Stay At Home X-Man

Introduction

Welcome to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

I am Scott Summers and I'll be your teaching you all about how I lead the X-Men from the comfort of our own X-Mansion, while wearing my pajamas and rarely, if ever, showing up for work as Field Commander of the X-Men.

To start, you may notice that we've got quite the full house. Don't worry, it's part of what makes being a stay-at-home X-Man work. I'll take you through the different Support facilities we have access to here at the school before explaining how I spend my Event time and introducing you to the different members of the X-Men. Finally, I'll teach you about some of the notable things I've learned from my time as Field Commander

Support

To start, Cerebro is one of our most valuable assets, allowing me to find the X-Man I need, especially if one of our Psionic members with me. More on them later. Should you ever doubt on what you need to lead the X-Men from home, the answer is going to be Cerebro.

Next we have the Danger Room. After some Danger Room Training, any member of the X-Men is a force to be reckoned with, making this our second most important asset.

The new Med Lab is a very useful tool to get our injured members back out there. Just remember that not everyone has need of it and Pixie seems to really enjoy hanging out there.

Don't mind The Triskelion parked behind the school. I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D. knows where it is. I just need to ship more X-Men out to deal with the villain, but I think Nick Fury prefers use to keep it where it is. Where's The X-Jet? Well, Rogue and Gambit are taking the Blackbird on a joyride so we can't use it to have more X-Men in the field.

The island of Utopia is valuable location and I prefer to pay it a visit after making use of Cerebro and the Danger Room

Staying at the X-Mansion is not mandatory, but it does significantly improve our [Mutant Education](/card/37021 program), but we'll come back to that.

Team Training is great for any team, but doesn't take priority over anything most of the time. It can definitely be useful at times though.

Event

Now you might ask 'Mr Summers, what do you do all day while the members of your team are out there busting their asses?'. I'll be straight forward with you. For the majority, I'm spending my time on Meditation and determining our Priority Targets when necessary. It helps me figure out who to deploy and do so more efficiently than I can when I'm out on the field myself.

As you may know, there's Strength In Numbers and I enjoy using this when the first X-Men are deployed to the field to accelerate ourselves towards victory. Especially if it enables us to access Cerebro or the Danger Room.

After trying out several tactics and throwing them away at whoever of the X-Men needs them, figuring out who your Priority Targets are through some Mutant Education is the way to go for me. Especially if I'm at the X-Mansion, which makes it so that I not only can deploy tactics anew, but we'll gain something as well!

Upgrade

Danger Room Training, as mentioned before, makes any of the X-Men a force to be reckoned with. Just remember to grab a fresh training regimen in the Danger Room before resorting to old ones as it helps speed everything up.

Finally, through sheer Leadership Skill, I make sure that not only my team is more effective, but also prevent myself from getting Caught Off Guard and losing my Cerebro and Danger Room privileges.

Ally

Psionics

Our psionic mutant friends are key to fully utilizing Cerebro while we sit around at the school.

Jean, better known as Phoenix is one of the best and will make sure I get that Priority Target right again. Psylocke on the other hand allows me to lounge in my underwear as her origin story confuses the villain. Professor X does the same, but he always wanders off somewhere else, so I make sure to tell him to use Cerebro before he goes to visit Moira MacTaggert or Magneto. Blindfold, Marvel Girl and Mirage are also great for helping me use Cerebro, but I prefer to resort to the others when the opportunity strikes.

Staff

I have to admit, technology can be fickle here at the Xavier Institute, but Forge can help you out no matter what. Just remember that a working Cerebro and Danger Room is our top concern. Getting to Utopia or having the disco lights in the X-Mansion are secondary.

Pixie will help convince other X-Men to go on a mission again. She doesn't really need Danger Room Training, mostly because she enjoys staying in the Med Lab so much, but otherwise some Danger Room Training is better than none.

I don't know where Beast keeps finding the Strength, Genius and sheer Energy to convince other X-Men to head out with him, but he does so I make sure to deploy him before anyone else when I find him with Cerebro.

Others

The rest of the X-men I like to deploy are all reliable while I'm staying back at the school and need very little from me to work. There are a few members I'd like to specifically highlight.

