The King of Hearts (3-4 Player)

Unusual X-Men Decks #7 - The King of Hearts

Here's a Gambit Protection deck focused on alter-ego! If that wasn't weird enough, it's a deck designed around defending with allies who are at full hp while still getting incredible value.

In other words, this deck could be called The King of Hit Points!

...Just don't play it in solo, mon ami!

See the deck played here in 3-player as myself, Nelson All Over and Get Up and Game take on Expert Sabretooth + Legions of Hydra!

• Archetype: Ally Defense / Alter-Ego
• Difficulty: Above Average
• Recommended Player Count: 3-4
• Ideal Aspect Partners: Justice
• Ideal Hero Partners: Anyone who doesn't also want Utopia
• Scenarios to Avoid: Collector #1, Project Wideawake

Note: While absolutely not necessary, someone playing a copy of Uncanny X-Men on you will make this deck ridiculously powerful.

Strategy:
Gambit has great defensive tools - but to use them, he wants to start in hero form. And that conflicts with his fantastic alter-ego. Naturally, it's been popular to build him with an alter-ego focus before - but, as far as I can see on MarvelCDB, never in Protection.

That changes here.

Your key cards are Danger Room and Hangar Bay. So there is a little setup - but what this allows us to do is play an ally and use it to block three villain activations. At least if said ally has a Tough or inflicts Confuse. The +3 hp from Protective Training makes all the difference.

Be alter-ego → play an ally → trigger Danger Room to find and attach Protective Training → wait, don't use them to THW or ATK → defend with them → ready them with Hangar Bay → defend again.

This is very efficient. Polaris, Professor X, Rogue and Colossus usually hit three blocks across two turns. Karma and Armor also have a good chance to do so.

And we have other allies that can block twice - namely Angel and Iceman. And Gambit can still defend when in hero form.

Of course, your ally could be outright defeated if the attack gets a lot of boost icons. Enter Gambit's alter-ego ability: Thief Extraordinaire.

Using Thief Extraordinaire means that you can set the first boost card for an easy block on an ally's hp - and remove threat to make up for the fact you keep going alter-ego. Alternatively, you can use this to set up a ready from Gambit's Guild Armor too!

Don't forget to throw Honorary X-Men on yourself. This lets you play Armor from alter-ego and use Utopia to ready yourself and thus use Thief Extraordinaire a second time!

Unless playing for the challenge of staying alter-ego only, try to change form each single turn. You want to minimize threat and gain charge counters while still using Danger Room every round. (More info in staying alter-ego only in the Further Reading section!)

Last but definitely not least, this deck gets insanely consistent when you factor in X-Men Instruction. Don't stop shuffling your best allies back into your deck. Once you have 4 charge counters, you can loop Rogue as a 0-cost card that can block three villain attacks! Guess she really is a Bulletproof Belle.

Mulligan Priorities:

• Danger Room
• Hangar Bay
• X-Mansion

Other Tips:

• Don't be afraid to spend Molecular Acceleration in alter-ego form if it helps set up an ally with Protective Training from Danger Room. Missing a charge counter isn't the end of the world.

• You can still do Gambit things! If you constantly change forms, you will amass charge counters. Spend them. Charge de card, throw de card!

• Sometimes, using an ally might be more important than guaranteeing a second/third block with it. If all the players are healthy but the board is getting overwhelmed, use your healthy army to help out! You might even dedicate one ally to always use their ATK or THW each turn - especially at 3-player on an average scenario where you may otherwise have too many blocks.

• Don't sleep on X-Mansion. Sleep in it. It's easy to forget to use it when your allies are all expendable. Use it to heal yourself, another X-Men/Mutant identity, or heal an ally anyway! Preferably someone else's ally.

• Chill out when blocking with Iceman, avoid readying him with Hangar Bay unless you have no other target. Keeping him around for another turn or so can let you get value out of his stuns.

Further Reading
Some people enjoy the challenge of playing a character purely from alter-ego - and you can do that here! In that case, I recommend you drop Armor, Honorary X-Men, Utopia, and Beauty and the Thief! Swap in 3x Assess the Situation and Rockslide in their place.

Alternatively, if you want to play this unusual deck in a more traditional style, consider dropping 1x X-Men Instruction and 1x Protective Training for 1x Armored Vest and 1x Unflappable.

Good luck!