Ace in the Hole

I want to start off by saying you want to live in Alter Ego for the majority of the game. There are a total of 24 cards that you can drop in Alter Ego. I started off play testing some of the more popular decks and quickly realized I wanted to take full advantage of Gambit's Alter Ability which I think is the best Alter Ego ability in the game. This meant putting in as many cards as I could to keep threat low in Alter mode. Cards like Surveillance Team, Breaking and Entering, Under Surveillance, Creole Charmer, and ALL the Allies thwart for a minimum of 2! This build will allow you to always keep threat low, never worry about too many side schemes and only flip to hero mode when it is super beneficial to you! You can take full advantage of Cerebro, X-Mansion, Weapon X, and Mutant Education like never before!

The Ace in the Hole!! Especially for SOLO play Under Surveillance is MVP. I'll focus on the Core set for the examples. But this card single handedly beats Rhino, takes so much pressure off of Klaw, and can be a game saver for Ultron's 3rd scheme.

When do you go to HERO??

Because of Gambit's Thief Extraordinaire you will always know (in solo) what the Villain's Boost card is going to be and with Gambit's 3 Defense you can almost always plan it so that when you flip to Hero you should be able to just block it all by setting a 1 power boost card on top. Most Villain's have an attack of just 2 (without attachments) so picking the Boost card is insane. If you also happen to have the Villain confused you will know the encounter card your going to get all before you start playing any cards! Also flipping when you have Natural Agility in your hand is one of the safest times to flip as well!

You will need to build counters on Gambit's Hero Side but you are going to do this strategically! You want to flip once Early in the game after you have manipulated the encounter deck to make sure you wont take any damage, and start building counters. You will always get at least 2 every time you flip. The turn you flip to Hero and the beginning of the next turn before you flip back to Alter. Always Always try to make sure you take full advantage of Molecular Acceleration by using that double resource in Hero mode.

Once you have safely built up some counters on Gambit, Royal Flushand Charged Card become super powerful and will just burn the Villain down. And you will be able to play these MULTIPLE TIMES RELIABLY with the X-Mansion and Mutant Education combo. Putting two of your best cards back in your deck and then replacing itself is just insane value!

X-Mansion is a work horse in this deck. For a deck that lives in Alter Ego and so many Allies that thwart for two you can keep Ally's out there for so long, just keeping threat low allowing you to buy time for you huge attack turns.

Speaking of Allies this is probably the best deck to utilize Longshot ability. With being able to manipulate the top two cards with your Alter ability placing a boost card on top of the deck becomes easy! This is really beneficially for some of the tougher non elites in the game.

A tip for Multiplayer. Under Surveillance is extremely powerful in 1 and 2 player games. Once you start getting into 3 and 4 player games switch out Under Surveillance for Mission Training and take full advantage of your allies!

Hope you enjoy!