Iceman's Giant Snowball

With this deck you'll Frostbite the villain 4 or 5 times nearly every turn and laugh as Steady and Steadfast become meaningless.

Many people are going to look at this list and wonder:

Why is it running SEVEN resource generators, another five resources, plus 3 card drawers. If this is an aggression deck, where are the attacks? TWO team-building exercises? Those can't even be used together.

Here's the thing: by running all of this, Iceman gets to have explosive turns.

But, isn't Iceman's strength that he can play tempo really well?

Yes! And the beauty of this is that with relatively average draws he'll start the game playing 2 or 3 cards from the first turn and by the end of the game he'll be playing 4 or 5 cards every single turn. With this set up it's easy to attach 4 or 5 Frostbites in a turn then you flip down and take advantage of Bobby Drake's cool off ability to shuffle most of Iceman's events back into your deck to drastically increase the chances of doing it again the next turn.

Resource Generators

For simplicity sake I'm going to refer to Helicarrier, Team-Building Exercise, The X-Jet, Deft Focus, X-Gene, and Power Belt as your "Resource Generators" in the rest of this write up.

Ok, but why TWO [Team-Building Exercises](/card/12024)

We all know how good this card is for Iceman, 14 cards in his kit have the "ice" trait, X-men allies benefit from it, and so do X-men supports. You can't use both of them to play a single card, but with 22 cards that share a trait with Iceman odds are really good you'll have 2 different cards that can benefit from Team-Building Exercise every turn. I've even toyed with slotting a third one in just to make sure it gets played early and often. The only reason I haven't is because after many test draws I found the only time the third one mattered was on draws that contained two different three cost cards.

Starting the Snowball

This deck is very flexible in it's opening. Ideally you want to get 2 resource generators in play on the first turn if you can manage it. Sometimes you'll need to deal with an obstacle in which case you might play one resource generator and play an event or ally instead. The best opening hands can get 2 resource generators AND an event or ally as well.

For example: Discard a double resource play Team-Building Exercise. Flip up, discard another double resource + activate Team-Building Exercise to play The X-Jet. Finally discard one of your 2 remaining cards and activate The X-Jet to play your final card which could be an ally, Chill Out!, or Arctic Attack. Or for a really crazy turn, another resource generator.

That's your best case scenario. But you'll only get 2 resource cards about 15% of the time. Most of the time you won't have anything like that. Instead focus on getting down whatever you happened to draw. Mulligan for resources and resource generators.

The priority on playing resource generators goes like this: The X-Jet = Helicarrier > Team-Building Exercise > Deft Focus = Power Belt > X-Gene. Though X-Gene is bottom priority its also the most annoying to play because you have to be in Alter-Ego so if you have an easy chance to do so you'll generally want to take it.

Don't be afraid to discard good cards just to get resource generators into play. You'll be glad you did very quickly. It should be noted Avengers Mansion is not a high priority. Play it on a turn where it doesn't stunt your hand to pay for it. You want to try to use all of your resources every turn and that means never ending a turn with 2+ cards in hand if you can manage it.

Your first few turns you might get hit by the villain for full damage. This is ok, your job initially is to get the snowball rolling as fast as you can. Once you do recovery is very easy. Aggressive Conditioning, Power Belt, and Triage will all help you bounce back rapidly. Plus Bobby Drake has a nice 4 recovery and flipping down isn't really a bad thing. In solo try to wait to flip down until Professor X has confused the villain or you have a Frozen Solid on them. Ice Wall is your ultimate safety card, but it's expensive so you ideally don't want to play it until the snowball has started getting big (when you can pay for it entirely with your resource generators).

The Snowball Grows

By roughly turn 3 or 4, you should be able to play at least one of your events with no discarding every single turn. This is where it really starts to get fun. When you can play multiple events in a turn, and if you can save Iceman's activations to attack the villain you can really easily pile on Frostbites while continuing to develop your board at the same time. Then when you flip back down to alter-ego you'll get to shuffle all those events back in, increasing your chances of drawing them all again the next turn.

