Meeting the Master of Magnetism

Meeting the Master of Magnetism: In this case, meeting him again and again and again.

If you'd like to see a discussion of this deck, see the following video: Magneto Protection Deck Discussion with Community Help | Meeting the Master of Magnetism

Thank you to the content creators who made the following suggestions for building this deck:

SmoothieBrainGaming (https://www.youtube.com/@smoothiebraingaming) for suggesting including a resource sink and other ways to ready, which led to the inclusion of Lockjaw and Indomitable.

Solo Marvel Champion (https://www.youtube.com/@solomarvelchampion) for the suggesting Armor and additional defense that also deals damage, which also contributed to the addition of Indomitable and more allies.

Daring Lime (https://www.youtube.com/@DaringLime), who not only had some suggestions but also threw together a sample deck with some possibilities, which led to the addition of Utopia, Beak, Professor X, and Forge.

VILLAINS TESTED AGAINST (and UNDEFEATED) (in both standard and expert): Klaw; Taskmaster; Red Skull, and the Magneto villain

NOTABLE ELEMENTS OF PLAY:

Dead Hand Insurance: Lockjaw and Nightcrawler.

Those of you who've played Magneto enough times know that he can be prone to having dead hands due to a combination of his Wrapped in Metal, Magnetic Missile, and Master of Magnetism cards, combined with discarding non-identity cards with his hero ability, Magnetic Pull.

Lockjaw is the more obvious of the two, but if you have Nightcrawler in play and draw into a dead hand, you can make sure to to use his ability on defense to bring him back into your hand to play again the next turn.

Be Ready and Re-Ready: During the Villain phase, it is sometimes beneficial to have Magneto defend for himself, whether because he had Magnetic Bubble in play with Retaliate, or because he wanted to allow an ally to have an extra activation, or due to necessity. Indomitable made this an easy decision to make without sacrificing one of Magneto's activations on his own turn, often allowing him to attack or thwart three times when combined with What Doesn't Kill Me and Utopia.

If Specialized Training had been defeated, and Combat Specialist chosen, then he had a number of times where he attacked for 3, 4, and 4 (11 points altogether) through the combined use of Magneto's Cape and Magneto's Armor, and What Doesn't Kill Me, or playing an X-Men ally with Utopia in play, the latter facilitated by an abundance of X-Men allies.

Critical Resource Generator: The X-Jet.

The X-Jet generally facilitated the play of many cards; however, it ensures that one always has a physical resource available for What Doesn't Kill Me and an energy resource available for Nightcrawler. Build Support and Forge helped assure its play despite the possibility of its discardation from Magneto's hero ability.

Extra Activations for Allies: Because Magneto sometimes could defend for himself or even wanted to be damaged to facilitate playing What Doesn't Kill Me, it was handy to allow the allies to have extra activations at times, especially Polaris, Nightcrawler, or Lockjaw. The one copy of Honorary X-Men allowed this to happen for all three of these allies, and Protective Training for any X-Men ally. Often these cards weren't necessary and were just used as resources instead. I could understand, though, anyone wanting to reduce this deck to 40 cards by removing them.

Conclusion:

If you want a strong control deck that can deal regular damage throughout the game, then this is a great choice for protection. It is highly flexible for the needs of the moment, while providing an adjustable amount of damage mitigation as well. It can also provide damage bursts of about 18-22 points when needed to defeat the villain.