Steely Rage

I've been trying to make Blood Rage work and have had varied levels of success but Colossus works really well with it. One of the main reasons is his large health pool, he can afford to sacrifice a hit point here and there. Colo also wants the card draw since he has a smaller hand size in hero form. He can also chain Blood Rage with Iron Will in some cases to get double card draw. This will be the primary strategy of the deck along with an emphasis on minion slaying, readying and flipping.

The card draw isn't quite as crazy as what Colo gets up to in Protection but there is a considerable amount once we get rolling.

Getting set up our priorities are:

-Iron Will grants card draw each time we discard a tough which is going to be a main source of the strategy.

-Blood Rage grants us a card draw when we defeat an enemy and take 1 damage. Note you can't trigger this with a tough on

-Titanium Muscles gives +1 Attack and generates a resource for each tough Colo has

-The X-Jet generates a resource

-Deft Focus allows us to reduce the cost of the next Superpower card we play by 1.

-Hall of Heroes puts a counter on each time we defeat a minion. We can flip to AE and exhaust to draw 3 cards by removing 3 counters.

-Unshakable gives Colo steady which keeps us from being shut down by stuns/confuses. It's not a huge priority but against villains that throw around status it can be a life saver

-Combat Training gives us +1 Attack allowing us to defeat enemies easier.

We have both Build Support and Superpower Training to get these supports as well as his hero specific upgrades online quicker.

Strategy:

Once set up with Iron Will the idea is to use our toughs as a form of currency as well as to block incoming damage. Several of Colo's events have you discard a tough to generate extra benefits. How I typically want to lay things out is turns where I have flipped back to hero, ensure that I have at least 1 tough for the villain phase to block damage and generate card draw from Iron Will.

For turns that we will be flipping to AE, we are going to be trying to use up all of our toughs and maximize benefits.

For example, with Organic Steel out the tough we lost during the villain phase would be recouped and we would have 5 cards in hand for out turn. Playing Bulletproof Protector would get us a 2nd tough and draw a card from Iron Will.

We could then play Steel Fist removing a tough to deal 5 damage and stun/confuse the villain also drawing another card.

We could then bring out a minion with Looking for Trouble and remove 3 threat from the main scheme. Then use Made of Rage remove our last tough giving us +6 Attack as well as overkill to defeat the minion. This would generate a card draw from iron will and since we removed our last tough, we could also trigger Blood Rage to deal a damage to ourself and draw yet another card.

With Battle Fury out, we could deal another damage to ourself for defeating a minion and get a ready allowing us to Attack again or thwart.

This would be 4 cards drawn as well as generating around 10 damage as well as a stun/confuse plus a ready while also leaving cards in hand to potentially play an ally or another event.

You can also do things like defeat a minion and then trigger battle fury to knock a tough off resulting in a ready and card drawn then recoup the tough with Organic Steel to have one for the villain phase.

This is just a couple ofexamples of the type of turns I've had running this deck.

Thwart:

Colo doesn't have any traditional thwart events but he does have Armor Up which allows you to flip back to hero when the villain activates thus avoiding the scheme.

Beyond that we have Tempus who can only be played in hero form but can be discarded when the villain schemes to avoid the scheme and you're dealt an encounter card instead.

Looking for Trouble helps keep the main down as well.

We also have a couple of strong allies for thwarting:

Shadowcat has 2 thwart and we can also give her Attack Training which doesn't boost thwart but does give her extra health to keep her on board longer.

White Queen provides 2 thwart as well while also allowing you to discard a status when she enters play.

Hope Summers provides 2 thwart and can search for a superpower card when she enters play. Early game this is a great way to grab Iron will. Later game this is great for Bulletproof Protector to maximize toughs.

Professor X provides 3 thwart as well as a confuse.

Beak only has 1 thwart but he also removes threat equal to the number of x-men allies in play when he's played.

Other Cards Considered:

-Utopia which gives us a ready when we play an x-men character. It worked well enough but I kept playing Hall of heroes or x-jet as opposed to it. There are also a number of ways to ready in the deck without it.

-Psylocke can give you confuses plus solid 2 thwart. She was one of my last cuts, she worked well but I found myself not playing her as much in favor of other allies.

Overall I've really enjoyed this deck and it performs really well. It shores up 2 of Colo's potential weaknesses in thwarting and provides extra card draw to supplement his small hand size.

It really shines in scenarios that consistently bring out minions. Against Expert Apocalypse 1, I was able to trigger Hall of heroes on 3 different occasions thanks to prelate minions and looking for Trouble.

I'd love to hear any feedback or experiences with the deck!