RogueHawk

I must admit, when I first saw the new Rogue ally card, I was a bit underwhelmed. For a pretty typical 4-cost 2/2/3 ally, I thought her ability was pretty unremarkable. I figured the general meta around this card would be to target your hero to boost Rogue. It's good for Spider-Ham of course, but didn't seem too special otherwise to me. I guess, if you targeted an ally, you could 'steal' their stats, but then what exactly would have been different than if you just used the ally in the first place?

But then as I was watching some of Nelson's streams last week, I realized that you could target an ally that was exhausted. At first, I figured this meant I could get extra value out of Nick Fury or Professor X, but then realized that Starhawk would be an amazing target, especially if played with Storm.

Starhawk already has a pretty awesome combo on the turn after you play him originally where you can THW1 or ATK2 to deal the exact damage needed to return him to your hand. Then you play him again and activate again. Essentially, for 2 ER, you get two activations. It's pretty fair value, but something you can reliably do every turn.

Now put that into a Storm deck with Thunderstorm out, and Starhawk can attack for 3. However what is special now is that you can get a 3rd activation by using Rogue to deal that damage to Starhawk and play him another time each round. Plus, Rogue gets to keep the stat boost until the end of the round, which really combo's well with Game Time.

Here's a sample turn:

• Starhawk starts in play with 2 damage. He thwarts for 1 and gets returned to hand
• Play Starhawk fresh and ATK3
• Use Rogue to ATK5, targeting Starhawk to add his PRINTED ATK2
• Return Starhawk to hand
• Play Starhawk again and ATK3
• Use Gametime to ready Rogue and ATK5 again

All of this above would cost a typical 5-card hand, and would provide 16 ATK and 1 THW. That's amazing damage. Plus, if you have the ability to use any of the 8 double-resource cards that can play Starhawk, you'll be able to play even more cards.

This deck is really all about the RogueHawk combo, so more of the other cards can be replaced if you wish. I'm running Northstar to try and eliminate boost cards so Storm can run a perfect defense with Storm's Cape and the Armored Vest to trigger Unflappable. However, running a ton of 2-cost X-men Allies would also work really well.

Ultimately, this is all about getting a ton of attack out of Rogue and Starhawk, and you'll be able to do this consistently, If you've seen some of my posted decks before, you'll know that I love combos that are reliable to play again and again, and this one will fit that mold. Doesn't take much to get going as all you need is the RogueHawk cards.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I do. As always, love for you to give this deck a like or a comment.

Until next time Champions...