The Painted Gunboat

This deck is quickly becoming a favorite of mine and will likely be a strong candidate to bring to the Con of Heroes.

What does it do? It puts out allies who are good at thwarting, improves them, and then capitalizes on those improved stats with Gunboat Diplomacy.

Other than the Posse members, all the allies have a THW 2 or higher. The X-Men can then benefit from Mission Training, made easier by the Danger Room. But once you get Children of the Atom into play, your X-Force allies benefit from both of those cards as well. You can also drop X-Force Recruit on your Posse members, opening them up to Mission Training as well. Sadly, they cannot benefit from Danger Room as they will not be X-Men when they enter play.

Children of the Atom also gives you way more combinations of characters to exhaust for Gunboat Diplomacy.

While you are setting up all of this, Domino defends and blasts away with her Domino's Pistol cards as well as Sharpshooter, plus her excellent events and deck control. She can also contribute to Gunboat Diplomacy, but you will likely want to have Heroic Intuition on her before you do, as her base THW is only 1.

While this deck's namesake, The Painted Lady, does not feature heavily in it's strategy, getting it into play will give you way more flexibility with setting up the combinations of cards needed to pull off your best Gunboat Diplomacy plays.