Seeing Double

Intro

Bishop has completely surprised me. He's powerful, fun and relatively simple though has hooks in each aspect. Aggression has been a ton of fun and he's really started to click after I put in a fantastic card for him, Fusillade.

^ you rn

Stay with me here.

Big thanks to Tjjj for giving me the suggestion to include more aggression specific resources like Audacity and Aggressive Energy only to share a Bishop aggression deck with me 15 minutes later that utilized none of his own advice.

Skip to Deck Strategy to get past the kit analysis

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Deck Changes

Swap out Down Time for X-Mansion. Totally wasn't on my radar but the extra target for Forge is really solid and leans into the doubles theme. Thanks to journeyman2 for the suggestion!

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Run of the Mill

No! I needed that card! I take it back!!!

^ also you btw

Bishop's main hook is his signature ability, Energy Absorption, leaning into the 'health as a resource' archetype. This lets you get (almost) guaranteed card draw and resources for every attack you take! Depending on your perspective, this either creates uniquely dynamic games or uniquely frustrating ones as you mill the most important non-resource cards of your deck with the hopes of drawing resources.

If you do end up drawing into them, Bishop's Uniform allows you to heal for every resource in your hand after triggering Energy Absorption which can be one of the most powerful healing abilities in the game. Bishop's Rifle allows you to deal free damage for each resource in your hand at the start of the player phase, perfect for the start of a turn.

Obviously there's a big focus on resources in any of his builds so you can draw into them and heal. His events themselves are pretty straightforward and complement this, offering either a ready or card draw if played with resource cards. The standout event here is definitely Energy Conversion, allowing all of your resource cards to be shuffled back into your deck so you have a higher chance of drawing into them with Energy Absorption. Once you have all those resources, you can discard them to boost up Super-Charged and use your basic attack to hit 10 ATK.

That's not to say all the focus is on hero abilities. Alter-Ego is extremely powerful here too, boasting a powerful 4 REC. While the main play for Bishop is of course massive Super-Charged attacks, Temporally Displaced understands that you're likely to mill through important signature upgrades Bishop's Rifle and Bishop's Uniform. A quick flip to alter-ego solves that, letting you grab any Temporal cards including his signature upgrades, signature allies or his resources.

So what does Bishop need to succeed in order to build him out properly?

• Expect the unexpected
• Don't rely too much on any single card coming out OR make sure there's multiple ways for specific cards to come into play
• Have resource dumps out/available so a hand full of resources isn't a wasted turn
• Build around occasional flips to alter-ego sometimes to grab Temporal cards
• Anticipate that you will have to recover sometimes/have other methods of healing

Now that we know all of this, let's get to it.

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Deck Strategy

This deck was built to capitalize on Bishop's strong basic attack buffs (and boost them further) while utilizing the powerful aggression X-Men allies for some thematic tribal synergy. While aggression decks I've seen so far really lean into buffing Bishop's basic attack or synergizing with Energy Absorption, I haven't come across any that lean fully into an X-men Utopia build to constantly ready while also buffing attack further.

Bishop also allows us to focus on Weapon synergy as well to buff our basic attack while also justifying Fusillade for those turns where one of those Weapon upgrades isn't going to be triggering.

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Deck Setup

For this deck, everything you need comes in twos because of how easy it is to mill through your deck and lose key setup pieces. There are only a couple of cards that are essential to the build.

• Utopia is your priority target, with Forge being a close second because he can grab it. With 10 total X-Men allies, the sooner you get this out, the more you can take advantage of it!
• Lock and Load will help you grab either Godslayer (my preferred target) or Bishop's Rifle and you can easily clear it (in solo) with a basic power activation
• Bishop's Uniform is important to get out fast for all of the passive healing. Not the worst thing if it gets missed because it's easy to grab in the discard pile.
• Avengers Mansion is a good early card because it's easy to pay for with all of the double resources and is a more high value return the earlier you get it out
• Honorary X-Men will be incredibly helpful for flips down so you can trigger Utopia in alter-ego. If you see it, play it!
• While not a traditional mulligan target, if you can get Lockjaw discarded early game you always have that resource dump available. Especially useful if you don't have any Super-Charged on the board

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Two is better than one

You'll notice that the majority of cards I've put in this deck are multiples of 2. This is intentional. With the exception of Professor X, Lock and Load and Godslayer (I'm not counting Honorary X-Menas a 0 cost card or Down Time, see the changes note), every card I've put here should be able to be paid with a double. You'll be seeing a lot of your doubles thanks to Energy Absorption and I'd rather not overpay for cards.

