Phoenix Pixie-Lab Recursion

Pixie-Lab Recursion

This deck is designed to abuse Pixie's ability to recur Professor X and Med Lab's ability to recur Pixie. The main reason Phoenix is chosen specifically is her access to Cerebro and Psychic Kicker. Since 2 pieces of the engine are X-Men allies, Cerebro lets you find them on demand.

One of the bottleneck of ally-based strategy is resources so Uncanny X-Men is a card we want to play. However the extra HP that UXM gives is actually a drawback that delays putting Pixie back under Med Lab for a turn. Ready effects like Psychic Kicker and Command Team provides an extra boost to allow us to get Pixie back in time for the recursive engine to work smoothly.

Here's the play sequence you want to strive towards:

1. Have Pixie under Med Lab and start the turn in Alter-Ego.
2. Activate Med Lab to play Pixie.
3. Pixie returns Professor X to your hand then you switch to Hero.
4. Play Professor X to confuse the villain. If you have Utopia, ready Phoenix. If the villain has Stalwart, you can ready Pixie so you don't need another ready effect when UXM is in play.
5. Block with Professor X.
6. Next turn attack with Pixie. If UXM is in play, you'd need a ready effect to attack with Pixie again and get her under Med Lab. Note that if the target has Retaliate, then you won't need a ready effect.
7. Switch to Alter-Ego and do Alter-Ego things. The villain is confused (unless Stalwart) so your risk of getting schemed out is low. And this sets you up to be ready at step #1 again.

While you're doing this whole recursion, you're also getting 3 THW and 4 ATK in addition to your hero activations and any other card you play since with UXM in play, it'll only cost you 3 resources every other turn.

The rest of the deck is designed to support the above interactions or cards that play nicely with them.

• Miles Morales interacts nicely with all of the ready effects. His bonus lasts until the end of the phase so you can get a lot of damage out of him with Psychic Kicker.
• Ironheart and Nick Fury helps you find what you need faster while providing some THW/ATK and a block. This deck is opting for Ironheart over Maria Hill to support a The Power in All of Us-based economy.
• Moira MacTaggert gets you more cards when switching from Alter-Ego to hero which you'll be doing every other turn.

Gameplan

• Mulligan: look for UXM, Team-Building Exercise, and The X-Jet. Phoenix has a solid economy from Psionic Bond but the cards in the deck are rather pricey so you still need to invest in them.
• Early Game: aggressively use Psionic Bond to help setup what you need. Prioritize playing support and allies.
• Midgame: find Med Lab and the other pieces. Cerebro helps find them.
• Endgame: keep looping Pixie and Professor X to handle the villain activations and use the extra resources to deal with everything else.

Other Options

• Maria Hill and White Tiger over Miles Morales and Colossus, The Power of Leadership over The Power in All of Us. This version puts in more card draw over raw power. The benefit is getting the engine setup faster but might have a harder time dealing with a flood of encounters.
• Gentle over Miles Morales. You'd be giving up some late game power for a more consistent minion clearing since an X-Men ally is more supported by the rest of the deck.
• Danger Room Training and Danger Room over Moira MacTaggert and Command Team. This is an option against a Stalwart villain, since Professor X would be used to ready Pixie instead of confusing the villain, you don't need additional ready effects. So you can get +1 ATK/THW over 2 activations instead.