Rogue - Queen of Status Lock

TLDR:

• Thin out your deck to reliably get events to confuse, stun, and get tough status cards.

• Laugh at the villain as they are unable to attack or scheme.

This deck was born of the idea of deck thinning, aggressively. Rogue is the best candidate for this for a few reasons:

1. Touched counts towards your deck size, so you effectively have a deck size of 39 before you even start playing.

2. Rogue's events are very good and very flexible. If you are up against Steady/stalwart villain you can just use your events in a different way.

3. She is equally good at thwarting and damaging, so no need to add more cards and use her in any aspect.

The challenge with Rogue is knowing when to put Touched on the villain and when to put it on an ally. As many have noticed, and mentioned frequently on the people's podcast, Bulletproof Belle only works if Touched is on the villain or minion. Worst case scenario, you put touched on an ally, use superpower adaptation, finish the player phase, then draw into Bulletproof Belle and be unable to use it.

That is why I landed on Justice and Upside the Head. If you decide to put touched on an ally you can use Upside the Head to confuse the villian and switch to AE or, if they are already confused, stun them and stay in Hero.

Another Challenge with Rogue is that you need allies to trigger Superpower Adaptation. In a 2+ player count you can use on other players, but in solo you need allies. Then you need events that correspond to each Ally type. When you use Superpower Adaptation...

...if you have Gambit in play, grab any of Rogue's amazing events. Whatever will help you.

...if you have a basic ally in play, you can grab Beauty and the Thief for 4 attack and 4 threat removal, or grab Mutant education and switch down to AE and get those amazing rogue events back in the deck.

...if you have a Justice Ally, grab Upside the head to confuse or stun.

Ultimately, I found that most of the time I could keep most villains in status lock and when I couldn't, I recover in AE. Between Goin' Rogue and Upside the Head you confuse regularly to safely switch down...even in Solo.

Future thoughts:

This deck could also work in Aggression. I would use less allies and use Superpower Adaptation on Gambit and just accept that it may be a dead card sometimes. In Leadership, I would use Ready for Action to keep putting toughs on my allies and blocking. This would keep them in play for the purposes of deck-thinning and keep them around for Tough-Blocking. I'm avoiding using her in protection because it would be too easy to deck thin with her in green.

EDIT: After playing a few more games with this deck. I have decided that White Queen isn't super useful, at least here. I found I only ever used Superpower adaptation with Gambit or the Justice Allies. I would drop the following:

1x White Queen 1x Forge 1x Colossus 1x Beauty and the Thief

I'm not sure what to swap out for, but anything that can get the deck size smaller. Dazzler and Professor X are never bad options. I am open to suggestions.