I'm Very Protective, Bub

Wolverine's a pretty unique hero.

He's the best there is at what he does and what he does is not very nice. That's kind of the point though, we want to turn bubs into shish kebab before finally going snikt on the big bad.

Wolverine's Claws allows us to play his awesome attack events at the cost of HP, but it's a tough resource to manage without flipping to Alter-Ego every turn, as you're likely to pay 2-3 HP for the event with the Claws and then have to deal with an attack from the villain for 4 or more. And we really don't want to basic defend every single turn with him either.

So, what do we do?

Well, this deck is all about keeping the resource that his HP going so we can kick ass and chew bub-blegum.

In comes "Come Get Me, Bub!". It's a very interesting card, mainly meant to support the new Change of Fortune deck with killing minions in the villain phase, but this deck is not about that.

Instead we'll be looking to use it to get us through villain phases relatively unharmed and still make use of Wolverine's Healing Factor to heal for 2 after the player phase begins.

"Come Get Me, Bub!"

Let's start off with one of the central cards of what makes this deck pretty damn awesome.

I've always liked Berserker Frenzy, but often it was hard to trigger the effect without, well, defending as well and not die to the villain's attack.

"Come Get Me, Bub!" fixes this by giving us a tough status to absorb the villain's attack and then letting the minion hit us for 1 or 2 damage and trigger Berserker Frenzy's draw 1. Then during the player phase, Wolverine will heal for 2 and we're ready to snikt some more bubs.

This means we get a pseudo 6 card hand in Hero form whenever we get to play "Come Get Me, Bub!" after Berserker Frenzy is on the table. Since we're only taking a couple damage a turn on most turns, that means Berserker Frenzy sticks around for a while unless we're forced to go to Alter-Ego.

That's extremely powerful, especially since we can play any of our awesome attacks for free if we happen to have them on hand.

This entire sequence also allows Wolverine to keep his basic activation to control threat or make sure any bubs don't stick around too long by attacking them without 'wasting' something like Slice and Dice on them.

Healing Factor

Alright, so we know our HP is a resource.

Outside of "Come Get Me, Bub!", we have Regenerative Healing in Wolverine's kit to either heal up a bunch or get rid of any nasty status cards that keep us from making shish kebab (or thwarting. Thwarting is important after all).

There's also Triage, but we're unlikely to use Triage to heal good ol' man Logan. More on that in a bit.

Then there's Med Team, a trusty old card that can provide Wolverine, or one of our trusty allies, with a nice 2 HP heal.

To further mitigate damage, there's Energy Barrier. It might not seem like much at first, but it is surprisingly effective, especially to soften up bubs for the eventual snikt. There is another important interaction with Energy Barrier, but we'll get to that in the next section.

With A Little Help From My Friends

We got a total of 8 allies, including Wolverine's signature ally Jubilee. We're running all X-Men in part to make use of Utopia, a card that most of you probably know.

Utopia's great, but it's not really here for the ally limit increase...most of the time. Instead, the readying is what gives this deck a lot of power. Chances are though, we're not using it to ready Wolverine unless we really have to or have no other targets for it.

Armor and Polaris are here to cover us on turns where we don't have "Come Get Me, Bub!" to keep us alive.

Beak is just an amazing cheap ally and often will remove 3 threat in this deck when he hits the field, 4 if you're lucky, as well as providing another blocker should we not be able to deal with the villain's attack otherwise.

Triage as mentioned before, is great for the heal, but will most likely be used on another ally instead of Wolverine himself.

Northstar is one of those allies that likes the heal. Being able to exchange one damage on an ally for roughly -2 damage taken on Wolverine is pretty big. You manage to hit one of the triple boosts with him, it's even more value and helps keep Wolverine at a healthy amount of HP to throw more Lunging Strikes at the villain.

Gambit is a really solid card and even at 2/2, he will be putting in work. Not only that, he'll also be manipulating the villain phase to a certain degree, which gives us valuable information on just what kind of attack we might have to take to Wolverine's face.

Finally, we have Rogue. Our hard hitting Southern Belle that suits Wolverine so well because of his 2/2 stat line and Healing Factor to make the 1 damage dealt to him practically nothing if we get the fastball special rolling.

However, Rogue has another important interaction that pushes her over the edge, if you ask me. You see, healing the damage with Wolverine's healing factor is nice, but that isn't healed up until the next player phase. Should we have an Energy Barrier out though? That 1 damage suddenly gets reflected to an enemy of our choice!

You see, Rogue only cares about dealing 1 damage to a friendly character, but not about that character actually taking that 1 damage. As listed under Damage in the Rules Reference Guide: "When the amount of damage a character takes is modified (such as by damage being prevented), the amount of damage dealt is not modified".

So, as long as we have an Energy Barrier on the field, Rogue touching Wolverine basically turns into 1 damage to an enemy while still giving Rogue that awesome 4 THW/4 ATK stat line.

Add in Utopia's ability to ready, and you suddenly have a lot of damage and thwarting packed in our lovely Southern Belle.

To further fuel this, the deck runs 2 copies of Protective Training. The +3 HP from this is amazing for Rogue, but also for Gambit and Northstar. Likewise, all three of them really enjoy a good bit of first aid from Med Team.

Goin' Rogue

Is this secretly a Rogue deck rather than a Wolverine deck?

A little bit, as my starting point was definitely "Who can give good stats to Rogue at minimal cost or maximum benefit?". There's some other options, but I liked the idea of also having Wolverine with "Come Get Me, Bub!" and this is the current end result.

I've tested it against several scenarios and it's been pretty effective. Definitely could use a broader range of testing, especially to see if it can keep up with scenarios that require a lot of thwarting.

Most notable scenario I've beaten with it though, is Expert Magneto. He wished he could just tear Wolverine a new one, but between the different ways to get Tough and the amount of healing we do and one beefed up Rogue, it was pretty easy to manage the board in his scenario and Wolverine can just throw a ton of damage out once we're ready to do so.

There's probably certain scenarios it will have a tougher time with and it's not always as straight forward as Lunging Strike, "Come Get Me, Bub!", Berserker Frenzy, especially when minions have Teamwork or something else that messes with you. You will have to show restraint sometimes and not use "Come Get Me, Bub!"

I am considering finding a spot for Superpower Training, if only because it provides a ton of value when cleared by Track by Scent and all 3 of Wolverine's upgrades ("I Got Better", Adamantium Skeleton and Berserker Frenzy) are really good to grab.

You may also be wondering, where's Charles?! And obviously he's a very good card in this deck as well. I'm trying to have only two decks built with him in it and that meant not including him in this one. Think his power is more than high enough to warrant being card #41 in this list or to have something swapped out for him.

The two copies of The Power of Protection have really helped smooth out turns for playing allies and Med Team and Energy Barrier, so I'd be a little reluctant to cut one, but it is an option if you feel you must play Professor X or Superpower Training.

I've also tried Game Time, for those sweet, sweet Rogue activations, but I often found them dead cards in my hand and opted to not use them in this build in the end.

In conclusion, the deck has been a lot of fun to play and I'm loving the interactions between "Come Get Me, Bub!" and Berserker Frenzy, as well as Rogue and Energy Barrier. I might refine it in the future, but the list as-is has worked really well for me.