Power Overwhelming

Ever wanted a single ally to deal 20+ damage on the turn you play them? Yeah, me too. Enter a combo of new cards: Effective Leadership and Psychic Kicker!

Play your allies, overcharge them with psychic energy, and ready them again for maximum devastation!

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• Goliath and Spider-Man can each gain a huge boost to their ATK until the end of the phase through their own abilities.

• Play them with Effective Leadership to increase their ATK even further!

• Increase their hp with Team Training to get an extra use from each of them!

• And ready them with a mixture of Psychic Kicker and Command Team to repeatedly take advantage of their huge ATK stat!

Playing either ally with an Effective Leadership while Team Training is out, and using all their hp that turn, gives you 18 damage from Goliath or 20 damage from Spider-Man!

Add at least 2 more with a Psychic Kicker that Black Panther can hold for you and Kaluu can find for cheap. Do this combo twice, and you've effectively won against any villain in solo. Or significantly speed up any multiplayer game.

Note: This deck breaks the usual 40-card deck, climbing up to 43. While largely unnoticeable, it has the benefit of diluting your hand of Phoenix cards (they tend to be a little on the weaker side while Restrained) and keeping Goliath and Lockjaw in your discard pile a bit longer for consistent combos.

Meet the Cast

• The Main Stars

  • Goliath is the first star of the show. While you can get a little more damage out of one Spider-Man play, Goliath needs less readies to get almost as much damage and you can Make the Call for Goliath and still get his ATK bonus, making him much more convenient and consistent. He also helps cover thwarting when used conventionally.

  • Spider-Man is the second star of the show. The downside is that he has to be played from hand for his +2 ATK (no Making the Call for him), but the upside is that he is cheaper than Goliath and has higher potential damage due to him having more uses.

  • Power Man is the back-up for when either of the other two can't make it. While he does not get to attack as much as either of the others, even with Team Training, he still packs a mean punch and can really help finish of the villain. He is as cheap as Spider-Man and you can Make the Call for him for convenient burst damage. You can even play him and thwart once, then fish for cards like Psychic Kicker in your next hand to power him up in the following hero phase.

• The Backstage Crew

  • Black Panther grabs Psychic Kicker for us, either to hold for a big combo with Effective Leadership on someone - or to use immediately on himself for tempo. With Team Training, he gets to ATK or THW twice making him great value. He can also grab Make the Call for when you need another ally!

  • Kaluu can also hunt down Psychic Kicker for you, and he's cheap enough that you can often play him alongside a big ally for immediate gain. And using Psychic Kicker on himself is still decent value if that's what you need. Of course, Kaluu can also swipe one of your hero events from the deck too, giving him amazing versatility.

• The Bouncers

  • Colossus keeps Phoenix and her 9 hp safe, providing two blocks and 3 damage. Alternatively, especially when played with Effective Leadership, he can end up as a great source of burst damage. He rivals Power Man for damage/efficiency, but you cannot Make the Call for him and might prefer to use his Tough for defense as opposed to blocking consequential damage.

  • Mockingbird, also known as Blockingbird, also blocks two attacks. Her decent hp means she can stick around for a good while too, providing a flexible target for Psychic Kicker when there's no one better to combo it with.

• All-Purpose Stand-Ins

  • Ant-Man is a classic at this point. Pay what you want, get what you pay for. He can deal respectable damage or respectable thwarting, and is always good to chump block. With a Team Training deck, you can play him for 0 and he'll still have 1 hp, making him a 0-cost Tough card if you have him block for you! Or a 0-csot 2 damage/2 threat removal event. With Make the Call, you can always find a cheap block from him.

  • Cyclops is a great ally, but probably the one least played here. He doesn't provide as good a defense as Colossus, Mockingbird, or Team Training'd Ant-Man. He doesn't provide the damage of Goliath or Spider-Man. But he is a great all-rounder for whatever you need in the moment. The counters he provides are good but this deck tends to lean on allies for damage, preferring to use Phoenix's juicy 3 THW in Restrained for most of the game, so make sure his leaving play doesn't flip you to Unleashed too early! (In multiplayer, if threat control is handled, this becomes less of a factor and Cyke can actually help intentionally Unleash you right when you want to!)

A Phoenix's Best Friend

Humans and mutants aside, we have one very important four-legged friend in the deck.

If you find yourself having a poor hand of cards, call on good boy Lockjaw from the discard pile!

