Protect your team with the power of the Tank Top

The best Tank

The frustrating part of defending with Colossus is to exhaust to defend damage higher than your basic defense. You end up loosing your ready AND your tough card!
This deck uses the power of the Tank Top to defend while ready.

Anticipated Attack, Preemptive Strike, Powerful Punch and Shadow and Steel will declare you as the defender while you stay ready.
Powerful Punch and Shadow and Steel can even defeat a minion, saving a tough card in the process. Or slowly help defeating the villain.

Wear your Tank Top

Colossus wears a tank top in alter-ego only. This deck is about changing form every turn to focus the power of the tank top. Your main goal is to reshuffle Armor Up with Aspiring Artist.
But thanks to Mutant Education, you get to reshuffle your Organic Steel too! No need to choose, you get everything back in your deck. Then you go back to hero form with Armor Up to defend your friends!

Top Deck with 45 cards

The short explanation is : try it!

Long explanation : this deck draws like crazy. But more importantly, Weapon X and Piotr's Studio will discard so many cards. A 45 card decks will prevent you from emptying your deck too quickly. Colossus actually likes to prevent reshuffle to increase the odds of drawing the reshuffled Armor Up every turn.

Once you are set up, you should draw/discard your entire deck every two turns or less. The draw engines are :

• Iron Will (one card per attack tanked)
• Moira Mactaggert (one card per round thanks to armor up)
• Piotr's Studio and Weapon X (between 2 and 5 cards per turn thanks to digging deep)
• Unflappable (one card per round)
• Defensive Energy (situational)

Since you will often reshuffle Organic Steel with Mutant Education, you might actually have cards to play after using Piotr's Studio and Weapon X. Digging Deep will help you play those.

Just remember to use all your tough cards if you want to trigger Weapon X! If you are not convinced and really really want a 40 cards I am sure you can remove a few resource cards and the player side scheme.

Titanium and Steel

Did you ever start your turn without tough cards ? It makes you feel like Titanium Muscles is an identity version of Combat Training. That's why Protection is the best aspect for Titanium Muscles. You can use it during the villain's phase, right after using Armor Up to play defense events. If you used Perseverance you can even play a 2-cost defense event with Titanium Muscles.
Add Nerves of Steel (a card that should definitely be reprinted with a Colossus artwork) and you have all the resource to play 3 or more defense events per turn. You may have noticed that I play 2-cost defense events. Don't worry, it's easy to pay because as the protection player, you don't mind spending Made of Rage, Steel Fist or Bulletproof Protector as resources. But with so much card draw you will stil get to play Steel Fist from time to time.

Healing

Since you defend so often and use Weapon X, you might actually go below 10 hit points every now and then. Angel's Aerie will make sure that you are always healthy. Thanks to Armor Up, you will be able to put counters on Angel's Aerie and exhaust it to heal every turn.

Multiplayer Recommandations

Anticipated Attack is clearly the best defense event in the game for Colossus. No exhaust, triggers unflappable, draw a card to Iron Will. But you could definitely use the other players help to put a side scheme in the victory display. The easiest choice is to play with a Cable player. But I am pretty sure your play group plays player side schemes even without Cable.
A player using Build Support will help you get Angel's Aerie or Moira. If you are unlucky they end up discarded because of Piotr's Studio and Weapon X.

You could have an other player as Shadowcat to help play Shadow and Steel, but that's not compulsory.

A player with X Mansion will let you draw with Mutant Education. And you can trigger your friend's X Mansion to heal other players and allies every turn.

Deck Management

Weapon X and Piotr's Studio will most likely discard aspect upgrades and supports. It's important to draw as many of those as you can with your mulligan.
When you have 6 or less cards left in your deck (including Armor Up), check your discard pile before blindly using Weapon X and Piotr's Studio. You don't want to discard a cool aspect upgrade or support.

On the contrary, if you know that all those cool cards are already in your discard pile, you can use Weapon X and Piotr's Studio to reshuffle your deck faster.
With that said, this deck reshuffles and draws enough to make you sure you hit those cards at some point.