Angel-Make Pitchback Cool

At a Glance

Player Counts: Higher Burst potential and dominating tempo from Signature cards in solo, but also several Multiplayer friendly cards and high utility to effectively slot in next to others.

Play style: High Tempo, Lean Combos.

Strengths: Quick to setup, very high tempo, and diverse turn-by-turn play options.

Weaknesses: Deck stops scaling soon into the mid-game, and Signature Cards often squeeze out combo in priority.

Sales Pitch

"I was given this new power for a reason, Doctor. To use it. And that's exactly what I intend to do" - Angel, Wolverine and the X-Men Volume 1 #20.

Hello everyone! Angel and Psylocke are finally here. Focusing on Angel today, and he brings a lot of rewards for the Aerial trait and cards! Really potent effects like Angel of Life and Angel of Death, along with potent cards like Power of Flight, can really direct how Angel makes his decks. What we have here is the essentially following that game plan, but it has some extra small synergies that help smooth out some cards we want to play anyways!

Our main combos allow us to use Pitchback to greater effect. It is not a bad card by any means, especially so in Angel (It can really throw out the cheap damage with Avian Anatomy). The awkwardness it has in Angel comes from it being cheap, meaning it wants to be played in Angel form to utilize Angel of Life, but it also needing to trigger off an attack, which we generally want to do in Archangel thanks to the better base attack/better home for out other aerial attack events. If you trigger Pitchback off of an Angel basic attack, that's effectively making Pitchback a 3-damage card if we could've done so in Archangel instead, which is usually pretty easy. Playing it after an attack event in Angel is also awkward, since that is likely an aerial event in itself, and so we will waste an aerial card that could've been used to trigger Angel of Life/Death in our other hero form.

So, what are we doing to untangle these? We're gonna play Pitchback when we normally wouldn't, in the hero phase, triggering it off of preparation cards. Lie in Wait and Counterattack both are upgrades that allow us, our hero, to make an attack during the Villain Phase, and so letting us trigger the response for Pitchback. We can trigger Angel of Life/Death an additional time per round then we normally would (assuming you aren't playing an Aerial Agility). And we don't mind as much which form it triggers in since it still is a resolution we normally wouldn't have. There you go, a card that originally was trying to find it's chance to play gets extra breathing room to come in at full effect, no compromises!

Packed in the Back

Angels pack has a lot of clear cut staples in his pack, cards that have very few arguments not to take with him. When you combine that with other cards that both compliment Angels Hero abilities and compliment large parts of his kit your deck is already looking pretty tight, and is probably pushing you towards a certain game plan. Generally, this is gonna look like playing Angels signature cards, Aerial events, and effective economy pieces, to string together a very high tempo strategy. Let's get into the card by card.

Our Upgrades are the biggest shakeup, included to facilitate Pitchback plays and net extra Angel of Life/Death triggers. Counterattack is the one I generally prioritize. Especially at lower player counts, it can add a lot of Villain Damage that helps close the small gaps keeping us from defeating enemy quickly. Lie in Wait is still good though, when combined with Angel of Death and Pitchback we actually have a decent spread of damage ratios we can throw at any minions that comes out. Both are Max 1, so we're just playing 2-each to not get screwed with hands of unplayable cards, but still seeing them often and early.

Team-Building Exercise works with a large part of Angels kit (anything with the Aerial trait). X-Gene is not a bad alternative, but Dive Bomb, Bombs Away, and even Hope Summers are all cards we probably want to play when giving the chance. Speaking of Hope.

Hope combined with Superpower Training lets us see an incredibly powerful card sooner, Techno-Organic Wings. Even if these cards can be slow, and don't have targets once our wings show up, the payoff from wings is more than worth it. Helping us in a myriad of ways and really sending home our tempo-based strategy. Our other allies, Sunfire, Throg, and Vivian, were chosen since I found angel tends to like cheap allies, even over other aerial allies, who don't do much for his kit besides working with Team-Building and Power of Flight. Cheap allies are both easy to thread in after we play an aerial event, are easy to hit the board without competing with aerial-specific resources, and are nice to chump block so we can focus on committing to Threat/Damage. These three all also provide good utility, Vivian and Sunfire remove problematic encounter effects (even if temporarily) which can often clear the way for us to take care of another problem or finish the game. Throg's potential tough is hard not to appreciate.

This just leaves our other aerial staples. The Power of Flight works with most of Angel's kit, essentially being honorary cards 16-18, and even work for our Aspect Events. Dive Bomb becomes massive single target damage when combined with Angel of Death. It and Razor dive can take turns getting played every other turn and quickly take down even the tankiest of villains, and happens more often then you would think thanks to Avian Anatomy and Worthington Industries. Bombs away I did not think I would like, but grew on me a lot through my plays! Two-cost aerial events really do hit the sweet spot of feeling good whether played in Angel or Archangel form. Bombs Away also feels really good with it's damage and Angel of death adding up to 5 on any single minion, taking care of many of the threats you're likely to see. It's a really good way to convert damage from Angel's activation before readying him with wings, but it's also the reason you should chump with your other allies before Vivian here, since she can be exhausted for it's cost.

Takeoff

That's all I got! I've enjoyed a lot of the cards from Angel and Psycloke, besides the heroes being great, they have a few cards in pack that can almost make new deck archetypes on their own. I plan to share another deck soon featuring something like this. But until then, I hope anyone who tries this list out enjoys their games, and happy release day!