This little snowflake can perfectly protect herself

Time to grow up and not rely on Colossus anymore.

This is the first deck I've played a lot and refined. It's a perfect defense Magik deck used to play solo and a great workout of the defense rules and timings. It had me checking the updated rulebook multiple times while playing, fun times.

Track record so far 11-2, the two losses were to heroic Klaw. The wins include standard Loki, expert Mutagen Formula and heroic Rhino.

You can take this exact decklist, but should treat it more like a framework. What I posted is the version I ran against Loki. At 46 cards it is fairly large and can be reduced if desired, but I think it works fine. Spiritual Meditation and Scrying help, and it thins itself out a lot after the first 1-2 passes through the deck.

Game plan, strengths and weaknesses

The plan is simple: Flip to hero and just stay there all game. Ideally play one card from the top of the deck on the villain phase and one on your phase. Stabilize with allies and Magik's kit, get as many upgrades out as possible and get value on the villain phase by perfectly defending. Once stabilized and upgraded, start pushing damage.

The deck feels very strong once ramped up and due to Magik's kit is quite flexible in dealing with everything coming her way on the way there.

The biggest weaknesses are dealing with a lot of threat early on and the unpredictability of defending the villain attack. Missing that perfect defense can make the whole game spiral out of control.

Cards:

Allies

Most allies can be swapped out, e.g. Iron Fist against stalwart villains. The only one I'd always put in is Jocasta, with her ability to get you what you need.

Armor and Iron Fist are great at relieving some pressure early game and keeping the villain busy while Magik builds up.

Deadpool is good for dealing damage every turn and can also help out with thwarting. In earlier versions I used Luke Cage to hit for 12 damage.

Events

This deck gets value from defending and playing defense events. Around 7-9 additional defense events seems to be the sweet spot, so let's go over the ones in the deck. Events with 1 or 0 cost and are preferred, since they combine well with Magik's kit. It's also probably better to tailor the included events to the encounter and run 3 of the ones you want, instead of running 2 of each. First the ones I wouldn't take out:

• Shield Spell is one of the best choices. It's very flexible, you can just not defend, take the hit and then decide whether to play it. Or it can block the last bit of damage if the villain got a crazy hit in.
• Defiance is amazing at making the villain attack predictable.

Now the ones that are in, but could be cut:

• Riposte is pretty good for pushing damage and defeating minions to draw with Change of Fortune.
• The value of Desperate Defense lies in having flexibility. Sometimes you just get exhausted again by encounter cards, most of the time it's an attack, but sometimes the villain attacks again, and you get to block again.
• Not Today! is good if you need threat removal, but should be cut when you don't need to thwart much.

Potential candidates that I haven't included, let's start with what could make sense to swap in:

• Preemptive Strike sounds good in the ideal case, but Defiance just does it more consistently cheaper and also prevents * icons.
• Powerful Punch is an interesting one that could be used instead of Riposte. But costing 2 it's too expensive and I think Riposte is better value.
• Never Back Down stunning the villain is really good early on, but once built up, you want to be attacked. And early on you might not have the upgrades to get that perfect defense easily.

And now some I wouldn't put in:

• Expert Defense could be a contender, but doesn't do enough on its own.
• Jump Flip is the other thwarting defense event. The timing can be pretty useful sometimes, but prevent you from playing this other times. And needing to pay eliminates the advantage when playing it from the top of the deck, and it only targets the main scheme, which Hard to Ignore already covers.
• Side Step has the same disadvantages as jump flip.
• Mutant Protectors doesn't fit the deck. If my understanding of the rules is correct, after playing it, you're not the defender anymore. You'd have to build the deck around it, which I might do in the future, but I've seen multiple other decks with it already.

Everything else

Most cards here should be pretty obvious why they're in the deck: To get value from defending.

Energy Barrier could be run multiple or swapped out for Forcefield Generator or Defensive Stance, they all fill a similar role. Basically an insurance in case the villain hits harder than expected. I chose Energy Barrier since it's multi-use, cheaper than forcefield generator and also allows defeating weaker minions without playing cards.

Then there are some survivability cards, which could be cut:

• Armored Vest helps a lot, because Magik's armor isn't reliable
• Angel's Aerie is pretty much always a full heal, and you can use it when flipping down for Magik's obligation and flip right back up.
• The Night Nurse really strong card if the villain stuns/confuses a lot, some redundancy with Magik's Crown

What's not in the deck:

The X-Jet is a great card, but when under pressure early, I found it hard to get out. And once built out it's not really needed anymore. Bloodgem is a better alternative, since it doesn't hurt your tempo, but can be dangerous of course.

One contender to add is Defensive Energy, if you can draw it along with your defense events. For me, it never worked out. Early on it clutters the deck even more, and once built up your economy is pretty good already.

And Endurance is a good emergency card for survive and can be combined with Dauntless if you want to build up even more.

Gameplay

One of the most important things with this deck is understanding the timing of the included events and when things are evaluated. And I'm still not sure my understanding is complete still.

Usage of Limbo is key. The big choice with it every turn is whether to put a something on top at the start of the villain phase or keep it untapped until your turn starts. It depends on a lot of factors, but if it's a defense event it's very likely worth it most of the time.

To push damage, you can set up pretty decent combo turns. For example using Stepping Disc to recur Magic Barrier. If you have Riposte, limbo it on top of your deck and play magic barrier first, which resolves 3 damage due to being on top of the deck, then you can defend and play riposte for free to deal 10 damage on the villain phase from the 2 events. 6 from the events themselves, 2 from Flow Like Water and 1 from each Mystical Armor and Electrostatic Armor.

One mistake I made frequently was mindlessly playing Spiritual Meditation first. When you can line up a good turn, don't ruin it. It's still an amazing card to get to what you need from the deck and reroll the top card if necessary.