You will mill through cards that you don't want to. This isn't ideal but is a guarantee. For everything that you do want to do, there will be (at least!) two ways to do it.

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• Weapon upgrades - these have their own benefits in addition to being a target for Fusillade
  • Godslayer to buff up your basic ATK
  • Bishop's Rifle to take advantage of your resource cards

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• Getting Weapon upgrades on the board
  • Lock and Load for Godslayer with only a 2 THW scheme to clear
  • Temporally Displaced for Bishop's Rifle

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• Alter-Ego Access
  • Professor X and Psylocke for confuse
  • Tempus for steady/stalwart scenarios to block scheming entirely

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• Getting Utopia in play to reap the benefits
  • Play it directly
  • Utilize Forge to get it in your hand and play it

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• Readying to utilize strong basic attacks/thwarting as necessary
  • Concussive Blast lets you ready after dealing 6 damage
  • Utopia lets you ready once a round if you play an X-Men ally

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• Drawing cards to mitigate poor hands
  • Bishop's Command Authority will let you draw a card and remove 3 threat
  • Avengers Mansion will let you draw a card each turn

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• Healing to help us stay in hero form, especially without Bishop's Uniform
  • Triage is an easy 2 cost heal
  • X-Mansion to heal for 2 more with each flip down

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• Buffing your ATK stat to synergize with Super-Charged
  • Combat Training will boost your basic ATK stat
  • Godslayer is perfect for boosting your ATK up to 4 against the villain/unique enemies

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• Resource Dumps for all those hands with nothing to spend extra resources on
  • Super-Charged is always a good resource dump. You can have both on the board at once too. Hope Summers is great to grab this!
  • Lockjaw is an easy play from your discard pile if you'd like an ally out or have nothing else to do
  • While not a traditional resource dump, you can play Clobber twice if you need to! Remember that a round starts with the player phase so Energy Conversion won't affect its utility

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• Getting rid of tough status cards
  • Wolverine helps to stay on the board for any scenarios with a lot of tough
  • Audacity can be nice to ping tough off of the villain

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• Forge targets
  • Utopia for all of those nice readies
  • X-Mansion for more healing with alter-ego

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Paying for Forgiveness

So I get it. You're a Fusillade hater. I'm going to run you through some quick reasons for why this isn't the worst option here.

First off, you've got 2 Weapon upgrades here that work with it:

• Godslayer
• Bishop's Rifle

You've also got an easy way to get them both in play:

• Lock and Load for Godslayer with only a 2 THW scheme to clear (though can grab Bishop's Rifle too)
• Temporally Displaced for Bishop's Rifle

Bishop is rich which makes this easier to justify.

• You can populate the board with both upgrades very easily
• You're not struggling to pay for slightly inefficient cards anyways
• Being a 2 cost card, you're not overpaying with it with any of the doubles.

There's only 2 copies to compensate for the brief setup required with this.

If you really hate Fusillade that much, let's look at the wealth of other 2 cost attack events that we can pick out:

• Haymaker - 3ER for 3 damage
• No Quarter - 3ER for 4 damage and more milling through your cards
• Outta My Way! - 3ER for 3 damage (majority of the time)
• Piercing Strike - 3ER for 3 damage
• Quick Strike 3 ER for up to 3 damage
• Relentless Assault - 3ER for 5 damage and overkill

The only one here that's even worth considering is Relentless Assault and even then, being minion specific means that this is actually more difficult to play then Fusillade and would require further building around. In multiplayer, a minion is slightly more likely so you could include it, but where's the fun in that?

This being an aggression deck with no focus on thwart through events like Chase Them Down or Looking for Trouble means that you'll need to use your basic THW sometimes. This leaves cards like Godslayer potentially unused, leaving open a prime target for Fusillade. This is even more relevant for scenarios with non-unique minions you want to attack, with most of them conveniently at 5 HP or below!

In sum:

• Trigger Fusillade on Godslayer if you aren't making a basic attack that turn/you have a number of non-unique minions to take out
• Trigger Fusillade on Bishop's Rifle if you don't have a lot of resources and need to use your basic activations toward thwarting while still needing to deal some damage.

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Ass-Kicked and Taking Face

You're going to be taking a lot of damage. A lot. Yeah we have a lot of allies that could chump block but you want to try and trigger Energy Absorption and that isn't going to trigger if you let them chump.