With Team Training, Lockjaw can activate twice before blocking - making him 4 effective resources for 4 ATK/THW and a blocked villain attack! Having Lockjaw in your discard pile also means Effective Leadership always has a target!

Your worst hand of cards suddenly becomes a good turn, and with Phoenix, she is prone to bad hands - especially in the early game when you're still Restrained.

Mind Over Matter

• Psychic Kicker is the core this whole deck was built around. In essence, it's a 0-cost thwart or attack event, dealing out 2 THW or 2 ATK - it just requires an ally. While the ally has to use up a hp from consequential damage, there's no bad downside here, you're going to spend their hp eventually anyway. This actually quickens the tempo of allies and helps prevent you from hitting the ally limit with Team Training prolonging each ally's life!

• Effective Leadership is the other key card this deck was built around. Play an ally through it, and it's just like any card as a resource - but gives you an extra damage or threat removal. Ready that ally up? Now you've got 2 damage or 2 threat removal from it. Ready it again...? You've made big gains.

• Make the Call is a card everyone reading this should know. Pick the perfect ally from your discard pile to deal with the situation at hand. You can end games quick with Goliath, block for cheap with Ant-Man or Mockingbird, or fish for answers with Kaluu, etc etc!

• Mind Control is forever amazing. If there's a minion out, it's a great way to clear the way for a big Goliath/Spider-Man combo to destroy the villain and add to the damage! You can still Psychic Kicker a mind-controlled minion too!

The Other Stuff

• Command Team is there to help your main star allies to hit as hard as they can with their temporary ATK bonuses. It's also good in a pinch to push regular allies to clear something nasty. Getting 2 of these on the board per deck cycle is ideal, but even 1 is enough to enable a lot of damage and flexibility.

• Team Training is great value in general, but essential for boosting several allies. Goliath, Black Panther and Lockjaw really value it, giving each of them another use despite their double consequential damage, and Ant-Man becomes a 0-cost block as also mentioned. There are two copies because you want this out quickly, and if you're forced to miss it the first time, you still have a back-up.

• The X-Jet + Helicarrier are plain resource generators to ramp up the deck and increase your combo potential. They're especially helpful to let you play one ally from hand and Make the Call for another. While Team-Building Exercise is great for Phoenix, without many X-Men allies it mostly just exists for her Psionic cards and, especially in Restrained, they don't do a great deal. These two are much more flexible.

• Endurance is self-explanatory! Phoenix has low hp. Low hp is dangerous, especially in scenarios with overkill. Endurance gives you more hp, and more hp is good. (But you can cut this in multiplayer with a Protection player.)

Strategy

Your mulligan targets are The X-Jet, Helicarrier, and Team Training. If you've drawn 2 Command Teams in your opening, I will often try to play one - even if it's more a mid-late game card, because it's so essential to your combos. Finding the final Command Team last, or even being unable to play it due to immense pressure, hurts the deck a lot.

Aggressive mulligans are great because it helps you put Lockjaw, Goliath, and Ant-Man into your discard pile sooner. If none of your six initial cards are those mentioned in the above paragraph, mulligan all of them.

Since your allies bring such tremendous damage, the goal of this deck is to utilize Phoenix's 3 THW to control the main scheme/defeat side schemes. Allies can help with this, and you ideally want to use them to chip the villain's health down to at least 15-18 hp ready for one of your big Goliath or Spider-Man combos. With Team Training, you can afford to burn their hp aggressively!

Once the villain has been knocked onto their final stage, it's usually safe to go Unleashed. Sometimes, you'll want to unleash sooner. Other times, the threat might remain problematic and you'll simply want to stay Restrained.

Something to be mindful of is how many Telepathic Trickeries you've seen. If both are still in your deck, unleashing is a lot more desirable. The same goes for Telekinetic Attack to a lesser extent, having this still available in deck really helps you close out games or even eliminate Dark Phoenix should she rear her ugly head.

And in general, remember that while the perfect combo is somewhat rare and hard to achieve, your combo pieces are generally still great worth when played raw, and even small combos still generate a lot of value.

Navigating the Rules

Note that Effective Leadership does not work when you Make the Call as you are not playing an ally, you are just putting it into play.

Also remember that Spider-Man only gains his +2 ATK when played from hand (e.g. not when you Make the Call).

Good luck and have fun!