Concussive Photons

Carol will be a little 'resistant' to being a Sidekick

New Recruits

Use Cameo to grab Captain Marvel. She's a mid-game card that you will slowly build up, but Suit Up can grab her when you need her, along with the plethora of upgrades to truly make her shine. Do note that this card has received an erratum that says it can 'grab an upgrade that can attach to an ally' instead of 'that ally'. What this means is, you can use it to grab for example: Captain Marvel and Danger Room Training or Professor X and Sky Cycle, even though those upgrades cannot attach to those allies. Eventually, you'll have a super buff Captain Marvel ally that will be drawing you cards multiple times per turn, along with Game Time to provide even more value (which can be fished out of the bin with Tactical Brilliance). It's a great engine with a lot of moving parts, but you'll build it piece by piece and eventually overwhelm the villain with value.

Mutant Re-Education

The first thing you need to focus on is laying down the ground work for Captain Marvel, but that does not mean just finding her as soon as possible. With your starting hand, you'll be down to 4 cards from Cameo and then +1 from Scott Summers' Constant Training (grab Exploit Weakness turn one as it's fairly situational early game). So for the first couple of turns, you're likely unable to use Suit Up to grab Captain Marvel and actually play her that turn, unless you have Energy, Genius, or Strength. But even if those stars align, she'll likely thwart or attack, and draw you a card you cannot play. She simply won't be very much value.

There are a few strong turn-one openings depending on what you have in your hand. Mulligan hard for Suit Up, and it opens up a lot of options.

So the first ally is most often going to be Triage, because she's a situational ally that you can also with other Suit Ups when you need her. Usually the first upgrade is Clarity of Purpose to bring up your total resources expenditure per turn. If you don't have anything else worth playing, You can use Clarity to help pay for Triage and heal yourself back up, attack or thwart for 1, then have a good chump block. Solid turn 1.

If you have something else to play, like Tactical Brilliance or Ruby Quartz Visor, go ahead and spend Triage to play those instead. If you start with Tactical Brilliance, make sure to grab Coordinated Effort with Constant Training instead of Exploit Weakness. Spend Coordinated Effort, then bring it back to your hand with Tactical Brilliance, and play Coordinated Effort on the villain. You now have an upgrade attached to the villain that does not have temporary, so go nuts with your Optic Blasts and Full Blasts whenever you can.

Late game, Suit Up could lose a lot of its value, especially if you have played all of your relevant upgrades, but one option is to leave one Honorary X-Men so you can grab an ally and a resource to help pay for them. Professor X helps confuse the villain and enables trips to Alter-Ego. He could also stun a minion (not useful most of the time) or ready Carol (very useful). Triage is great for keeping Carol or Scott healthy, and Phoenix can grab you anything you need from your discard. That one extra resource can sometimes be the difference between playing out that combo or not, so keep that in mind before you commit to playing the second Honorary X-Men.

Study Hall

Once you progress to the mid-game, it should be easy to get Captain Marvel down and start powering her up. Eventually, she'll have The first upgrade you need is Honorary X-Men as soon as possible. This opens up a lot of other strategies, but there are many other upgrades that don't require it. Keep in mind that this is all granular. You aren't trying to build Carol to get every upgrade until you can start playing the game. She provides a lot of value right away and you can keep increasing her impact on the board turn by turn, eventually building from a 2 THW / 2 ATK / 3 HP ally to 4/4/6 ally that can activate multiple times per turn, pings 1 damage when attacking or thwarting, heals when you recover, and heals at the X-Mansion every time you flip to Alert-Ego.

