A Mild Degree Of Recklessness

The Side Scheme: Live Dangerously has always been sort of a fun little project to try and maximize, with that enticing +2 hand size for everyone at the table. But the downside of the extra crisis, hazard and acceleration icons certainly balances this quite a bit.

But then the Shadowcat ally came along in the Iceman pack, giving the ability to blank icons on a Side Scheme, and there was a whisp of a possibility to 'break' this card. Only problem is, you need to play Live Dangerously in 'Pool, but there isn't a lot of recursion for Shadowcat available when you're in that aspect.

However, we can solve this problem by playing Cable. He can pull Live Dangerously on turn one, and get the +2 hand size for everyone going nearly immediately. Plus, we can play him in Leadership then, getting access to some of the best cards to get Shadowcat back into play.

However, Shadowcat has two pretty big restrictions still, being that she can only be played by an X-Men, and needs to be 'played from hand' which removes some cards like Make the Call and Rapid Response from our arsenal.

However, with the recent release of Children of the Atom, we have all the cards needed to be able to play Shadowcat reliably pretty much every round. First of all, we'll need CotA in order to make Cable an X-Men so he can actually play Shadowcat. Then, we'll use Mutant Mayhem in order to be able to play her onto the table again, from hand, as per the text on Mutant Mayhem.

However, then we still have the issue of how to keep doing this regularly? Mutant Mayhem will come around 3x per deck cycle, which is good, but not reliable. Those who regularly come to see my decks know I like combos that are pretty consistent. So the key here is using Black Panther. He can pull and store a copy of Mutant Mayhem with his response to make this more reliable.

However, Black Panther himself can only be played once per deck cycle, which isn't really that reliable still. But what if we make him an X-Force Recruit? Then he'll have the X-Force tag, which makes him eligible for the very Mutant Mayhem recursion that he'll have stored underneath him.

However, there are only 3x copies of X-Force Recruit available in a deck, so you'll need to have Mutant Mayhem stashed under T'Challa until you see an X-Force Recruit, and then you'll be able to play your combo again. This gives us more reliability, but is still a little inconsistent.

However, you do have Children of the Atom in play already, which means that a copy of Honorary X-Men functions like a copy of X-Force Recruit This gives Panther the X-Force trait needed for Mutant Mayhem anyways. So now there are 6 cards that trigger this, plus the 2 other copies of Mutant Mayhem that aren't under Panther.

However, this might take a while to set up. Fortunately, we still have other ways to help get our key allies into the game quickly --> like Suit Up. This is an awesome way to get Shadowcat in our hand on turn one, so she can start blanking our icons on Live Dangerously. Suit Up requires you to select an upgrade too.

However, that upgrade you choose with Suit Up doesn't need to be one you play (although you can use it as a resource), so you can pick your copies of X-Force Recruit or Honorary X-Men as needed. You also have a copy of Won't Stay Down in order to pull Shadowcat back in AE if needed too.

However, it will get expensive to play Mutant Mayhem every turn. Fortunately, if you play this in your next 3P or 4P game, I'm sure you'll find you can convince your teammates to throw a few resources your way with the Alliance keyword available. They're all getting +2 hand size, so there are a lot of cards coming to the group. But even if you're playing solo or 2P, with you getting a +2 hand size, you'll likely be able to afford this recurring cost on your own pretty easily. I've included cards like Helicarrier, X-Jet and Avenger's Mansion to try and provide extra cards to pay for this every turn if you need.

Okay, so that's the combo. No more "howevers" left :) Bring this one to your next 4P game and your friends will absolutely adore you. You can run this combo all by yourself and don't need to try and make two decks work together in order to gain the benefits of the Shadowcat/Live Dangerously interaction.

Hope you enjoy this combo as much as I do! If so, I'd always love a like or comment in order to give this some visibility for a little while.

Until next time Champions...