Mutant Counterstrike (The Xpert-23 Project)

(The beginning of each of my X-23 decklist writeups are the same, if you want to read my writings specifically about this deck, skip ahead to the "Deck Strategy" segment)

What is the Xpert-23 Project?

Ever since X-23 was previewed I immediately was in love with the design. I said "this could be my favorite hero in the game", she just looked so powerful and fun to play, and capable of doing so much. As soon as her cards were spoiled online, I immediately made proxies so I could test her, and she was incredible. I then made the decision to start this project: take an X-23 deck in each of the four main aspects true solo against every villain in the game on expert mode, and track my progress, and eventually to have decklists to post for people. I was allowed to change cards in my decks, but not specifically to tech against any villain, in order to hone the decks to a point where I would be comfortable taking them against any villain in the game. It took 192 total games to achieve this, 28 losses. Interestingly it was also my first general attempts at true solo for the most part, which was also interesting to explore (my favorite way to play is two handed solo, and while I haven't tested it yet I think X-23 is a monster in two handed). So all of my writeup and takes on X-23 are based on true solo plays, but they should also be totally fine for multiplayer games.

But that wasn't the end, I kept getting drawn to play more, do more last minute testing, until now where I've had to force myself to put her down, pull her claws out of me for the moment, to do these writeups. What did I learn? Well, I learned that I was correct in my initial impressions of X-23. She is incredibly powerful, incredibly consistent, incredibly resilient, and one of the absolute strongest heroes in the game.

Justice Aggression Leadership

What makes X-23 so strong?

The initial concern that people had with X-23 is how often she'll have to flip to alter ego to recover. Your claws deal 20% of your starting life total to you each time you use them, but on the flip side you are always inclined to block when the villain attacks you, which cancels out the damage your claws deal to you. The turns of "I'll just take this villain hit to the face because I have to do stuff next turn" don't really exist with X-23, because her ability is once per phase instead of round. In fact when you defend you actually hope to take exactly one damage, that is ideal. Her ability seems good on paper, but in play it's just incredible how much you get to do. Cards like Assault are so much less devastating, because you often ready from the initial attack and can block again, and still ready again to do something in the next player phase. This is unreal efficiency, and makes X-23 a hero that is capable of dealing with any aspect of the game that she needs to do at the time. She thwarts well, she attacks incredibly, and she is no slouch at defending, especially against multiple things.

Tips to playing X-23

• My number one tip for building and playing X-23 is to remember this statement: Honey Badger is NOT your hero. It's tempting to think of all the upside you can get if you put a bunch of cards into your deck to ready her over and over and boost her stats, and while this is exciting and will lead to some crazy turns and stories about how you readied X-23 6 times in one turn, it will also lead to your deck being way more inconsistent. X-23 does so much work by herself, so it's always best to focus on boosting X-23, and having Honey Badger there to help make her a bit better.

• Through my games it became more and more evident that X-23 for the most part wants to play super low to the ground. She isn't a hero to build a large resource engine, her cards are all so cheap that it's better to try to lower the overall cost curve of your deck instead of trying to add in a bunch of resource generation. Just go cheap and X-23 will do the rest of the work.

• Do not forget that X-23's alter ego ability draws you a card. I actually missed this for a lot of the games this project (I think I realized it during the Red Skull box), and it really changes gameplay decisions. As wild as this seems, there was a lot of times I chose to discard Honey Badger turn one to help play a setup card just so I could shuffle her back in to get a free card. If you count your cards ahead well enough you can flip and shuffle her or Sisterly Bond back in and guarantee you'll have it next turn. Although most of the time I would suggest waiting until the next turn to do it to go up to seven cards.

