Midas Touch

Intro

Rogue is a tough character to figure out. At first glance it seems like she's got a lot going for her, especially in a deck building sense. After playing a few higher difficulty games, you realize that her kit can be frustrating to play, frequently getting in the way of itself where you're not completely sure how she's meant to be played. Focusing on either a stun/confuse lock approach or an Ally based trait approach leaves you neglecting part of her kit and punished for it.

The premise for this deck was to try and utilize all aspects of Rogue's conflicting kit and control the board without specializing too much in any one approach. Once you get setup, everything you touch turns to gold and makes all your wildest dreams come true!’*’

Skip to Deck Strategy to get past the kit analysis.

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Fool's Gold

Touched is the foundation to Rogue's deck. She can attach this to another character once per round using her Skin Contact ability, gaining their traits until the end of the round. She can attach this to another Hero, the Villain, a Minion, or an Ally, all of which give her extra benefits and affect her event cards.

An important restriction for Touched is that at the start of the Player Phase, the Forced Response triggers and it is removed from the board, even if you are staying in Hero form. She also loses Touched in Alter-ego thanks to Withdrawn. Aside from Energy Transfer, you only get 1 chance to make your decision of who it is attached to. This is where decisions become hard and the kit is working against itself.

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Attaching to the Villain

If attached to the Villain, Rogue's kit rewards you more than any other approach. Despite a pretty high incentive to do this, this approach is not without its drawbacks.

Pros:

• Southern Cross gets a stun
• Goin’ Rogue gets a confuse
• Bulletproof Belle allows you to prevent all damage from an attack and gain a tough status card
• Rogue’s Jacket gives you a 1ATK stat increase
• You gain retaliate 1

Cons:

• Superpower Adaptation becomes a useless card
• There's no real card draw
• Many of the cards here are higher cost so you might be playing a single card as your entire turn
• Majority of traits that you gain are useless

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Attaching to an Ally

If attached to an Ally, it's high risk and carries consequences. If you end the Player Phase attached to an Ally, you'll feel like you made a mistake.

Pros:

• Southern Cross gives an extra two damage to deal
• Goin’ Rogue gives you two extra threat to thwart
• Rogue’s Jacket gives you a 1THW stat increase
• You gain the Aerial trait
• Superpower Adaptation allows you to recur events from the discard pile to your hand. Depending on the Ally these can be Signature cards or Aspect/Basic cards. This is limited to events only

Cons:

• Bulletproof Belle completely whiffs and you eat up damage. Decide to let an Ally chump block and they're gone by the time the Player Phase begins
• You lose out on pretty much all status card benefits, making flipping more risky. This is a rough situation because after eating damage and due to lack of card draw, you probably need to flip

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Attaching to a Hero

Attaching to another Hero is something I can't speak to much. Highly dependent on scenario and Hero you play with. Hard to build around.

Pros:

• You gain stalwart
• Southern Cross lets you draw a card
• Goin’ Rogue lets you draw a card
• Rogue’s Jacket gives you a 1THW stat increase
• You can recur events from other discard piles with Superpower Adaptation

Cons:

• You get all of the negatives of attaching to an Ally with a fraction of the benefits

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Attaching to a Minion

Attaching to a Minion is hands down the worst approach.

Pros:

• You get overkill when attached to the Minion
• Rogue’s Jacket gives you a 1ATK stat increase

Cons:

• You get all of the negatives of attaching to an Ally with NONE of the benefits
• Majority of traits that you gain are useless

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Self-Sabotage

The only two viable approaches to Rogue are attaching Touched to the Villain and to allies, at least in a deckbuilding approach.

With only one chance at picking who Touched is attached to, you can see how the kit gets in its own way. Anything you try to do to get an advantage can be punished in the same turn. Here's a couple of examples.

• You want to stun/confuse the Villain but you don't have those events in hand. You use Touched on Gambit and Superpower Adaptation to recur Southern Cross but then you can't stun/confuse the Villain because you're attached to an Ally.
• You want to run trait specific cards so you attach Touched to an Ally to try and play a card. You are able to play a single event/upgrade that is trait locked. During the Villain Phase you have to chump block with the Ally and end up without the ability to play any trait based cards in your hand. You might have been able to get out an upgrade. Maybe it was Honorary Avenger/Honorary Guardian. If not, you probably would have been better off attaching Touched to the Villain.

