X-Men, Dancing with the Star(Lord)s

This show only lasted one season.

Hello everyone! Star-Lord has made a real 180 in interest for me over the past year. I think having other teams/tribals enter the game has just made him more interesting, sharing his Gaurdian trait easily with teams that bring their own strengths.

This deck aims to reliably setup some of the best thwarting allies in the game, fielding a team of X-Men Allies with Mission Training and a board wide boost from Leader of the Gaurdians.

The Stars

We're using a suite of effective allies that we actively want to play with with What Could Go Wrong?, and get the most out of our buffing effects. Banshee can give us an added bonus when he thwarts, Blindfolds affect works well with Star-Lord in particular, Dazzler gives a valuable confuse on play, and Marvel Girl has the best Thwart:Health:Cost ratio for our X-Men allies, with a situationally positive affect. We won't be buffing Professor-X but his three Thwart+Confuse+Chump block is too much to not include, with some additional utility that's nice to have in the back pocket. Mockingbird and Gamora are also just super valuable to bring out with our ability and are some of the best Tempo and Value allies respectively for their cost.

The Show

The premise is Simple, Leader of the Gaurdians and a Mission Training can setup an ally to singlehandedly manage a whole players worth of threat by themselves for several turns. Blindfold is our worst target for this and even she will manage 16 Threat by herself when things are said and done. Danger Room will let us get this set-up consistently and make repeating it effortless. X-Mansion can also keep spinning value out of an ally if we wish to focus on developing something else. We're bringing Sonic Rifles(carried in a side holster), as we'll have an easier time playing them than most other heroes and they'll let us flip down to utilize our powerful supports more. This will also enable Meditation. We like this a lot more than Power of Justice or Basic, since it can hit targets for both of those as well has our hero specific cards. The alter-ego restriction is not an issue since we're doing it anyway to use our supports and have ample confuse, plus we're not reliant on our basic activation to progress our gameplan. Our ample Thwarting also makes cards like One Way or Another and Command Center much more accessible and easier, and are nice rewards for doing our jobs well.

The Script

One of the great things about this list is the small amount of setup you need. We really just want to hard mulligan for Leader of the Guardians and Danger Room. Danger Room becomes less of a priority the more aggressive you expect the villain's early game to be, as we'll possibly want to chump block before setup is completed. We can always hard play Training upgrades on our allies, but Danger Room does represent value and consistency that should not be overlooked. Also, we want to make sure we setup at least one Element Gun from our opener. 5-damage (2 from our activation and 3 from a gun) is going to be enough to handle most damage demands until we reach setup, especially if we give ourselves an extra turn for damage from a Banshee activation confusing a minion. Command Center also helps solve these problems cleanly, but since it's dependent on actually having a side scheme in play for our stellar allies to defeat, we don't want to miss out on guaranteed damage. Post-setup, we are not going to have much issue getting into alter-ego to quickly equip an X-Men ally. Playing an ally in Alter-Ego may seem awkward, but we have so much Thwart that we won't miss anything dropped there. We're also just as likely to start in AE so getting the full boost from the get go is very feasible.

The Side-Deck

Overwatch might seem like a obvious include here, but our Thwart is just high enough that it generally isn't necessary even in a two-player game. For going up in player count or playing against a Villian which starts with more Threat/side-schemes I think you can justify it. Game Time falls under a very similar umbrella. We are already Thwarting enough, but if we notice more burst Thwarting is needed it might be wanted. Think Fast! is also a very potent card, though I didn't like how it could conflict with the on play affects of allies we wanted to hit the table, so that's why the Sonic Rifles were brought in as a more on-demand option. If you're in a fast paced solo game or with a team where no one else is confusing then you can find room for it. Best of luck, and I hope anyone who plays this list enjoys!