• A big part of evaluating new heroes is how they interact with their obligation or their nemesis set. If you aren't going all in on Honey Badger, X-23 has maybe one of the least impactful obligations in the game. Self-Isolation takes Honey Badger and you have to make a basic recovery to discard the obligation and Honey Badger. You generally want to make basic recoveries already in the game, so you just naturally get rid of it and can immediately shuffle Honey Badger back into your deck to draw a card. It's a supremely inconsequential obligation depending on your deck build, the most annoying timing to draw it is when Honey Badger is in your hand, because then you lose a card. As far as her nemesis set goes, if it's mid to late game I just ignore Lady Deathstrike and the side scheme. You generally prefer to just leave Deathstrike out because it blanks Cyber Mods as well, although her 2 scheme does make it harder to flip. Hack n' Slash is supremely annoying, and Critical Would is a pretty messed up card, although I think that's more dangerous in multiplayer games than in solo, because if it hits a hero that can't ready that is low on life they're just dead. The side scheme is the biggest obstacle, especially if you hit it early, but late game you can use the retaliate to your advantage by popping your claws before your first attack and readying from the retaliate damage. In general the 6 threat on that scheme is a pain to deal with, and it's a good target for an Animal Instinct play.

• You don't ALWAYS have to use your ability. You almost always do, but sometimes it's correct to just chill.

• If your option is to discard Honey Badger or Pain Tolerance to pay for a card, choose to discard Honey Badger. Pain Tolerance is arguably your best long term investment, allowing you to stay alive and in hero mode for longer. Sisterhood is a harder choice, but I would still be inclined to play Pain Tolerance first, but less likely to discard Sisterhood as a resource for it.

• You don't always have to use your allies to chump block. Sometimes you can just let them go to consequential damage, especially if they have a 2 stat! X-23 has a lot of reason to block herself, especially when you have Adamantium Lacing out and gain retaliate.

• Keep on top of threat. It might be tempting to go all in on damage, and you can get away with it to an extent, but you do like to flip down a couple times a game and it's best to make sure the main scheme is a clean slate when you do, just to be safe. You have a pretty good outlet with her 2 thwart, and since her attack isn't strong without her boost from the claws you are inclined to thwart for 2 then take the damage to ready a more powerful attack.

Deck Strategy: Protection

I always thought that protection would possibly be the best home for X-23, as controlling the damage that she takes from outside sources and having more access to healing seem to be things that she would want, and that was correct. While I think leadership is the "best" aspect for X-23, she is amazing in all four, and protection might be my favorite. The strategy of the deck is to establish a protective shell around X-23 to allow her to freely block and punch back hard. Stay alive longer with your protection events, deal consistent damage through blocking with retaliate and Electrostatic Armor and Counter Punch, leading to a huge turn with Repurpose (keep an Energy Barrier around if you possibly can for this). Of all the X-23 decks in this series, protection has the hardest time flipping to alter-ego consistently, so the extra healing and damage prevention that protection offers is a natural fit for the deck. You miss out on a lot of the classic protection cards though. You don't want tough statuses, and you aren't built to take advantage of the "if you don't take damage" cards.

Total Losses: 8 (Mutagen Formula, Ebony Maw, Sabretooth x2, Magog x2, Mojo, On the Run)

Card Choices

Daredevil/Machine Man/Starhawk: protection simply doesn't thwart as well as some of the other aspects, which is part of the reason for playing Daredevil and Machine Man, who both do or can have good thwart stats. I've never once used Daredevil's ability, but he is 2 cost for 4 total thwart in X-23 which is great. Importantly they all have the physical resource type, which is a requirement for What Doesn't Kill Me, one of the best cards in the whole deck. Starhawk in particular is great at that because you can control bouncing him back to your hand if you need the resource for What Doesn't Kill Me.

Momentum Shift/What Doesn't Kill Me: Great ways to actively heal while getting benefits. These cards are always solid, the downside generally being if you can't heal 2 damage you can't play the card. Luckily that's not a problem for X-23, who can take 2 damage each turn if you'd like. Having a 5 card hand with a Claw Mastery and What Doesn't Kill Me in it is unbelievable. The net effect of that turn is 13 damage to the villain and no damage to you, and that's without Honey Badger on the table. Throw in a Repurpose and really go to town.