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Striking Gold

The one card I haven't mentioned here is Energy Transfer. It's the ONLY card that allows you to use Touched multiple times in a turn. Not only that, the card itself also comes with a 2 HP heal and a ready. Rogue should have a nerfed version of this this as an upgrade in her kit but that's another discussion. With Energy Transfer, both of the above scenarios can work in the ideal way. This allows Rogue to utilize both viable approaches and is the fundamental to making her kit work more than any other. Assuming of course, that you can afford everything.

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Going Broke

Rogue has an economy problem. Rogue only has 3 unique cards that are below 2 cost and no resource generation or card draw built into her kit.

• Bulletproof Belle is 1 cost, but playing it during the Villain Phase locks you out of 3 cost events. Lose a card during the Villain Phase and you can't do anything during the Player Phase.
• Superpower Adaptation is 0 cost but is essentially allowing you to recur an event that has a cost, negating its utility as a 0 cost card. It's an opportunity to replace a card in your hand.
• Rogue’s Jacket is 1 cost and offers a very minor stat increase

Other than these, her entire deck is filled with medium to high cost event cards. While the cards are strong, Rogue needs a ton of upgrades and supports up and running to make the most use of her kit. Play her as is and you’ll end up playing a single event per turn and using a basic action. It's easy to get overwhelmed with minions and side schemes and struggle to maintain the board, much less actually progress.

She has no resources, resource generators, or card draw which is a huge drawback. You’ll find yourself wanting to flip to Alter-ego as often as you can because the only real card draw she has is the extra hand size in Alter-ego. You have to add in significant resource generators and card draw upgrades in order to make her viable in any real sense.

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Fundraising

Rogue's design seems to encourage an event-focused build but lacks the resources and card draw to actually do so. Due to this, you're looking at a setup deck if you really want to run her events consistently. Thankfully a few key basic cards can be added to really help her out in this, provided that you can get them running. You can more or less build a Rogue deck with any Aspect. I'd go so far to say that the basic cards that you pick have a far greater impact on playing her than any Aspect you pick.

Because her economy is so rough, focusing on high cost cards in any build is a mistake. Other than a select few allies or supports, you need 0-1 cost cards to make up the majority of the deck to actually be able to perform multiple actions in a turn. Cards that are lower cost can also be recurred with Superpower Adaptation and adds a significant amount of utility to that card.

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Prepping for the Worst

Keeping all that in mind, I wanted an aspect that would allow me to have adequate control over the board to setup Rogue while also filling my deck with low cost cards to be able to negate some of the economy problem. Playing primarily solo, I was finding myself overwhelmed with threat, especially when Mystique came out (Misled is absolutely brutal for a setup Hero).

A Justice build seemed like the right fit to keep scheme low and utilize stun/confuse to allow myself to flip and skip villain activations when necessary. Rogue has some decent control over the board so I wanted to capitalize on that. At the same time, I knew that not all villains are easily stunned/confused so I wanted to keep the deck general enough to be able to deal with stalwart and steady villains. I also wanted to utilize allies to play trait locked cards while not focusing too heavily on them and getting punished for doing so.

The final idea was this:

A Justice build specializing in the Spy trait, making a combo of preparation style decks, stun/confuse control decks, and common Justice event decks to have an all-rounder deck you can adjust depending on the scenario. It's general enough where you can switch priorities depending on the scenario and not so specialized where you're punished much if you have to adjust.

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Deck Strategy

The basic idea is to setup Rogue to be able to play a signature event every turn along with low-cost justice and basic events. There's a focus on recurring Energy Transfer as much as possible to be able to utilize Touched on both the Villain and allies each turn, using allies to grab cards from the discard pile when you can. You'll be flipping pretty much every turn while you specialize which approach makes the most sense for the scenario.

Early game should be focused on setting up Rogue and getting 3ish upgrades/supports out so you have decent card draw and resources. You’ll probably be stun/confuse locking so that you can justify flipping so often to get the setup cards faster. Once you can play Rogue's events fairly easily, you can do a little bit more to progress the scenario. The deck is thinned out with some upgrades on the board leaving you with events and allies.