Now I know that you think you're going to heal with Bishop's Uniform and just be able to stay in hero form forever. Here's why that's not going to happen:

• You might not even have Bishop's Uniform out and still want to take damage
• You're probably also letting yourself tank extra villain activations and minion activations for more resources, leaving you at a net negative health overall
• You can only trigger Bishop's Uniform once per round. At best, you're probably breaking even. At worst you might trigger it after the first activation to heal for 2 only to tank another activation from an encounter card

Where does this leave us? Needing to flip down to alter-ego and use our basic recovery. Alter-Ego is an important piece of the puzzle here we haven't touched on yet.

When you flip down, you get a Temporal card. There are a number of these cards that are worth grabbing during a flip to alter-ego.

• Bishop's Uniform and Bishop's Rifle are the best targets early game to help get set up
• Stored Energy can be grabbed and can let you either play a card in your hand or the resource can be used for Super-Charged
• Malcolm and Randall are both Temporal so you can grab them and play them. They can be a decent resource dump if you have no other options

Honorary X-Men helps you a lot during those flips to Alter-Ego.

• You can bypass Tempus' play restriction
• You can heal from Triage
• Most importantly you can ready with Utopia from alter-ego, letting you recover!

This combination of Temporal and X-Men traits in Malcolm and Randall allows you to grab them via Temporally Displaced, play them and ready up with Utopia while also giving you a resource dump if you need it!

Of course with all those potential readies in alter-ego, X-Mansion and your basic REC help you justify the flip down so you can take more hits once you're back in hero form.

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No Hope

I get it. Thematically you're really struggling because of the relationship Bishop and Hope Summers have in the comics. It's really taking you out of the whole deck and you are not having a good time. I've thought really hard about it and brainstormed a solution for you.

You can really swap out any of the allies to your liking and adapt these to the scenario. There are a lot of good X-Men allies you could consider here and swap out for.

• Angel, Colossus, Legion, Longshot and Storm could all be justified here. I'd swap out one of The Power of Aggression for The Power in All of Us if you end up leaning more gray
• Dust, Goldballs and Magik didn't make a spot here for me because of their cost being an odd number but if you really dig them, go ahead
• Sunfire, Tempus and Psylocke are probably the easiest allies to replace as they can be very scenario specific

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Other Card Considerations

There have been a lot of changes in testing this. Unfortunately thanks to Energy Absorption, relying on too many specific upgrades/supports coming out results in far more inconsistency.

• Battle Fury was another ready that could have been helpful. Good in certain scenarios though less useful in others. I didn't want to include minion tutoring into this too much so ultimately this got cut. Same goes for Blood Rage and more broadly events like Toe to Toe or "Bring It!"
• Counterattack could easily be included. I'd probably swap one of the allies for it or take out Combat Training.
• Endurance isn't as good as Down Time for a hero that may need to use a basic recovery multiple times in a game. Turns out X-Mansion is better than both of these!
• Fluid Motion was a great boost to an attack when there were more attack events in the deck but asked for a lot of setup. It also wasn't 2 cost and I didn't find it was worth overpaying for
• Hand Cannon and Full-Body Charge were options as well but that's an overkill build I didn't want to lean into
• The X-Jet isn't needed thanks to all the resources you can draw into
• Skilled Strike buffs the basic attack but I really tried to shy away from 0 cost cards when there are so many resources you might have
• I didn't consider other player side schemes like Superpower Training because of the Temporal keyword on both Bishop's Rifle and Bishop's Uniform allowing them to be played far easier than thwarting
• Tenacity was considered at one point for the ready. Ended up out when Fluid Motion got cut. Aggression needs more readies!
• "You'll Pay for That!" is a generically good Bishop card and maybe one of the most glaring omissions. This isn't included because:
  • It gets limited by Energy Conversion to only thwart for 3.
  • I prefer 2 cost cards over 1 cost cards for this deck
  • With all of the readies and the ability to use Lockjaw, thwart isn't enough of an issue to justify it
  • It isn't the purpose of this build!

If you are a diehard 40 card deck enthusiast, you can cut out Combat Training and your least favorite ally.

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Results

This has been a ton of fun! I really have been surprised by how dynamic plays have been using this deck. There's a surprising amount of sequencing decisions you can get involved in.

Other than that, I'm always happy to find a home for a forgotten card. Is this the most efficient aggression deck for Bishop that you'll find? Probably not, though this kit is so strong you don't really need to focus too much on efficiency.

Let me know what you think!