Cable Diplomatic Intervention

Introduction

This deck exploits the inherent power and natural synergies of Cable and Gunboat Diplomacy.

It's been done before and with good reason.

• Gunboat requires one X-Men and one X-Force, preferably with high THW.
• Cable satisfies the X-Force and can easily get up to 4 THW.
• Cable loves Player Side Schemes, so Gunboat always has a valuable target even if the villain's schemes are under control.

This is my personal spin on the concept. It is specifically tweaked for En Sabah Nur in a 3-player setting, but I would be happy to bring it against most scenarios and player counts.

The Plan

Ramp, control, obliterate.

• Tell people you are playing Cable. They may want to modify their decks to take advantage of Build Support, Call for Backup, and Lock and Load. Especially Build Support.
• Don't be the first player. In fact, be the last player so your teammates can set you up for an explosive first round.
• Mulligan for a way to finish Build Support round one. If you start with Build Support, discard it on purpose.
• Put Build Support into play with Soldier X.
• Recruit your teammates to chip away at Build Support as needed, but make sure Cable finishes it so he can use his Hero ability to ready.
• Get Graymalkin. Everybody else gets a Helicarrier or better. We're rich!
• Try to get an X-Men ally into play early. We need valid targets for Mission Training and Gunboat Diplomacy.
• Play and defeat play side schemes as fast as possible without neglecting the board. This ramps Mind Scan and accelerates the team's ability to build out.
• Once we have 4-5 cards in the victory display, pump the brakes on player side schemes. Beyond a certain point we're just making our nemesis more lethal.
• Once we have both X-Men and X-Force allies on the board (or Children of the Atom), we'll generally want to use Gunboat Diplomacy on them instead of Cable.
• Once fully built out, our Gunboat Diplomacy will do 8 thwart and 8 damage. Mind Scan will do 7-9 thwart and Telekinetic Blast will do 10-12 damage.

A note on the 'boat

Gunboat Diplomacy may be the most powerful card printed to date. It is important to note, however, that Gunboat is not here to help us thwart faster. Do not keep it in the first round.

Gunboat only does the thwarting we were going to do anyway. The real benefit is dealing massive damage, preventing consequential damage for allies, and being able to split our thwarting and damage surgically at a ridiculously cheap cost.

Apocalypse-specific notes

• No Confuse because we have to worry about Stalwart.
• Apocalypse's side schemes have nasty effects when defeated, so we're not bringing One Way or Another.

Allies

We need a healthy serving of X-Men with a side of X-Force. Bonus points for Psionic.

• Gambit frequently grabs a 3-boost encounter card against Apocalypse, which can make him our favorite Gunboat target. He can also take a particularly nasty encounter card out of the deck and just sit on it.
• Marvel Girl, Professor X, Blindfold, and White Queen are Psionic X-Men with high THW. They are solid Gunboat targets and keep Cerebro at full power.
• Pete Wisdom is our preferred X-Force target for Gunboat. We can eventually boost him to 4 THW with Children of the Atom and Mission Training.
• Deadpool is the best X-Force stat stick.
• Spider-Man is honestly just here for the fun factor. He can solo clear any of our Player Side Schemes on round 1 and it's just a hilarious moment. Feel free to cut him to make the deck even leaner.

Events

• Gunboat Diplomacy is the only event we need.

Player Side Schemes

• Build Support is our top priority for ramping the table's economy/power.
• Call for Backup is just solid value, but it's a relatively low priority PSS.
• Establish Perimeter is relatively cheap way to ramp our victory display and has a nice effect.
• Lock and Load grabs our Plasma Rifle.
• Superpower Training has numerous strong targets depending on what we need in the moment.

Supports

• Cerebro helps us get Gunboat Diplomacy online and keep it online. It doubles as a resource generator whenever we need to flip down. It will almost always be at full power due to our ally composition, and we can also power it ourselves with Technovirus Purge.
• Children of the Atom allows us to use any two allies for Gunboat Diplomacy. It also allows us to put Mission Training on Pete Wisdom.

Upgrades

• Deft Focus is a fantastic resource generator for Cable.
• Heroic Intuition helps us boost Cable's THW. We'll get a ton of mileage out of it between Gunboat and readying with our hero ability.
• Mission Training will be placed on our Gunboat Diplomacy targets.
• Overwatch is pretty amazing in a deck loaded with Player Side Schemes, although it's arguably overkill.
• Skilled Investigator will give us value nearly every turn. It's tempting to bring extra copies for other players.

Special mentions

• You could add For Justice or Even the Odds (depending on player count) to help improve the odds of clearing Build Support on round 1. However, keep in mind these cards will be rapidly out-scaled by our other thwarting events.
• I wouldn't recommend adding more Player Side Schemes, but you could definitely replace some of them according to your preferences.