From there, each turn you can focus on whatever you’d like:

• Continue stun/confuse locking and recurring those events via Mutant Education. Utilize Mockingbird and Dazzler's enter play abilities to help with this
• Utilizing the Spy trait and getting preparation cards on the board, altering priority of cards based on the scenario. Focusing on Spy allies and ignoring the others
• Using Superpower Adaptation to recur Justice and basic events and making sure allies are on the board
• Trying to set up the impossible Gambit play with Superpower Adaptation, Energy Transfer and either Goin’ Rogue or Southern Cross to pull off the most satisfying move the kit can make

Each approach has different benefits and drawbacks. Either way you'll need to be flipping pretty often with Goin’ Rogue to confuse the Villain when necessary and taking advantage of supports like Moira MacTaggert and X-Mansion to heal and draw cards. In general, it’s good to try to keep Allies alive for a little bit so you have a couple of options.

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Deck Setup

Without these setup cards, you're going to be struggling. These are your mulligan targets in priority order.

• Deft Focus reduces the resource cost of the next superpower card. Every one of Rogue's events is a superpower. Playable in Hero form and Alter-Ego.
• X-Gene allows you to generate a resource for an identity based event. Massive help, but only playable in Alter-ego and the resource only goes towards her events.
• Moira MacTaggert allows you to draw a card each time you flip from Alter-ego to Hero form. You'll be flipping a lot to take advantage of stun/confuse status cards so this works well. Can lead to some really solid Player turns. Card draw is only every other turn and it's higher cost, so not top priority.
• The X-Jet is a good general resource but is the last priority card. You can only use the extra resource while in Hero form and it's hard to justify getting this out all of the time. When you can get it early, it's worth it.

If you can’t get one of those, hope you have something to stun/confuse the villain and pop back into Alter-ego for another try next turn.

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Allies and Recurring Events

This deck utilizes two traits primarily. The Aerial trait you get from Touched being attached to an Ally and the Spy trait from having certain allies in play. Ally selection and makeup is incredibly important to make the most out of this. While I wanted to take advantage of traits you can end up whiffing a lot if you lean too heavily into it.

For that reason the only trait locked cards are the following:

• Yaw and Roll is only playable when attached to any Ally and receiving the Aerial trait.
• Espionage and Spycraft are only playable when you control an Ally with the Spy trait.

In total, that's only 4 cards that are trait locked in the entire deck, which is about the limit at what Rogue can handle. There are 5 allies that grant the Aerial trait and 3 of those grant the Spy trait.

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Ally Selection

Allies here have strong enter play effects and allow for recursion of powerful cards.

Agent Coulson: Spy Trait. Justice Ally. Enters play and allows for a preparation card to be added to your hand. Can play cards limited to the Spy trait and those without. Superpower Adaptation > 1 cost Clear the Area, 1 cost Yaw and Roll, 0 cost Turn the Tide

Nick Fury: Spy Trait. Basic Ally. Enters play and allows for a few different effects. I focus on card draw. Attaching Touched allows to play and trait locked cards that he draws. Superpower Adaptation > 0 cost Mutant Education, 0 cost Assess the Situation and 2 cost Beauty and the Thief

Mockingbird: Spy Trait. Basic Ally. Enters play and allows for a stun. Attaching Touched is less useful for the Spy trait, but still worth if you have trait locked cards in your hand. Superpower Adaptation > 0 cost Mutant Education, 0 cost Assess the Situation, and 2 cost Beauty and the Thief

Dazzler: X-men trait. Justice Ally. Enters play and allows for a confuse. Superpower Adaptation > 1 cost Clear the Area, 1 cost Yaw and Roll, 0 cost Turn the Tide

Gambit. X-men trait. Signature Ally. Enters play with charge counters allowing for extra 1 damage interrupts after basic attacks. Attaching Touched isn't incredibly useful for any traits. Superpower Adaptation > any of Rogue's signature events. Energy Transfer is the main target to allow you to attach to the Villain and utilize any events already in your hand

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Event Selection

In addition to rounding out Rogue's economy, low cost event cards are perfect in this deck because of Superpower Adaptation.

I have 2 copies of each event because they are able to be accessed not only via drawing cards but also the discard pile.

