Indoor Sunglasses

Cyclops has some great hero abilities, events, and hooks to maximize his X-gene ability to shoot laser blasts from his eyes. But we're going to forgo all that with this deck and lean into his talents as a tactician, teacher, and team-leader.

This is a support deck for multiplayer. I haven't tried it in solo.

Shades, not Visor

• 45 cards isn't too bad for an alter-ego deck, because you'll still be seeing most of this deck in a timely fashion due to the card draw. Instead of vital upgrades, we will be looking for the gamut of alter-ego supports that make Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters tick.
• X-Mansion is the most important one, oddly enough. It should be prioritized early on, and Forge/Build Support give you 3 chances to draw into it.
• once you have X-Mansion down, this "thins" the deck significantly by adding "draw one card" to Mutant Education and X-Men Instruction
• next we want Cerebro, which will potentially draw us an ally each turn. We have a few Psionic allies in the deck, but once we have Phoenix in play, we can remove the randomness and get whatever ally we want from the deck.
• The others are more "nice to haves". Once Phoenix is our Sidekick, we can use Utopia to ready her after she activates, and use Danger Room to put Danger Room Training on whatever next ally we play to trigger Utopia. Then use Weapon X to get another Cyclops card into hand and then basic recover to heal Phoenix (and Cyclops, of course)
• lastly, a flip up so that Scott can become an Honorary X-Men keeps Uncanny X-Men online, even in alter-ego. Again, this is more "nice to have" than crucial to what he's doing.

Field Recruitment

• Now it takes a few turns to build up the school. In the meantime, we don't want to forget Cyclops' Alter-Ego ability Constant Training which can grab whichever upgrade you need for the moment. Practiced Defense can help your teammates weather the Villain phase, while Priority Target can help other people accelerate their build with card draw. As the game is progressing, Exploit Weakness is great to move things along with extra Villain damage
• Using Mutant Education, Scott can shuffle these back in to grab them again and again. While you wont always have access to the perfect Tactic, you will usually have a way to get the one you want.
• The same could be said for Allies. Sunfire can rip a Villain attachment, Forge can tutor most of your supports, and Professor X/Psylocke can confuse the Villain for some control over the threat that would normally accumulate from Scott being on comms rather than in the field. (this deck has done fine against steady, but full-time Stalwart will probably not be fun)
• Pixie and X-Men Instruction can get whichever ally you need from the discard pile.
• Besides the general support role, attaching upgrades and activating supports, Voltron Phoenix is your primary board impact. Usually two activations per turn with Inspired and Danger Room Training and Sidearm can thwart for 4 and/or attack for 5 with ranged.
• Field Commander is a bit of a misnomer here, since Scott is the Home Base Commander, but still allows other players the joy and privilege of benefiting from Scott's upgrades on the table first.
• your obligation will probably tutor the Ruby Quartz Visor at some point, but then you can exhaust to get it to your hand. Play it, or not, however you feel. It's shades over visor in this deck, but once the obligation is removed it's safe to put down.
• you may find the need to flip up repeatedly in the beginning of the game before you have consistent confuse access, and then again at the end of the game when it's time to Full Blast and Ricochet Beam the Villain into submission.
• and then you win. I've had a great time with this deck because I get to feel smart and powerful, building an engine that can answer threats as they arrive, and other players at the table get to do more of what they came to do as well! Win win win.

Further Considerations

some things that didn't make the cut but would be fun to play with include:

• Armor and Polaris for toughs
• Northstar to cancel boost cards around the table
• Down Time to help the table absorb overkill damage (block with an ally, then Scott heals it back up the next turn)
• Coordinated Effort on the Villain so that you can always laser blast him is cool, but not the focus of this deck. Front Organization wouldn't be back to prevent a key upgrade or support from being discarded
• Med Lab wouldn't be bad here, but I never had a problem getting the allies I wanted back in the deck with X-Men Instruction and then grabbing them with Cerebro

Have fun!