Cable's COTA Uncanny X-Force

Cable abuses Children of the Atom and Uncanny X-Force to get bigger allies to thwart side-schemes for no damage. Organizational Support keeps him fed for resources, allowing X-Force and X-Men supports to act as money to keep a flow of powerful allies with when-played effects cycling through the table.

Overall Strategy (how to play?)

One of the issues of the X-Force trait was its members inherently had their THW values nerfed due to the presence of Uncanny X-Force. This was good for balance, but bad for X-Force abusing their abilities. With the release of Children of the Atom, we no longer have to worry about that, and can use the great X-Men allies for Uncanny X-Force shenanigans.

If you know anything about Cable, he loves defeating side schemes. We're going to do that by abusing ally swarm, and Uncanny X-Force to keep our big thwarting allies in play. With CotA and your X-Men allies, you can use the better THW values on X-Men with your Team card.

Early Game (building your team)

You get to start play with a side scheme, and I recommend Call for Backup in most scenarios. When you trigger it, I would snag Beast, to get the Resource Card kicker.

Most in game side schemes have a value divisible by 2 or 3. Depending on player counts, you might have trouble mathing out how Cable will complete a side-scheme to trigger his ability. Early, simply having one two-thwart and one three-thwart ally will trivialize this. With Mission Leader on the table, this draws everyone a card, beyond the benefits Cable already gets (a ready, Graymalkin).

Once you've got allies in play and are abusing Side-Schemes, use your engine to go over the top. Organizational Support allows you to use your allies as resources (when they're not Side Scheme busting), but you can ALSO trigger off of X-Men and X-Force Supports like X-Bunker and Utopia.

Play Mutant Mayhem to pick up two allies and play them again, healing damaged allies and re-triggering effects you need at the moment (Cyclops for damage, Beast for resources, Phoenix and Triage for healing, Marrow for damage, and Kid Omega for damage/thwart support).

How do we win? (I can cycle threat forever, but that mostly doesn't win the game)

Your deck will have shrunk massively by the time the end game comes around. With three allies in play, six side schemes in the victory display, your upgrades/supports out, your deck will be down to 3 Allies, 10 Events, and 8 Resources. This should be plenty of money and opportunity to fire Plasma Rifle for four. Every other turn, you should see Telekinetic Blast, which is dealing 10 damage a shot, and with the resource availability, if you drew both, you should be able to play them.

Problems (what do the other players do, since you're already winning?)

Leadership swarm was already one of the stronger archetypes in Marvel Champions (citation needed). This deck relies on Cable being a big hit-point bastard with good defensive options to go the distance. What it doesn't do well with on its own is deal with minions, and particularly, bigger minions. Eventually, Plasma Rifle will sort those knuckleheads out, but it takes time that can be detrimental. Having a second player to solve that problem is key in scenarios with big, powerful minions.

Later in the game, you can't FORCE the scenario to give you a side scheme. But a Justice player using One Way or Another could. And if they were operating the The Raft, they could also be helping thwart/feeding a minion sweeper minions. Just a thought.

While this deck works great, it can be a little slow to setup, so might not pop off as intended against fast villains, or expert threats.

Altering the Deck (Why didn't you do X?)

This deck can also be built pretty easily towards a few other things, and I view it as a baseline. Mind you, this baseline has 44 cards already in it, so some people might say we're already not building efficiently enough. I think it shrinks enough to justify that bloat, particularly in multiplayer.

Strength In Numbers is an easy three-of add. Using your allies to also draw more cards is just strong assuming you're keeping them around. A little redundant to Organizational Support, but they fulfill different functions.

The Triskelion could get you a fourth ally on the field, but you probably don't need to. Likewise, Team Training seems an obvious choice, keeping allies around longer, and getting more not-thwarting-side-scheme uses out of them. If you waned to lean into allies doing things besides thwarting side schemes, Mission Planning lets you use your allies for all kinds of guilt-free shenanigans.

Want to cycle allies more frequently? I'd actually include one more Mutant Mayhem for each other player in the game, remembering that all costs for playing an Alliance card can be played by the entire group. It's no Gunboat Diplomacy, but it's pretty good.

Allies can also be made better. If you don't WANT to recycle an ally, you don't have to. This deck considers that a feature, but you could easily stack Danger Room Training or Inspired on any given ally in this deck, and get more out of them.

Speaking of abusing an ally, you could easily focus around the psionic trait. Since Cable risks losing his at any time, Phoenix can be a solid solution. If you're willing to ensure you have her in play, this opens another strategy. Cerebro can find any ally in your deck and add them to your hand. Danger Room can find and add a Training card. And because these are both targets for Organizational Support, you can use them as resources on turns you don't use them for their intended effect.