• Clear the Area offers more threat removal and card draw bonuses
• Turn the Tide offers some more damage, especially useful for minions
• Yaw and Roll allows for threat removal from a different scheme after thwarting. Only available if Touched is attached to an Ally
• Mutant Education allows to get identity based cards back in the deck and extra card draw. Alter-Ego only
• Assess the Situation allows to mitigate bad hands by increasing hand size the following turn

Mutant Education's main targets are Energy Transfer and Bulletproof Belle, the only events in her kit that only have 2 copies. Remember that the discard pile is public knowledge. If Gambit is in the discard, you can decide and put in 2 copies of Energy Transfer. Otherwise it may be useful to have a copy in your discard to recur. You can also use Mutant Education to recur Superpower Adaptation if you have multiple allies on the board.

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Synergy

• Mutant Education and X-Mansion allow for some extra card draw. While this might whiff in Alter-ego unless you're able to play an Ally, it's useful if you can bank a Bulletproof Belle or an Energy Transfer for your next turn.
• Deft Focus and X-Gene allow Energy Transfer, Goin’ Rogue and Bulletproof Belle to be played without discarding a card. It's only one resource to play Southern Cross
• Agent Coulson can be used to grab Espionage or Spycraft. Because you control a Spy character, you can play them that turn
• X-Mansion works as a great heal for Rogue but can also be used if you want to keep Gambit or Dazzler alive for longer to recur Justice/signature events using Superpower Adaptation
• Nick Fury and Mockingbird can both recur either Mutant Education or Assess the Situation which gives you the choice of a hero form buff to hand size or a better chance to draw signature events in Alter-ego.

Other Card Considerations

• Crew Quarters: A really solid healing card that allows for 1 heal per turn while in Alter-ego and doesn't require exhausting your identity. Ended up dropping for X-Mansion because X-Mansion lets me do the same thing but synergizes well with Mutant Education for extra card draw.
• Forge: Good low cost Ally to recur X-Men and X-Force supports, most of which are too high cost to recur and play in the same turn. Also kept removing more of them so ultimately there weren't enough targets.
• Mission Training: Was using this to pump up Dazzler and Gambit and keep them on the board for longer. Other than the low amount of targets, I needed to utilize Gambit more for attacking and chipping away tough status cards.
• Foiled!: Good in theory but ended up whiffing most of the time. Goes against a lot of the confuse locking you're able to do as Rogue that justifies the flip.
• Agile Flight: A really solid card that you can't justify due to Rogue's economy. Ultimately Yaw and Roll is a better card at a fraction of the cost considering so much thwarting is done as Rogue. Hard to justify any high cost events with the rest of Rogue's kit.
• Breaking and Entering: While it's a decent card and synergizes with the Spy trait, it ends up being too hard to pull off. Trait locked event cards (aside from Aerial) are whiffing more often than not.

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Trimming/Specializing the Deck

The deck itself is pretty adaptable depending on the scenario, but you can swap out some cards if you'd like. If I was trimming the deck to 40 cards, I'd cut out the team-up card and two of the preparation cards. With a build that takes advantage of a decent sized discard pile, cutting cards may mean more whiffing on certain cards.

• Beauty and the Thief: I think the team-up cards are fun and quite literally see no other use than being in these decks, but the reality is it will be a resource the majority of the time. If Superpower Adaptation allowed Gambit to recur this card, maybe it would be different
• Espionage, Target Acquired, Spycraft and Counterintelligence: These can be reduced/changed depending on the scenario. I'd say Counterintelligence and Spycraft are easily the most useful. If you're playing a scenario where you don't see a lot of surge, cut out Espionage. If you're playing a scenario where you don't see many boost abilities, cut out Target Acquired

Results

I was able to beat the following scenarios (eventually)

• Magneto expert with Sentinels
• Red Skull expert with Masters of Evil
• Ultron expert with Master of Time

The kit still falls into Rogue’s biggest traps and ultimately ends up relying too much on stun/confuse because it just makes the most sense the majority of the time. That said, if you play on lower difficulties you can really utilize all of the different approaches in the same playthrough and have a ton of fun.

’*’While you CAN do everything I’ve described, it doesn’t always line up or make the most sense. That’s why this deck is called Midas Touch. The way Touched works is both a blessing and curse.