Find 'em, Freeze 'em, Confuse 'em and Blast 'em

After watching X-Men'97, I've been wanting to play Cyclops more, but really leaning into his Optic Blast ability. There have been plenty of decks published over the last year that showcase Scott's ability to bring X-Men allies into the field, but fewer are designed to build around Optic Blast. So here's a new take to share with you all...

This one is based around using Looking for Trouble or Angela to pull a minion. If you don't expect to be able to deal with your minion immediately, use Iceman to stun them to buy you some time. Then, using Banshee's response you can confuse the minion so you don't need to deal with it scheming when you flip down. Ultimately, you'd love to put a number of Upgrades on that minion like Exploit Weakness, Priority Target or Suppressing Fire. Even Practiced Defense is fine because it can also allow you to keep the minion around until you are ready to blast it.

Field Commander becomes a more important play because then you can keep some of the temporary upgrades on the minions. Chances are, you'll be flipping regularly so you can use Constant Training to go and find the one you want. But you'll also want to flip regularly to get access to Cerebro, which is the key to this deck.

The first goal is to get Cerebro down along with Psylocke. Then, making use of Mutant Education and X-Men Instruction, you can nearly always have access to Phoenix. If she is in your deck, you can pull her directly with Cerebro because of Psylocke's Psionic trait. And if Phoenix is in your discard pile, you then shuffle her back in, draw a card if you have the X-Mansion down, and then you can find her using Cerebro.

Phoenix then is going to draw you Full Blast from your discard pile. This is the key to the deck - do NOT let this get shuffled back into your draw pile! With Full Blast, you'll be able to hit the Minion for 11 with piercing, ranged and overkill. Even better, you can then trigger Directed Force for even more damage.

You should ideally be able to keep recurring Full Blast every time you flip from alter-ego back to hero so expect to flip every turn. A typical two-turn sequence would then look like this:

Starting in Hero form you would play Looking for Trouble or Angela and find a minion. Then, use Banshee to thwart, clearing any remaining threat and confusing your minion. You should be heading to alter-ego with 5 threat removed, and likely a relatively cleared Main Scheme. If you really need, you use Psylocke to confuse the villain. Using any copies of Mutant Education or X-Men Instruction in your hand, you put Phoenix back into the discard pile, as well as as Cyclops Upgrade if playing Mutant Education. Then use Constant Training to put an Upgrade on your confused minion. Heal Banshee using X-Mansion.

After the villain's turn, you then would have a 6 card hand. Use Cerebro to pull Phoenix to have 7 cards and use Constant Training for an 8th. Thwart and Heal with Banshee or Psylocke before flipping to hero form. Then play Jean using 4 of your cards. Take Full Blast from the discard pile bringing you back up to 5 cards in hand. Soften your minion up using Jean's ATK 2. Put another Upgrade on the Minion if desired and then use hit the minion for 11 using Ruby Quartz visor or 13, 15 or 17 if you have any copies of Directed Force. (Edit: Missed that Directed Force doesnt stack. Thanks to tehsideburns on Reddit for noticing). You'll completely overwhelm any Minion and overkill the excess to the Villain. Finally, on the Villain's turn, block with Jean so she gets back into your discard to find again next turn.

Ultimately, this combo is quite reliable to be able to play a Full Blast every other turn when you return from Alter-Ego. There's nothing quite so satisfying as taking a 17 (Edit: 13) damage shot at the Villain. Makes you feel just like Cyclops from X-Men'97!

Until next time Champions...