iron Will. Deft Focus should be used practically every turn once it's in play, with Limitless Stamina rounding out your plethora of hero superpowers and helping you keep everything under control.

Team Training's value cannot be overstated. Now all your 2 THW allies are removing an extra two threat. For Colossus, this is almost as monumental as Iron Will. Suddenly, you're not struggling with the threat. Everything becomes so much easier. It also turns Ant-Man into a 0-cost Tough status card, since you can pay nothing and he comes in with 1 hp.

It means Make the Call effectively becomes a 0-cost Tough card while Ant-Man is in your discard pile. And having 4 0-cost Tough cards in your deck is Shadowcat levels of strong.

Make the Call, however, often has a better target. Professor X. As covered in the intro, his confuses help you to go alter-ego where you gain massive benefits. He can also block an attack and thwart for a considerable 3! If the villain is already confused or Stalwart? Readying yourself is also an excellent option.

And let's not forget Maria Hill, the best 2-cost ally in any aspect. You can always Make the Call for her.

Last but not least, we have Adam Warlock. A card rarely included in decks, and yet he's excellent here. His best effect is remove 3 extra threat through discarding a physical resource - and Colossus has the most physical resource cards of any hero yet next to Hulk. It's very easy to line up, and in essence means that - for the cost of 1 resource - you can give Adam 4 THW. The fact that he can remove up to 4 at once means you can decimate almost any side scheme at will. With Team Training, and discarding a physical each time, he can remove 16 threat for 8 effective resources. It's slow, but if you can afford to initially play him, he effectively solves threat for you - allowing you to go on the offensive.

And as a final note, when you go alter-ego, I'd recommend prioritizing Bulletproof Protector as the card you shuffle back into your deck with Colossus' alter-ego ability.

With these kind of resources at your fingertips, controlling the threat and preserving your Toughs has never been easier.

Step 3: Pedal to the Metal

Once you have Iron Will and a few of your other key upgrades, it's time to bring the pain.

Between using Made of Rage to clear minions and Steel Fist to control the villain, you've probably already chipped the villain's hp down considerably. Now, it's time to finish it. There's not much to say here except that, when the allies have the threat under control and you're able to keep going alter-ego for card draw and shuffling Colossus events back into your deck, you can deal massive amounts of damage.

Magneto? Defeato!

If you wish to attempt to beat Magneto with this deck, it's first good to know the best strategy to fight him with in general no matter your character - and that is to rush through his side schemes to get Physical Strain attached to Magneto, removing his Steady keyword.

Once Steady is removed, you can keep on stunning and confusing Magneto to prevent him activating against you. No attack activations means he's hardly getting any magnetic counters. From that point onward, he's easily manageable.

For Colossus in particular, once Physical Strain is attached to Magneto, you want to prioritize using your alter-ego ability to shuffle Steel Fist back into your deck over everything else. Keep him stun/confuse-locked and cruise to victory!

Heart of Steel - Colossus help!

Need some basic advice for the iron giant?

Check out this fantastic video by the amazing SC0E for help on playing Colossus!

• Colossus Xplained

Good luck and have fun!