Under the Influence

On the Rocks

Wait... Psimitar in a non-Psionic character? You can do that?

You're going to need a drink for this...

Pre-Gaming

Start out with something easy to swallow: Cyclops is a complex hero to master.

• He loves alter-ego supports but has no status options
• He needs tactic upgrades to grab for Constant Training
• He needs upgrades attached to enemies to use Optic Blast
• He likes minions for Priority Target and Ricochet Beam but has no way to summon any

He's sort of an acquired taste, but here's the chaser: Danger Room.

Throw him in any aspect, give him training upgrades, build in some alter-ego access and win the game. It's a good strategy because it works and there's not a lot of incentive to do much else. Until now.

Here's a mixed drink you probably haven't tried: Cyclops, Psionic and Squared Off.

Under the Influence (Deck Strategy)

This deck pairs Cyclops' unique ability to include X-Men allies from any aspect with Squared Off for a leadership focused minion deck. With so many X-Men allies with minion synergy being Psionic, this deck fully leans into this theme to take advantage of some unique ally/minion interactions you won't find in other minion focused decks.

The combination of X-Men and Psionic allows us to gain significant benefits from allies entering play, and both The Power of the Mind and Squared Off let us get those allies into play fairly easily. There's also some strong tools for alter-ego access so you can flip relatively regularly to progress setup and grab Tactic upgrades.

On Tap

Everybody wants to be there for the party, and they'll be there no matter what.

• While Cyclops typically can't justify any extra doubles because he's not focusing on one aspect, focusing on almost exclusively Psionic allies across aspects allows for The Power of the Mind to have 11 targets here
• With most allies being 3 cost, Squared Off helps us play allies for cheap, with many having an interaction with the minions that they summon
  • Don't forget that Squared Off lets you play allies from hand so you can also trigger Karma and Magik's abilities when playing them this way!

These 'influencers' don't know when to stop, and they'll always want to get back out there to have a good time.

• 8 of our allies here have 'enter play' abilities with no restrictions
• Psionic allies entering play let you trigger Psimitar to deal damage
• X-Men allies entering play let you trigger Utopia to ready yourself or other allies
• Rapid Response can be grabbed with Constant Training and Tactical Brilliance to trigger those abilities again

All those Psionic allies will also let you search your whole deck for an ally through Cerebro when you flip to alter-ego.

Shaken and Stirred

Cyclops' Psionic friends make life hell for everyone else, but make sure every night is a night to remember.

• With Psimitar out, you can use M's enter play response after Psimitar triggers, enabling her to defeat a 5 health minion!
• Magik can take a minion with a bunch of attachments and sweep it away into the encounter deck. Hit the kicker with The X-Jet
• Karma can take over most minions that appear with Squared Off
• Marvel Girl can attack your minion and remove threat from the main scheme to help out
• Mirage can easily stun whoever she brings out, letting you store a tactic upgrade on it

Bottom Shelf

Cyclops only wants the best of the best - top shelf.

With so many X-Men allies to choose from, all of the choices had to have a lot of synergy with the theme of the deck. All the cards that didn't make it either added hoops to jump through or didn't have much impact. There's probably another version of this deck that doesn't lean into Psionic, but that's for someone else to figure out.

If you want to cut down to 40, you can cut either a copy of The Power of the Mind or Squared Off, largely based on if the scenario is already heavily focused on minions.

• Coordinated Attack is a card that I really wanted to work here, but feels terrible if you draw into it. Every other tactic upgrade is better here, and Rapid Response works with many strong allies here
• Legion and Chamber are the only allies with Psionic and X-Men traits that are not included here. They don't work much with the minion focused strategy and ally competition is high!
• Uncanny X-Men is in plenty of Cyclops decks, but not this one! Squared Off already reduces cost heavily and there are extra doubles. Regardless, you need to use allies to chump sometimes and there are more important cards to get into play
• X-Men Instruction was only really worth running if I also had X-Mansion, and there are already enough cards to build out the board

Last Call

This is my favorite use of Squared Off so far! Being able to play some underutilized off aspect allies is a fun time. Cards like Marvel Girl and Magik are hardly ever making it in a deck for me, so any excuse to use them is a win.