Calling The Shots

This is a simple deck that showcases the cool things that Cyclops can do, and nails the "team leader" theme of the hero. It's relatively low-setup, versatile, and lets you help out other heroes on the team.

Scott's ability lets him pull in X-Men allies from across aspects, allowing his deck to be a unique toolbox of powerful effects that he can play for cheap with Uncanny X-Men. Allies let you do practically everything that you might want to do; I'll come back to that later.

This deck has only four permanent cards to get out.

• Uncanny X-Men: This is the most important card, because it discounts your powerful allies. The extra hit point that they get is also nice, letting you get more power out of them much of the time.
• Utopia: This has two equally important benefits. Cyclops can hit the ally limit pretty easily with the aforementioned Uncanny X-Men, so getting a fourth ally slot is wonderful. Second, getting a free ready on top playing an ally is incredibly valuable. Cyclops is going to want to defend and recover with his Basic Power more often than not; readying makes it easier to do both. If he doesn't need to recover with the ready, he can thwart, exhaust for Full Blast, or ready an ally instead (which is occasionally the better play!). In multiplayer, if there are other X-Men at the table, readying them can be very useful; in a recent game, Gambit got hit with Exhaustion and Guild Business in the same villain phase, and I was able to ready Gambit so he could immediately deal with his obligation.
• Ruby Quartz Visor: Free Optic Blasts are good! Getting Ranged and Piercing on top of that? Even better! Especially in conjunction with...
• Field Commander: This card is not very exciting in solo, but in multiplayer it lets you consistently set the team up for success. Enemy with Tough? Use the Visor to pierce it before the Aggression player's turn comes up. Did an easy minion pop up during the villain phase? Stick Priority Target on it before another player knocks it out to give them cards. Are you pushing toward the end of the game? Put Exploit Weakness on the villain before the team unleashes all of their attacks. There's a Tactic for nearly every situation, and they frequently benefit other players if you can play them before their turn comes up.

Okay, so all I'm adding for permanents here is Uncanny X-Men and Utopia, which any X-Men hero can run. What makes this deck special? What makes it a Cyclops deck?

As previously mentioned, it's the allies. Being able to use allies from all aspects means we can load the deck with allies with enter-play effects. Most of those are true "enters play" triggers, meaning they can be played from hand, brought back via Rapid Response, or put into play via "To Me, My X-Men!", and still trigger. The exceptions are Pixie and Sunfire; you'll basically never use Rapid Response on them, and while you'd probably prefer another ally if possible off of "To Me, My X-Men!", they're actually fine pulls who will still get an activation and then bounce to hand to be played the next turn anyway, letting you access their abilities.

Of particular note are

• Phoenix: Phoenix lets you grab any Cyclops card from the discard pile; if you had to throw Ruby Quartz Visor or Field Commander away, she can get them back. Between her and Tactical Brilliance, you can frequently grab a necessary Tactic to help the team out. And she enables you to play Psychic Rapport, giving you another way of retrieving Cyclops cards. Rapid Response lets you recur her to retrieve a card, further assisting your economy and letting you grab exactly what you need when you need it. As a bonus, Phoenix and Utopia enable you to play Full Blast a lot more reliably than you otherwise would!
• Pixie: Your allies form a toolbox; Pixie lets you recur specific tools. With Uncanny X-Men in play, she's inexpensive at 1, and no longer immediately dies when attacking; you'll usually be able to play Pixie into another ally, or flex to using the retrieved ally as just another resource. The defensive power of surging Pixie into Armor or Polaris is massive, and something only Cyclops can do. She's a lot more fun and thematic than running Make the Call, but from a utilitarian perspective she's another valid target for "To Me, My X-Men!" and she can directly impact the board, giving her points over the ubiquitous Event.

Cyclops gets his turn-over-turn power from having a suite of allies to call on. It's what lets him flex between thwarting, dealing damage, and defending as necessary. It's why Coordinated Attack and Exploit Weakness are valuable, even without other players at the table (Exploit Weakness can easily be worth 5+ damage for the Cyclops player alone between Optic Blast and ally attacks; that number balloons in multiplayer).

The other cards just lean into this further. Rapid Response is insurance that you always have an ally (and probably get to benefit from triggering an "enters play" effect an additional time). Effective Leadership powers up whatever ally you play using it, and isn't limited to any particular aspect. "To Me, My X-Men!" is a fairly reliable play that lets you get an activation, improve your economy, frequently gets you an "enters play" effect, and can trigger Utopia in a pinch if you didn't draw any allies.

And lastly, Havok is here mostly because he's fun and thematic. You could absolutely swap him for another ally, but between Uncanny X-Men and Coordinated Attack he can actually put out an impressive amount of damage.

This deck is flexible, thematic, and showcases a lot of what makes Cyclops special. It's a simple, light-setup alternative to other combo-tastic builds you can find here. I absolutely love this deck for its ability to support other Heroes; orienting the team around an objective and focusing their power or giving someone just the boost they need to handle something on their own both feel great, and because you'll have so many allies, you can help protect others either by defending for them or knocking out a minion that's just a little too much for them to handle right now. This deck feels like you're playing a team leader; if that's what you're looking for, give it a shot!