The Beauty and the Beast

Deck Overview

This is a high-complexity deck focusing on activating and readying your allies the turn they arrive in the game. We are using Beast to cycle Effective Leadership to have bombastic first turn, activating them 2 to 5 times each time they enter.

Player Type: Timmy

Player Count: 1-4p

Key Cards: Uncanny X-men, Beast

Complexity: ★★★☆☆

Damage: ★★★★★

Threat Control: ★★★★★

Survivability: ★★☆☆☆

Economy: ★★★☆☆

Card Drawing: ★☆☆☆☆

The main combo

The goal is to play Beast + Effective Leadership + Danger Room to get a 2 costed 4 thwart / 4 attack with 5HP. Beast costs 3 with Uncanny X-Men, and tutors a resource that we can use or stash with Resource Reserve. As he will loose 1-2 stats at the end of the phase, we try to activate him a maximum til this bonus last. That has the advantage of getting Beast ready to be spawned again.

Secondary Combos

There are a few combos hidden in this deck.

As Jean is Psionic, you can tutor allies with Cerebro, and activate them a lot. Also, Jean has an extra 4 resources with Phoenix Force, 3 thwart, and can tank while everything gets online. Play mutant education to make sure they sit in your deck and not your discard.

When you play Suit up, tutor Beast + Danger Room Training. You should have a double resource or Effective Leadership stored in the Resource Reserve, allowing you to play Beast back the turn you tutored him. Don't hesitate to pay Beast with the Danger Room Training, it should be played for free by the Danger Room support immediately upon entering the game!

The ideal turn:

• Resource Reservehas Effective Leadership in it
• Suit up get Beast and Danger Room Training
• play Beast with Danger Room Training, + 2x Effective Leadership (discounted by Uncanny-Xmen)
• with beast, store back an effective leadership for next time
• Danger Room triggers and puts Danger Room Training on Beast
• Flip to hero side, you should have 2 cards in hand, and a 5/5 Beast with 5 Hit points.
• Activate him once (+5 damage),
• Ready him with Psychic Kicker (-1 card) and activate (+7 damage),
• Ready him with Psychic Kicker (-1 card) and activate (+7 damage),
• Ready him twice with command team and activate (+ 5 damage x2).
• Activate for 3 thwart or 3 damage depending on your form.

For a total of 32 damage or 32 thwart, or any mix of both. Of course, you will rarely or never have all those cards in hands at once, but it's common to do 20 damage a turn.

Strategy

3 first turns: focus on getting your supports out, in priority Uncanny X-Men, then Danger Room, then the Resource Reserve, to finally play the Command Teams. Thwart is no issue, lean hard on the free 4 resources of Phoenix Force to become unleashed and recover the tempo lost with so many support. Play the occasional chump block, but also don't hesitate to block and recover, you are very strong in AE.

Mid game: Beast will start to rotate every other turn with Cerebro and suit up. Focus on keep the double resources first then progressively you will switch from Beast-tutoring double resources to tutoring Effective Leadership. The deck gets online quite fast.

End Game: you will activate 4/5 times Beast when you play him, with danger room training on him + effective leadership for 20 damage or 20 thwart a turn.

Other ideas

This deck would work extremely well with Rapid Response instead of the Cerebro, Mutant Education and Suit Up kit, but I wanted to show another way to use all those cards. The upcoming Recruitment drive may also be pretty dope for this combo, to pay ahead of time the future upcoming Beast.