Use your allies to defend you, even the amazing Shark-Girl or your Snow Clones. Later on they are going to be really strong, but for now use them to let you continue to primarily focus on setting up. The Snow Clones especially are great because you can shuffle them back in with Cool Off.

At this point your focus should be on getting all of your resource generators into play, getting your card drawing into play (Avengers Mansion, Cryokinetic Perception, and at a low priority Moira MacTaggert), or dealing with immediate threats.

You'll know this stage is done when at least one Snow Clone and/ or Shark-Girl are able to safely sit in play without needing to defend you.

The Snowball is Ready

So you've done all the set-up, now what? Your deck is much thinner by this point, which makes shuffling events back in work out great.

At this point you can drop any remaining supports or upgrades that you weren't able to play earlier. X-Mansion, Utopia, Combat Training, Aggressive Conditioning, Boot Camp and Attack Training are all very low priority cards that either get played when you need them or when you have extra resources to burn.

From here on out every turn... play every card in your hand. Flip sides every turn. When you flip down to alter-ego shuffle in whatever tools you need most (Frozen Solid, Arctic Attack, Chill Out!, Ice Blast, or Ice Wall). The next turn you get to flip up to hero and enjoy a 9 card hand (6 hand size, Moira MacTaggert, Cryokinetic Perception, and Avengers Mansion).

Resource Management

Managing your resource generators is important. You'll want to lightly plan out how to pay for all your cards in advance. Deft Focus and X-Gene only pay for your events at this point (Deft Focus played early can also pay for Cryokinetic Perception). Generally you want to pair Deft Focus and Team-Building Exercise for one event, and X-Gene and Team-Building Exercise for a second event. Finally you'll use Helicarrier, The X-Jet, and Power Belt to pay for Frozen Solid or Ice Blast. Go from hardest to use to easiest. Use Team-Building Exercise first. Leave Helicarrier and The X-Jet for last.

Slippery Situations

Most of the time we want to be attacking the villain to put as many Frostbites as we can on them. We never want Iceman to thwart under any circumstances (because you won't be able to trigger Cryokinetic Perception) and if we can avoid attacking minions, that's also worthwhile.

Handling Minions

Ice Blast and Snow Clone are the ideal cards for killing minions. The problem with attacking minions is when they leave play so does Frostbite and we want to stack those as hard as we can.

Defend Yourself(?)

In solo play Frozen Solid really shines. You can stack up Frostbite and have the villain skip their activation making getting all 6 into play a breeze. Even in multiplayer if someone else is stunning or confusing, with Frozen Solid out you can effectively deny 3 activations a turn. Frozen Solid stops one, the stun/ confusion stops one, and the third activation is at -4 or -5 making it mostly irrelevant.

Defending early on can be useful, but when you know you want to flip down to alter ego try not to defend. You want to go on the offense and get those Frostbites into play. Use your allies to defend instead when you can.

How to Handle Threat

Beak, Professor X, and Chill Out! are the only cards in the deck that deal with threat. While this may seem like a big issue, especially in Solo play, it works out surprisingly well. Frostbite slows threat accumulation, most turns you're only dealing with the basic accumulation. Frozen Solid and Professor X's ability to confuse can give you easy windows to flip down to alter ego safely. With such glacial threat accumulation you only need to play a Chill Out! every few turns to keep it in check. By late game you can shuffle your Chill Out! back into the deck if you really need it, and can reliably have one every turn.

3 or 4 Player Games

With a higher player count its harder to control where the activation with lots of Frostbite goes but every turn someone gets to benefit from it. That's what your allies are for. Someone at the table will always benefit. It might not be you, so a little more coordination might be needed in terms of defending for each other.

Specific Cards

Attack Training should go on Shark-Girl first, we want it to give her extra health so she can attack 2 more times. If you have that going, put the other one on a Snow Clone. This is a late-game card, early game use it as a resource unless you have nothing better to play.

X-Mansion is great for healing... Shark-Girl. You can use it on yourself too, but getting more Shark-Girl activations is everything.

