Mrs. Green Jean Raises a Barn with her Cerebro Toolbox

Ceeerrrrebro is the card for me! //Tutor only Allies that you need! //Reeecycle them when you are done //With three copies of X-Men Instruction!

The latest round of X-Decks and the Age of Apocalypse box added a couple of strong but very situational Allies to Team X in Shadowcat and White Queen. We also got an ally in Triage who is more broadly useful, but would be especially nice to draw at exactly the right time.

Luckily, there's already an X-card designed to draw exactly the ally you need at exactly the right time in Cerebro. The one drawback is that you need to play one of the two Psionic X-Heroes in order to tutor an ally instead of just searching your top five cards for one.

Making the case for Phoenix over Psylocke is one more new and amazing ally, Rogue, who cares a great deal about our hero's printed stats. Psylocke's PRINTED stats are locked in at one apiece regardless of your Psi-weapon shenanigans, but Phoenix comes with a whopping three THW, netting you five THW per turn with Rogue for at least three turns. We can keep Rogue around even longer for even more THW value with Triage and Protective Training without compromising our core toolbox functionality.

As for the other allies, a full three copies of X-Men Instruction allow us to use those sometimes-foods to pay for our other cards without worrying about being able to find them again when the time is right. Access to Shadowcat means our team won't lose to a loaded Main Scheme just because we popped a Crisis, and she can also turn off Hazard to reduce our chances of hitting our nasty Obligation. White Queen keeps nasty status ailments from spoiling our or our allies' fun. Professor X is a toolbox in and of himself, and Forge gets our engine going with both Cerebro and X-Mansion (and after that we can safely spend him whenever we draw him).

The result is a Phoenix deck that, while nominally a Protection deck, can fill the Justice role on any multiplayer team right up until it's time to start smashing face, at which point we go Unleashed and start throwing buffed Psychic Blasts and Telepathic Trickerys alongside Psimitar pings. One of my favorite cards of the last year, Stepford Cuckoos, gives us cover when we're Unleashed: the sisters can't negate our actual Obligation, unfortunately, but they can negate Fiery Rage to keep Consume the World under control. Remember that Rogue gets buffed based on your PRINTED THW, so even while Jean is Unleashed, Rogue can still clear five from Consume the World.

If you're still worried about that OTHER Jean Grey and aren't satisfied with Stepford Cuckoos, access to green means you can add the Black Widow ally. You can't tutor for her with Cerebro, but once she is on board, the deck has plenty of Genius and Wild resources to pay for her ability to cancel Burning Hunger.

The basic structure of the deck is very adaptable, so feel free to put together scenario-appropriate toolboxes. Quick ideas:

-Polaris for heavy-hitting villains like Juggernaut -Marrow for scenarios with loads of small minions -Nightcrawler for villains that threaten your allies