Storm - Rockslide only pawn in game of life

V2.0

The Nightcrawler pack update!

Change log:

• -1 Defensive Training, +1 Change of Fortune: Things I don't want to do in this deck: flip down. Ultimately, while Mutant Protectors is a feature card in the deck it's not an engine or a combo piece - just an occasional powerful effect. Time to stop worrying and learn to love only getting three Protectors per deck cycle! Change of Fortune is a highly variable flex piece that will sometimes be not-as-good as taking a third Energy Barrier, but when it's good it's great. I took the deck for a spin against Ultron for laughs, and laughs were duly had - "draw +2 cards per turn" is a pretty nice effect, wouldn't you agree?
• -1 Iceman, +1 Northstar: Jean-Paul is fantastic in this deck as he makes villain damage output predictable (i.e. no random 4-icon swings) and keeps things manageable for your limited damage reduction abilities. I found it's best to use his HP almost exclusively for his activated ability, as three Defiances on a warm body.
• -1 Night Nurse (Storm has stalwart at will); -1 Hangar Bay (sad to see it go, but it's one of those cards that may be synergistic but the effect it brings just isn't powerful enough); -1 Professor X (the first time in my life I've ever taken Papa X out of a deck! But I was only using him to give me enough cover to flip down and heal, and now I have a better option:)
• +3 "Come Get Me, Bub!": I feel like it took people a while to realise that this was going to be the sleeper hit of the Nightcrawler pack - Gunboat Diplomacy, Change of Fortune and even Riposte had more early hype. But it turns out that three health and a toughness card for zero while in hero mode is a fantastic tempo swing in your favour, and this is a deck that likes to have minions out occasionally so you're not stuck with unusable Pinned Downs. And four healing cards in the deck (including Triage) is enough that I can cheerfully ditch the Professor and treat Ororo's Garden like the dead card that it deservedly should be. Hero form 100% of the time from now on, baybee! Unless I pull Claustrophobia, I guess.

Original write-up:

A deck built around Blizzard synergies:

• The drawback to using Mutant Protectors as a pure "get any X-Man ally out for two effective resources" card is that your ally has to take damage from an enemy attack before you get to use them for their usual punch 'n' thwart role. A -1ATK to all characters means that your allies are that much more likely to survive the initial hit and live to do some additional good.
• Pinned Down plus an additional -1 from Blizzard neuters all but the most ATK-heavy minions - giving you additional enemy attacks that do no damage that you can then drop Protector allies in front of at no risk. If the minion in question only has 2 or lower ATK that's even better - you can swap to Hurricane and let them slowly beat themselves to death against your Retaliate.
• Hangar Bay doesn't get much love, but in this deck it finally finds a role: Let a minion attack for 0, throw down a juicy Rockslide in front of it via Mutant Protectors, then untap Rocky for free, thus completely negating Protectors' downsides.

Practical considerations:

• With only three copies of Mutant Protectors in the deck, you're not going to be able to use it every turn. There's no resource advantage to playing Triage or Armor via Protectors in any case (though it may still be worth doing if you draw both ally and event together and want to get Armor out immediately to Toughness-block).
• Speaking of which - you're not always going to be able to live the dream of dropping an ally in front of a Pinned-Down enemy - but with Armor, Colossus and Polaris on your roster you can at least guarantee that Hangar Bay won't be a dead card. If you want to take it to silly extremes you can do Nightcrawler shenanigans - the deck isn't exactly built around him, but you do have a disproportionate number of energy resources.
• Storm's non-Blizzard defences aren't all that crash hot - she needs both her Crown and Cape out just to be a basic 2/2/2. Energy Barrier gives her a little bit of damage negation without having to exhaust Storm to defend. Blizzard and Flash Freeze particularly improve Energy Barrier (which is prone to being swamped by incoming damage otherwise). Once improved, its ability to knock enemy Toughness cards off, plus the fact that it stacks and can be used over multiple turns, makes it more useful in my experience than What Doesn't Kill Me or Defensive Stance, which would be the other two natural considerations.
• You almost never want to flip down with Storm - really, it's just an emergency healing option; Ororo's Garden is never going to win Character Card of the Year honours. Professor X (who is otherwise not exactly ideal Mutant Protectors fodder) gives you a Confusion to cover yourself in true solo.
• On that note, I should mention that this has been tested exclusively in solo. It's a relatively selfish deck, but you can at least use Protectors to block for other players. And of course being a Storm deck means it automatically affects the entire board for both good and for bad - potentially making you a tremendous asset if you're good at juggling the weather well. Being considerate of teammates makes using Blizzard and Hurricane defensively that much harder, however.

How do you win?

...Oh right, you have to actually do stuff occasionally. Well, grasshopper, you have two 8-to-10-damage Lightning Bolts that you can point at the enemy dome. Plus you'll do two points of Thunderstorm damage fairly frequently. And if Storm herself is going to use a basic power it'll often be an attack, as your other stats are initially awful and only improve to 'underwhelming' with both upgrades out. Depending on whether you play your allies via Mutant Protectors or just the old-fashioned way, Utopia means you'll either get to defend and then attack, or to attack twice in the same turn.

Acknowledgments:

This deck was the inspiration, I just leaned into the key cards a little harder once I saw the interactions.