"I'm Gonna Turn You Into A Pincushion" (Con Of Heroes '26)

Card draw simulator

Odds: 0% – 0% – 0% more
Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
Nightcrawler - Pincushion 1.1 3 3 0 1.0
"I'm Gonna Turn You Into A Pincushion" (w/o Rogue) 1 1 0 1.0
Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) 0 0 0 1.0

Matafer · 1158

"I'm gonna turn you into a pincushion!! I've been waiting years for this moment! As for the rest, I'll leave that to the Devil himself!" Jean Pierre Polnareff

This protection deck is a defense-trigger engine that turns defending into damage, card draw, and tempo to help you keep up. You’re not just blocking homie - you’re profiting and clapping back every time you do.

The one downside is that thwarting can be hard, but that's what Kurt's basic activation is for. Also don't worry about the deck being over 40 cards.

Sideboard

  • Adding Dauntless, Endurance, Polaris to increase your staying power.
  • Adding Face The Past or Moira MacTaggert for more draw.
  • Some of these changes can also help with certain scenarios, mutant/xmen at the table, and doesn't hurt your tempo- but I found I was discarding them for other things.

Your upgrades stack into a well oiled machine:

  • Unflappable -> draw a card when you take no damage
  • Electrostatic Armor -> ping damage back
  • Flow Like Water -> damage when you play defense events
  • Defensive Conditioning / Armored Vest -> boost DEF and HP so you don’t take as much damage
  • Nerves of Steel -> pay for defense events easier

Basically just defend for your friends, take no damage, and turn it into value. Nightcrawler dodges hits with Bamf!, then hits back with events while drawing cards and pinging damage the whole time.

12 comments

Apr 29, 2026 Justalittlebloke · 1

Damn this looks fun! Would it work well in 2p? Also I'm surprised Dauntless isn't in it. Any particular reason why?

Apr 29, 2026 Matafer · 1158

@Justalittlebloke I hope you get to play it! And the deck works really well in all player counts!

With dauntless, it works well when you're ahead - but with certain villains like Stryfe, VG, or Ronan who crunch ya quick. It is a bit harder to stay at full health.

Apr 29, 2026 PoptartSusie · 41

The deck that made me love Nightcrawler protection! Love this build in solo and multiplayer Mat!

Apr 29, 2026 eroush · 2992

I seem to always have the problem with Dauntless marvelcdb.com

Apr 29, 2026 TheLordMistborn · 35

What about Energy Barrier and Repurpose?

Apr 30, 2026 Matafer · 1158

@eroush Yeah dauntless can be a little tricky as you want to keep your Hit points high, so you'd probably want to include endurance too.

@PoptartSusie Glad you enjoyed it.

@TheLordMistbornI love a good repurpose deck with energy barrier and force field! Why don't you try making a version of this without the defense events kits and swapping them for repurpose.

Apr 30, 2026 Charles · 822

Hi ! Nice deck, how do you manage Kurt Cutlasses and Excelsior ? You can only put one of them in play

May 01, 2026 Matafer · 1158

@Charles I totally forgot to type in Sideholster in the list lol. Someone pointed it out to me as well. Ty Charles, I'll edit it and add that note.

May 02, 2026 N1GHTCRAW73R · 695

I've actually found that I don't use a side holster in an Excelsior deck with him. Once you get the tail out you can have both. Based on the situation I may need to wait till the second deck pass to get one of them out and personally tend to prioritize Excelsior first.

May 02, 2026 Charles · 822

Yes you’re right ! Well done ! ;-)

May 09, 2026 Game Design Raccoon · 3455

Very cool to see all the new toys for Protection Nightcrawler! :)

May 12, 2026 Caldias · 6595

This looks great!