Claw-Boat

It's time for another Gunboat Diplomacy deck, this time with one of my favorite heroes in the game, X-23. She's tailor made for it since she is X-Force and she comes with a signature ally who is of the X-Men trait, Honey Badger. Not only does she have the combo needed built into her deck, she also has ways of readying herself once per phase courtesy of her claws.

Even though Honey Badger can make the combo work, she doesn't have a large thwart number even with Mission Training so she will not be our main target for the gunboat combos but she is still useful for it in a pinch or to preserve her health. With the recently released Children of the Atom we have some other targets who can really make the gunboat combo pop.

Pete Wisdom has 3 thwart and gets up to 4 with Mission Training on him.

Deathlok can get up to 3 thwart with Mission Training and can grab it from discard once CoTA is out.

Bishop does not need CoTa out and can still use Mission Training. He's perfect in an X-23 deck since we are going to typically defend with X-23 in the villain phase to get the free ready. Each attack on you builds energy counters on him that he can unleash for up to 6 attack.

White Queen has a great when enter play ability and gives us another x-men target for Gunboat.

The deck strategy is pretty straightforward, get our allies out buffed up and then gunboat. What makes X-23 even more deadly with this deck type is her ability to ready once per phase.

Some of the combos look like this:

In Hand: Gunboat, Claw Mastery and a game time.

Have CoTA out as well as Pete with Mission Training giving him 4 thwart.

Honey Badger out as well with Mission Training.

X-23 with Surveillance Specialist and Heroic Intuition putting her at 4 thwart.

Play gunboat exhausting X-23 and Pete which will remove 8 threat and deal 8 damage.

Play Claw Mastery boosting X-23 to 3 attack, use her claws to ready her and push her attack to 5.

Have Honey Badger activate to ready X-23 allowing her to attack for another 5.

Use Game Time on HB to ready her and activate again, readying X-23 for another 5 attack.

That turn would amount to 23 damage and 12 threat removal if thwarting with HB or 25 damage and 8 threat removal if she attacked instead.

If Bishop were out as well with max counters, we could add another 6 damage!

Another Combo:

If X-23 is low on health and you aren't able to pay for her claws, use gunboat with Pete and Bishop to remove 7 threat and deal 7 damage.

Have X-23 basic thwart for another 4 and draw from surveillance specialist.

Use HB to thwart some more readying X-23 and flip down to heal.

To get our strategy online quicker we have 3 player side schemes:

Build Support which is to get CoTa, we can also use it to grab Sisterhood which can help us grab Honey Badger if she gets discarded or has to take a hit.

Specialized Training is to get surveillance specialist which boost our thwart and gets us a card draw when we basic thwart.

Superpower Training is to get Pain Tolerance online quicker which helps with X's survivability. If we already have that, Adamantium Lacing is a great 2nd choice as it gives +2 health as well as retaliate and piercing.

To ensure we have things to thwart we have One Way or Another to grab a side scheme and draw 3 cards.

Skilled Investigator gets us a card draw once per turn when we thwart a side scheme.

Chance Encounter allows us to search for an ally when we complete attached side scheme. This helps us find our allies to boost our gunboat combos or another way to find Honey Badger for those extra readies.

Overall, this deck is a blast to play and the damage output for a Justice deck is really satisfying. I would love to hear any feedback on the deck or experiences with it!