Electrostatic Armor/Counter-Punch/Energy Barrier: This is your kit, along with Adamantium Lacing, for attacking the villain even on their own turn. The thing with Counter-Punch is that it's rare to find heroes that actively want to defend that also have a high enough attack to justify playing the card. Because your claws and Claw Mastery are both end of round effects and not end of phase (Repurpose too), it goes into the villain turn, so you can wallop them pretty hard with a Counter-Punch. It's not uncommon for the villain to take 6 damage in the mid-late game with a Counter-Punch alongside retaliate and Armor and Barrier damage. Of course Barrier and Armor are our tech cards for Repurpose, which is an extra reason I'm playing 2 copies of Armor, even though you can only have 1 in play, I wanted another cheap tech that I could feel good about discarding to a value Repurpose, and it's such a good card to have early it was worth it.

X-Force Recruit: This is standard across most of my decks, but I prefer X-Force Recruit over the other ally buff cards, mainly the X-Men training cards, because I can throw them on any ally for extra use, and can even put it on X-23 herself if I just want the extra HP and an easy Caught Off Guard discard. Plus it gets Honey Badger up to 3 HP, which is important because it allow a First Aid to get full use in healing her. I just don't have any other permanent X-Men allies in the deck to justify running a Protective Training.

Cards I Tested But Cut

Iron Fist: Iron Fist is an amazing card for solo play, giving you up to 8 damage and two stuns. However as I said earlier, X-23 likes to be low to the ground and his 4 cost was often prohibitive, plus we are a retaliate/Counter-Punch deck, so the damage dealt by Iron Fist isn't as big in comparison. If you do want Iron Fist I would cut a copy of Counter-Punch for him, it's not wrong to do, especially because we are already playing 2x The Power of Protection. Some scenarios he thrives in, like Magog.

Nightcrawler: I tried Nightcrawler as an alternative to the other allies with physical resources, thinking if I saw my hand needed a physical resource I could bounce him back to hand a soak an attack, and that having another X-Men character in the deck could better enable Protective Training. But because X-23 has low economy it was just never right to actually play Nightcrawler

Armored Vest: I had one for a long time, but ended up cutting it. One of the worst scenarios with X-23 is you block the villain expecting to take damage and you take 0 due to a blank boost card, and Armored Vest made that more likely.

Angel's Aerie: This is a great card for heroes that defend a lot. It's not an unreasonable card to play, but as I said before you try not to flip to alter-ego much, and it's easy enough to use her 6 recover when you do, this card just didn't make the cut. In multiplayer I would absolutely include it though.

Med Team/Elixer: More expensive cards that got cut as I went. I thought Elixer would be cool because he could continuously heal the 1 damage off of Honey Badger and then I could use First Aid or Med Team on him to bring him back to 0. It actually is good when it gets going, but too often Elixer found his way into the discard pile after spending him to play a more impactful card. Med Team is good though, and could be included instead of 1x Momentum Shift

Taunt: I had this card in for a while and it was always terrible. I think it can be a very good card in some decks, but you need multiple extra benefits to stack, and X-23 just doesn't have those things. She can ready after blocking, but there was just always things I'd rather be doing with my actions than net +1 card

Specialized Training: I'm going to have this in every writeup, but I don't use this card because I just hate the design, it feels so lazy and generic, especially for heroes that can easily clear it in solo on a single turn like X-23 (she can clear it with a single Animal Instinct). If you're just going for power than sure, cut any card in the deck for it because it'll break the game with X-23, I just really dislike the design so much I didn't want to play with it.

Conclusion

This is a great deck to play that can certainly tackle any challenge put in front of it. Of all my X-23 decks this is the one that utilizes Honey Badger the least, but she'll still do great work for you.