The Stay At Home X-Man NeXt Evolution

We're back with an updated list for NeXt Evolution.

The biggest change it brings is the Call for Backup Player Side Scheme, which is an amazing card that slotted all too well in this deck.

If you don't have NeXt Evolution yet, I'd recommend swapping it out for a second Leadership Skill as that's what I ran prior to NeXt Evolution and the version I took up against every scenario from the campaign boxes on Expert difficulty.

We'll go over the general idea behind the deck and why 50 cards work for it.

So you want to lead the X-Men

You can't really call yourself the leader of the X-Men without having a bunch of X-Men to lead. Luckily, Scott allows us to do just that and we picked 14 all stars for beating every scenario on true solo Expert.

The must-haves are the Psionic allies, we want to have at least 1 out at all times to be able to use Cerebro to find any X-Men that can save the day while Scott sits in his pajama's back at the X-Mansion.

The allies in this list can be tweaked to your needs, primarily if you intend to run a second hero with some kind of Aggression/Protection/Justice X-Men deck with the other aspect training cards, but you want to have the ability to consistently enable Cerebro, so try to keep the Psionic allies in this deck.

Outside of the Psionic X-Men though, of note are a couple of others.

Sunfire is the silver bullet that will save your ass so many times against nasty attachments that usually require quite a bit to get rid of. Different scenarios have different things, but any attachments that have a Hero Action or Hero Response on them get taken care of by him and it's absolutely amazing every time.

Wolverine really is the best there is at what he does and will provide a good chunk of damage, especially with Danger Room Training on him and a Leadership Skill and Exploit Weakness to go even further beyond.

Forge almost goes without saying how crucial he is, but in case it wasn't obvious, your primary target is Cerebro, followed by Danger Room and Utopia. X-Mansion is nice, but only after the others are on the field. He's also one of the 2 cards we very much like to see in Med Lab, because it means we can get more of our support pieces out.

Pixie lets us play any X-Men we previously lost, basically. You'll have to think carefully about when to use her, because she can definitely be game changing when timed correctly.

But at what cost?!

X-Men aren't cheap and all those costs can be quite stressful to their great leader Scott Summers.

Luckily, we have just the thing to ease his burdens and make it so that his team can do all the heavy lifting and that is some good old Meditation. Exhausting Scott to reduce the cost of any ally we play in Alter-Ego by 3 is amazing because Cyclops' basic powers aren't that impressive really and the only other card that relies on his ability to exhaust in hero from is Full Blast, which is great but not something you'll be using every turn.

With Cerebro enabled and tactic upgrades in the deck, you're looking at 8 card minimum Alter Ego hands, meaning after a Meditation you're likely to have 5-6 cards left to make use of still. And boy do we want to play a lot.

One of the biggest risks in the deck was that eventually you ran out of tactic upgrades to fetch. This is where Mutant Education comes in, allowing you to put those glorious Priority Targets back into the deck to be fetched again and slapped on whatever poor minion is out or to be used as an extra resource. Preferably, you'll have X-Mansion out, but if you have nothing better to do with it, it can guarantee you having a Tactic upgrade in a future turn.

Finally, Strength In Numbers probably needs no introduction, but it is such a solid card to help get you up and running. On the turns where you have 2-3 allies sitting in play but not a whole lot to do besides poking the villain because threat is under control, Strength In Numbers means you get to do that much more.

Call for Backup is the shiny new toy and you honestly have so many ways of thwarting it down that it can fetch you anyone at almost any time. Biggest thing is that it also looks into discard and recurring Psylocke is amazing against anything not stalwart.

Long distance Tactical Support

We've mentioned most of them already at least once, but Cerebro and Danger Room are central to this deck, followed by Utopia and X-Mansion.

Med Lab is good, but not a top priority as you'll likely keep your allies around for quite some times. The Triskelion makes it so that we can get to 5 allies, but it's one of those cards that you only play if there's nothing more interesting to do. Team Training on the other hand makes every X-Men stick around longer, aside from Professor X, though there will be plenty of times you'll have to use it as a resource to play something else isntead.

Danger Room Training makes your X-Men hit and thwart harder and stick around longer. You'll rarely actually play it from hand, but it's an option. Remember to always first grab the copies from your deck with Danger Room instead of the ones in discard.

Leadership Skill is phenomenal. It's Inspired, but instead you can spread it across allies. And it protects against Caught Off Guard.

Finally, all of Cyclops' tactic upgrades are solid. For the ones to use as resources, go for anything other than Priority Target. Priority Target is something you want to actually use because killing a minion with it generates more resources than just discarding it. Exploit Weakness likely gets slapped on the villain the turn you're going for the win.

Ok, so what do I do?

In short, this deck seeks to build up and control the board. 50 cards makes it so that our deck is diluted enough that we can keep getting Tactic Upgrades (almost) every turn and gives us more control over what to get with Cerebro when.

You use Meditation to efficiently play your allies and Cyclops' ability to fetch Tactic upgrades to have even more resources available.

Cerebro double dips in duty and is why you want to keep at least a single Psionic ally around for as long as possible. At worst, it fetches your least useful X-Men to be used as a resource for one you have on hand. At best, it finds you the pieces you need to solve your current issues on the board. A lot of this deck comes down to figuring out what pieces to use when and where.

Just remember, you don't intend to win in just a few turns. You build up your supports for your allies, manage threat and then start punching the villain until there's nothing left to punch.

Against any non-stalwart villain, you can stay in Alter Ego almost indefinitely in true solo because of Psylocke, Dazzler and Professor X and in 2+ hero games, you can actually have Scott lounge through entire scenarios while the X-Men beat the villain.

Stalwart villains aren't a huge problem, it just means Scott has to get off his lazy ass and suit up more. You'll have to balance making use of your alter-ego economy fairly against them, but you won't have Meditation every turn and you'll need to weigh the cost of going to Alter-Ego like everyone else would. Which again, is a lot less of a problem in 2+ hero games.

Took me 31 games in True Solo Expert to defeat 28 scenarios and, man, having so many X-Men to play with will never be boring.