Dazzler allows me to lounge another day, which is always appreciated. Should Psylocke be out of commission, Dazzler is the one to go for.

I hate to admit it, but Wolverine is there best there is at what he does, especially after a round of Danger Room Training and Team Training. In his own words, he can 'snikt some bubs for days'.

Polaris helps the team, but depending on what villain we're facing she can be swapped out for someone like Dust or Nightcrawler. This is a case by case situation, but Polaris is the most generally useful out of all the options.

General advice

Now, you might wonder, 'Mr Summers, do you truly never take to the field yourself?' The truth is I do, but only after I'm done with my Meditation and using all the different facilities at our disposal. Once that's out of the way, I don't mind showing my Tactical Brillance every once in a while and make sure we get another Priority Target.

Staying at home becomes a lot easier if I'm partnering up with someone to take down the villain, allowing me to stay in my pajamas almost indefinitely while handing out tactics to the X-Men. Should I be by myself, however, I have to admit that, depending on which villain we're facing, I need a healthy work-life balance and, unfortunately, sometimes take to the field myself. I just make sure that I always make time for my Meditation and the activities at the various school facilities.

I don't intend to use my Ruby Quartz Visor much, so in case of a Lost Visor, I don't fret. When I don't have a need for some Meditation, I can go find it whenever I want to. Just don't ask me how I'm able find it without being able to see things.

I'm not afraid to let one of the team members withdraw from the battle and use their old Danger Room Training regime to put a different X-Men through the Danger Room and deploy them to the field.

If I can, I let Phoenix stay at the X-Mansion to keep her on the mission and enable full function of Cerebro at all times and use Utopia for the other X-Men. I can also choose to let Wolverine stay at the mansion, but he doesn't operate Cerebro quite like Jean can.

Thank you for coming to my X-Talk.

Notes

I hope you enjoyed my write-up of this deck. It's a lot of fun to play and have almost all the X-Men make an appearance. It's also a deck that can shift depending on what X-Men are released in the future, especially if they're a 3-cost ally that don't rely on you getting attacked (sorry Bishop).

Inspired was used for a while, but Leadership Skill is strictly better. Make the Call is good for recurring X-Men, but Strength In Numbers just helps accelerate the deck early game so much that it makes the cut over Make the Call.

I love Game Time, but with the amount of allies we can cycle through, we really don't need it.

The 50 cards might be off-putting to some, but in this case it prevents you from drawing all the tactics and instead using Scott's Constant Training ability to make sure we have 7 (or 8 with Cerebro) cards in hand.

Mutant Genesis

Taking this deck through true solo Mutant Genesis on Expert.

Progress:

Sabretooth: Cleared

Project Wideawake: Cleared

Master Mold: Cleared

Mansion Attack: Cleared

Magneto: Cleared!

In true solo this deck spends quite a decent amount of time doing Cyclops things instead of just Scott Summers things, but that's fine. Master Mold was a joke with both Jubilee and Magneto in play (Strength In Numbers is a card). Mansion Attack was the toughest challenge in the campaign so far, mostly because the first agenda was the one with Retaliate 1 and the second one was Steady, not to mention Toad is absolutely horrible to face as the first of the Brotherhood. Managed to finish it with a Full Blast against Blob (The villains were Toad, Avalanche and Blob in that order). All scenario's were beaten on the first attempt for this deck though.

Magneto was surprisingly easy! Completing the Orbital Decay as soon as possible helped a lot in switching between throwing X-Men in front of attacks and confusing Magnus. Magneto's Fortress got replaced by a Magnetically Sealed from the magnet counters, which meant I removed basically nothing from the main scheme. Things took a grim turn when both Bastion and Mister Sinister showed up in the same term and but with some Strength In Numbers on four allies to play Wolverine to trigger Utopia and untap an X-Men and then using the Ruby Quartz Visor and a Full Blast meant they both were gone the turn they landed.

The deck really has a lot of tools to get out of different situations, even in true solo. Keep track of Advances left in the encounter deck and other cards that might cause the villain to scheme and go to alter-ego to have some Meditation as long as you don't outright lose the game to it. In 2 player+, you can legit stay as Scott Summers all game long.