Minions Are Insignificant

One of the first things I do after a get a new Hero Pack is figure out a new aspect I want to try them in, especially if there's a thematic hook for them. With Magneto, I immediately thought of Polaris, the only one of his children without her own Hero Deck and I decided I wanted to try Erik in protection. Magneto is already quite suited to this aspect as is: Magneto's Cape gives you a free ready every turn so you want to defend, and Magneto's Armor can reliably boost his defense to 3, especially with all the Energy resources that tend to populate Protection decks. And while Erik does get a nice benefit when he goes to Alter Ego, most of the time you don't want to flip him if you can avoid it, making him a good candidate for the aspect that keeps you in Hero Mode.

Magneto also has potent Minion hate in Wrapped in Metal, so I thought I'd give him a little bit more with Pinned Down. Magneto wants to focus his defends against the villain, getting extra damage with Magnetic Bubble, Electrostatic Armor and Riposte, giving him some viable offensive pressure when you don't have a minion to check at the villain with Magnetic Missile. Since Magneto wants minions in play to put these cards on, "Come Get Me, Bub!" was a natural fit into the gameplan. Since I realized the deck was leaning that way anyway with Polaris, I decided to lean into the Tough Cards strategy with Hard Knocks to give Erik more Toughs when he needs it and a little more mid-range offense.

With all of these Tough cards, Magneto should be able to take hits to the face and get just a little bit more out of his great Basic stats. He should also be more than willing to take hits instead of his allies, so we can use those less for blocking and get more out of their stats. Chief among them all is Rogue, who will be using her ability to either take Magneto's stats, the crazy offense of Colossus or the insane thwarting of Professor X to serve as the unofficial "sidekick" of this deck. Or, perhaps most thematically, taking the potentially monstrous stats of Gambit. With Protective Training on Rogue and another ally, you've got a force that will stay around for a long time.

The rest of the deck just fills some niche weaknesses. I like Hard to Ignore passively eliminating threat as you do what you want to do anyway, Defensive Stance is good for dealing with incidental damage that you can't defend against, Northstar has a really useful effect that can save your game at critical moments. Ever Vigilant is useful as soon as your Cape is in play and lets you ready more, which makes Magneto feel even more powerful.