These Claws Are Always Ready to Fight

Ready for a Fight is the hot new card. Tons of heroes love it and with good reason, it allows for safe trips to AE letting heroes with solid AE abilities use them more consistently. So why X-23?

Instead of focusing on getting to AE for an ability we're combing RFaF with another less used protection card Angel's Aerie. Laura loves defending for the free ready and we're going to lean into that. In MP you can defend multiple times per turn building counters, flip and heal a ton then trigger RFaF to go right back and start again.

That being said you can also use RFaF to flip down and use a basic recovery to clear her obligation and shuffle Honey Badger back in, trigger RFaF and get right back to hero.

But just defending and healing isn't enough so we've got some other toys to help impact the game.

Setup:

Angel's Aerie provides a heal for each fatigue counter which you accumulate through defending.

Adamantium Lacing gives Laura +2 health and retaliate which is key.

Electrostatic Armor gives retaliate after defending as well.

Pain Tolerance heals Laura for 1 everytime you play an X-23 card.

Grim Resolve which deals a damage to x-23 to generate a resource. This can also be used to ready Laura on turns where you don't use the claws and provides a resource for RfaF.

Enhanced Physique which generates a resource by spending 1 counter off. This is to help fuel RFaF as well as What Doesn't Kill Me.

Moira MacTaggert has to be played in AE but is nice for the turns you trigger RFaF to draw flipping back to hero.

Specialized Training can grab you an upgrade. I opt for Front Line Specialist to get card draw when you take damage.

Endurance provides +3 health.

Energy Barrier lets you negate 1 damage and deal it back to the attacking enemy.

Gameplay:

This decks primary focus is to defend and deal damage back to the villain during their turn. Between Energy Barrier and Northstar we can mitigate the amount of damage we take and in a lot of cases deal more to the villain than they do to us.

However X-23 doesn't like to only play defense so we have Honey Badger with Protective Training and Game Time to get us multiple readies during our turn. Coupled with her claws and Claw Mastery the damage can really pile up quickly.

A turn can look like this, RFaF in play to set up a flip down and low on health with some counters on Angel's Aerie.

Play Claw Mastery and attack for 3, use the claws to ready her and attack for 5.

Honey badger attack/thwart to ready X-23 attacking for another 5. Use game time to ready HB and attack/thwart readying X-23.

Starhawk](/card/16012) is great as a cheap ally that can be played continuously. Normally you'll see him in Guardian decks but he works really well here to add some extra attack/thwart and recursion. He can also be the target for encounter cards that target allies to keep our main allies Northstar and HB online

Flip down and heal for 6 with her basic and then from the Aerie as well (so far my best 1 turn heal was for 12 just from the aerie).

Villain phase trigger RFaF and flip back to hero drawing from Moira and defend dealing back that retaliate damage. With both energy barriers, Electro and Lacing you can get up to 4 dealt back as well as readying plus putting a counter on Aerie. With Northstar out, you can use his ability to cancel the boost as well minimizing the damage even further.

In MP, you can defend during your turn and you can defend for your teammates as well. With Indomitable you can get up to 3 defends in a single phase and with her upgrades out you could turn that into a considerable amount of damage.

During a 2-handed game alongside a J Wasp deck against Expert Project Wideawake, Wasp only took 1 attack the entire game which was from a minion with quickstrike. X-23 defended the entire game for both and was able to do so comfortably while dealing a significant amount of retaliate damage.

I've been playing this deck alot and it's been really fun. It's seen a lot of success in solo as well as 2-handed/MP. I'd love to hear any feedback or experiences with it!

Swaps:

In solo I swap out Indomitable for Assess the Situation as the extra card helps balance out not having doubles.

Rogue is a consideration and works well but the deck feels better sticking with the low cost curve.

Change of Fortune is another consideration with our consistent retaliate damage.

Build Support could be swapped in especially for solo to get the Aerie online quicker.