Forge should get The X-Jet first, and beyond that whatever seems useful in the moment.

Its worth pointing out that Deft Focus can be used with Team-Building Exercise as long as you use it first.

Professor X is all great options. Early game confusing the villain lets you flip down safely. By late game readying Iceman will generally be the more useful option. Stunning a minion can be useful if you don't feel like dealing with a minion that turn and want to wait for better options.

Combat Training and Aggressive Conditioning are nice to have with the extra readies that you can get through Utopia, Professor X, or Cryokinetic Perception, but they aren't actually needed. By the time these cards are useful you'll be dishing out tons of damage through events and allies. These are my top two cards to cut, I just don't have anything else I particularly want more. Maybe Endurance.

Ice Slide is another card that is nice to have, but not all that important. It's actually slightly worse than Combat Training because when it shuffles back into your deck that's one less chance to draw one of your events.

Honorable Mentions

If you want to put in additional cards the top 3 cards to remove are Combat Training, Aggressive Conditioning, and the second copy of Attack Training. They are all useful, but easily replaceable. Boot Camp is the only card in the deck that isn't in the core set, one of the X-Men waves, or more recent. If you don't have access to it, it's useful, but replaceable.

Endurance could easily slot in, especially for more difficult scenarios. Either in addition to Aggressive Conditioning or in replacement of (because its cheaper to play).

Game Time would let you activate Shark-Girl more for lots of villain damage. I don't care for it, because by that point you've got the game pretty well locked, going slow and steady is fine. Shark-Girl isn't a minion killer, she wants to hit something with a lot of frostbite attached. That means Game Time only really does more Villain damage, something you rarely need to rush.

Mutant Education, and X-Men Instruction are both cards I'm very fond of and ran for a long time in this deck. Mutant Education may seem redundant with the Cool Off ability, but it adds an extra safety valve for those turns where you just can't stack Frostbite and want to hold off on reshuffling your deck. X-Men Instruction can help you get allies besides your Snow Clones back which can be very useful. They ultimately didn't make the cut for 2 reasons. One, flipping down to Alter-ego wants careful timing during set up and you really want to play these cards the turn you draw them or not at all. Two, once everything is set up, you don't need either of them any more. They become 2 more draws that aren't your events.

Honorary X-Men I've toyed with including this card to put on Bobby Drake so that you can still use The X-Jet, Utopia and Team-Building Exercise while you are flipped down to alter ego. However every time I've included it in the deck I discarded it as a resource every single time I drew it.

Weapon X I don't have a good reason for why I'm not running this. Might have to give it a test run next time I play the deck.

Surprise Move, Take That! or literally any other Aggression event don't make the cut because we don't need them. Iceman has no issues clearing minions, Surprise Move is really only useful for clearing minions. Take That! can't benefit from Deft Focus, X-Gene, Team-Building Exercise, or Power Belt and it isn't a cheap card. By skipping aggression events completely we can really put our resource generators to work. Once all the supports and upgrades are in play you only have roughly 18 cards left in the deck (5 resources, 7 events, 4 allies - assuming 3 are in play, 2 Frozen Solid). You're drawing a minimum of 7 cards each turn (5 hand size, Avengers Mansion, and Cryokinetic Perception). By keeping the events down to just the cards in your kit you'll have repeated explosive turns with a lot of Frostbite getting thrown down.

Other Aspects

This barely counts as an Aggression deck. The top three cards to cut are all Aggression, leaving the only reasons to stay as Shark-Girl, Attack Training (which goes on Shark-Girl) and Boot Camp.

If you wanted to go with Protection use Armor, 3x Ready for a Fight, and 2x Practiced Plan.

For Leadership use Pixie, Uncanny X-Men, Sidekick and 3x Side-by-Side

Justice might try Skilled Investigator, Under Surveillance, The Raft, Angel, Weapon X, and Endurance

Final Comments

I've been playing this deck with minor tweaks since Iceman first came out. It runs smoothly against a wide variety of scenarios in many different player configurations. If you like playing every card and having big turns blasting everything with ice, this is a great deck to snowball with.