• Danger Room Training (Requires Honorary X-Men): Compared to Inspired, it's just +1 HP, but also opens up Game Time, which allow for extra bursts of value late game when she's fully built
• Game Time (Requires Danger Room Training and Honorary X-Men): gives Carol an extra thwart or attack while also healing her, so it's completely free. The card draw from Carol means it completely replaces itself. Early game it's not helpful and takes a few cards to be online, but it's a free extra 3-4 THW or ATK
• Honorary X-Men: as explained above, this required for a lot of tools that help out Carol; the second one is for Scott so he can use The X-Jet while in Alter-Ego if needed.
• Inspired: +1 THW and +1 ATK for Captain Marvel; great value that will help you the whole game
• Power Gloves: extra ping damage whenever Carol thwarts or attacks; pings toughs, finishes off enemies who are on low health; it's just a great option. Change to Sidearm in Retaliate-heavy encounters.
• Sidekick: just like Reinforced Suit, but also allows you to heal Carol whenever Scott heals as well. Carol won't like playing the sidekick role, but I'm sure she'll appreciate the extra longevity in play. Also keep in mind that it simply attaches to an identity-specific ally, not just your identity-specific ally. Make the Call made it possible to steal other players' signature allies in the past anyway, but with Cameo, you can bring your own.
• Sky Cycle: allows Carol to thwart or attack twice a turn, drawing you an extra card in the process.
• X-Mansion (requires Honorary X-Men): heals Carol 1 damage per turn as long as you're in Alter-Ego (and flipping often will be a great strategy here).

The real reason for the mutant registration act

Extra Credit

Captain Marvel isn't the only resource engine in the deck.

• Scott Summers' Constant Training ability: get any Tactic upgrade from your deck. Early on, it's easy to grab something like Exploit Weakness or Practiced Defense to spend as resources to build up your board. Also get Coordinated Effort to place an upgrade on the villain that will stay there all game and help thin your deck. When there are minions around, grab Priority Target to just draw even more cards.
• Phoenix: she can get Full Blast, Ricochet Beam, Tactical Brilliance, or even some of his upgrades he can't get from his own Alter-Ego ability like Field Commander and Ruby Quartz Visor to help set up for pretty impressive turns that allow you to the turn the corner in a scenario.
• Professor X: also a value piece. Gives a quick burst of thwarting while also readying Carol to thwart/attack and draw more cards or confusing the villain so you can swap to Alter-Ego and get more cards that way.
• Mutant Education: is a powerful effect once you have X-Mansion in play as it replaces itself when you use it, but even without that cost refund, shuffling in some of Scott's strongest cards (including a Tactical Upgrade means he can grab one of them right away. Priority Target is especially helpful as it continues to draw you more cards (granted you have minions to defeat).
• Tactical Brilliance: seems like a simply thwart card, but it's actually a value piece with being able to grab value cards like Game Time and Priority Target
• The X-Jet: generates resources for an X-Men identity. Once Carol is an Honorary X-Men, you can give it to Scott so he can even use the Jet in Alter-Ego
• X-Mansion: refunds the full cost of Game Time and Mutant Education while keeping Captain Marvel alive. Crucial value piece.
• Priority Target: pay 1 card to draw 2 cards for doing things you want to be doing anyway (clearing minions)
• Ruby Quartz Visor: lets you pay for Cyclops' Optic Blast ability; with Coordinated Effort, you can hit the villain every round for 3 damage that has piercing and ranged for free. It's absolutely great value; just be careful of Lost Visor, though sometimes it can just grab your visor out of your deck for you.
• X-Gene: thanks to Phoenix (and Suit Up) along with Mutant Education, you will be playing your identity-specific events nearly every turn, giving you a huge return on your investment to play X-Gene

Final Exam

So how does this deck win? Well, first of all, Carol is hitting for up to 10 damage a turn once she's completely set up and can do an extra five for 'free' with every Game Time you have. In addition to that, you've got:

• Full Blast: this card hits so hard, but it's only one per deck. Play it multiple times by grabbing Phoenix with Suit Up so she can keep grabbing it out of the discard for you. Also it's so easy to keep available all game with Coordinated Effort which can be placed on the villain to provide no purpose other than having an upgrade on the villain for the entire game.
• Ricochet Beam: remember you can choose the same target twice, and thanks to Coordinated Effort, you can always choose the villain. If you have a Guard minion, and you're able to defeat it with the first 3 damage, the next 3 damage can be pointed at the villain (since both instances of damage are in two separate sentences).

Eventually, the villain will crumble under the might of this unlikely duo.