Welcome to the Xerxēs's Elite Unit!

I know, I know... What's the deal with having 44 cards in a deck? I promise I can explain. Although I'm a fan of the consistency of 40 cards, I've taken the liberty of breaking that rule (especially considering we have Soul World in our possession) to form the best elite team of Immortals... literally, they never die.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, I had to add those 4 extra cards to give the deck more consistency. How is that possible?

You see... All the cards work so well together that having to discard some to pay for others always ends up hurting us. We have to consider that the majority of the deck consists of Support and Upgrade cards, cards that are "somewhat" situational and that we almost always want to have on our playing field.

It becomes a problem when you have 3 or 4 allies/supports/upgrades in your hand and you want to play them all (although Quantum Magic will help us recover those important "sacrifices" later).

That's why, after much testing, I decided to "dilute" the deck a bit by increasing the number of cards of each class to 5 (originally they were only 4). There are 3 event cards that, during the first cycling of the deck, would only serve as resources since they are more situational cards, but later they become an active part of our game plan when we use them for their action. Or as fuel for our passive ability, which is the other reason for the "dilution". Having situational events of each class available in our hand makes it easier to activate our ability and empower our superpower events.

If, even so, you like making difficult decisions and sacrifices each turn and prefer to stick to 40 cards and lose a little fuel on the late game, you would have to remove:

Impede: Use this for the effect, and then keep it for next turn or burn it with your hero ability for profit and, maybe, untap and draw a few cards in the process with you Cape and your Senses.

Desperate Defense: allows us to defend, avoid damage, and ready ourselves to heal our Bug, so we don't lose 4 to 6 damage next turn.

Team Training: a dispensable upgrade. I'm thinking on playing Get Ready instead, for a late game finish spell (worthing around 4, 5, up to 9 damage for 0 extra resources).

Magic Attack: a very powerful card, but the other 4 aggression cards are irreplaceable.

Who are the IMMORTALS?:

Agent Coulson + Rapid Response: The mastermind, the one who sacrifices for the team. Our favorite (and only, besides Pip the Troll) chump blocker. For two resources each turn we have a THW for 2 and a blocker. EACH TURN.

Starhawk + Knowhere: 1 THW + 2 ATK + 1 card every turn for two resources. EACH TURN.

Bug + Energy Spear + Laser Blaster: One of the "Upgrade Ally" we have. He can deal a lot of damage having the right equipment. 9 total damage with ranged + piercing + overkill each turn.

Warlock + Enraged: Him not being a Guardian makes me sad, but he is a great Enraged ally. He can handle Inspired and Sidearm as well.

Tips and Strategy:

Early Game

During the first cycle of the deck, you should focus on survival (this will be aided by Endurance and Pip the Troll until you find Agent Coulson and the Symbiote Suit), and start building your board with allies and supports. Most events and superhero cards take a backseat (except for Summoning Spell and Karmic Staff) and should only be used in extreme emergencies or as resources to play your priorities.

Pay attention to your discard pile and what's there. Not only for your Quantum Magic, but there will come a time when, with a couple of IMMORTALS in play, you'll want to speed things up (with cards like Deflection, Zone of Silence, Magic Attack, Shield Spell, Cosmic Awareness, Karmic Blast) to quickly cycle your deck and recover all those spells, upgrades, allies, and other valuable superhero cards we discarded. Not to mention the precious token we'll place on Soul World.

Late Game

The second cycle begins. Our allies are in play and mostly equipped. Our resource engines are running. We have full health. Our deck is extremely thin, and our cycling speed is very high (drawing 7 cards from Symbiote Suit and The Sorcerer Supreme + 1 card from Knowhere with Starhawk). Now it's time to play with our Warlock's Cape and use our Mystic Senses to take advantage of the spells we'll draw. At the same time, those spells will further accelerate the cycling of our deck as mentioned before. Our deck cycles so fast that we can focus our Agent Coulson solely on thwarting, as villain attacks, even on expert difficulty and without defending, won't bring our health down before we obtain another token on our Soul World and recover up to 23 health points in a turn.

Will acceleration tokens be a problem? The truth is, no, the game will be over long before that becomes an issue. And it's worth considering that our thwarting spells are among the best in the game, and our damage per turn is extremely high once we setup.

TO BE CONTINUED...