Beautiful Chaos (absolutely insane Mutant Mayhem recursion)

An Echo deck full of mutant allies? With no defense, attack or thwart events? With Children of the Atom? What kind of insanity is this? Well, the best kind of insanity! Welcome to a world of absolutely insane Mutant Mayhem recursion. Welcome to the most Beautiful Chaos ever!!!

DECK NAME: I love naming my decks after song or album titles. This particular one is taken from an EP by daughter's favorite band: Katseye. Not the type of music I usually listen to, but the name is... gnarly, don't you think?

MAIN STRATEGY: The main idea of this deck is to exploit Echo's insane ability to recur events in order to play Mutant Mayhem as many times as possible. Mutant Mayhem is a great event when used with allies that have powerful effects when played (such as Beast, Caliban, Dazzler...) or that have counters or status cards that you'd love to reset (Psylocke, Polaris...). But it usually lacks consistency. Three copies per deck are simply not enough! With this deck, you will be able to play it every turn... even several times per turn! And sometimes at a discount with Photographic Reflexes.

SET UP: Of course, the most important thing is to get an X-Man and an X-Force ally to the table. Depending on whether you're playing solo or multiplayer, the difficulty of this can vary a lot. To help you set up quickly in solo, I've included many X-Men and X-Force allies and also Call for Backup and Make the Call. Children of the Atom can be helpful too in this regard (and it is useful later in the game too) because it allows you to target two X-Men or two X-Force allies with Mutant Mayhem. If you're playing solo, you may want to include another copy of Children of the Atom just in case (and maybe cut the Cell Phone).

In my experience, setting up in solo was in general easier than I thought, especially because Echo's initial hand is virtually seven as she gets an additional event when she flips up to hero form. A good strategy is to mulligan for Call for Backup. It is pretty easy to play it together with an ally and clear it up on the first turn (with Echo's 2 THW and the ally), getting two allies that you can bounce on the next turn. Alternatively, you can mulligan for Beast and/or Caliban. When Beast enters play, he gets you a resource card that you can use to play another ally (ideally Caliban, but Deadpool or X-23 will also do the trick). The math is as follows: you start with 7 cards in hand; you pay 4 to play Beast; now in hand you have a 3-cost ally, a double resource and another card to complete the set-up. Bingo!

Also, in case some of your allies get defeated or discarded, I've included a couple of copies of Make the Call.

Setting up in multiplayer is much, much, much easier. But I'll talk about later. First, let's see why this deck is so fun!

THE WOMBO COMBO: In addition to your allies, the only other thing you need is a copy of Mutant Mayhem. For Echo, getting it is extremely easy. She can search for it when changing up to hero form. She can get it from the discard pile with Study the Tape. She can recur it ad infinitum with Choreography. And, of course, she can tuck it under her from a discard pile (either hers or other player's) to play it at a discount with Photographic Reflexes.

With this deck, it is very easy to play Mutant Mayhem once or twice per turn. And in every game I've had turns where I played it three or even four times!

So, what to do with so many allies bouncing up and down the table? It depends on the allies you choose, but in solo games my favorite combination is, hands down, Beast and Caliban. Playing Mutant Mayhem usually costs 4ER, but you will get back a double resource card and an ally, so it only costs 1ER and it gets you 4 damage, 2 damage plus 2 threat removed, or 3 threat removed, as needed. And the new cards that you get allow you to play another copy of Mutant Mayhem or an ally (here The Triskelion may be useful to have an additional ally slot) or an upgrade or whatever. Moreover, if you played Lead from the Front, you will get more value from you ally activations. And by playing Get Ready you will activate your allies once more before bouncing them back again! By the way, another option is to include some copies of Command Center, a card that I considered in early version of the deck but that eventually didn't make the cut.

In the late game or when you need to clear lots of minions from the table, you may want to use X-23 or M instead of Caliban and Beast as the target of Mutant Mayhem.

And when playing with other heroes on the table, the options increase exponentially! But that is something that we will discuss in detail just now!

ECHO AND CYCLOPS, BFFs: In multiplayer, if you play this deck with another mutant hero at the table, you will have 99% probability of playing Mutant Mayhem on the very first turn and consistently turn after turn afterwards. In fact, in one of my games I had played it 10 times already by turn 4. I find it especially easy if one of the other heroes is Cyclops for two reasons: he can include X-Men allies from any aspect, allowing multiple choices for Mutant Mayhem, and he also has initial hand of seven, given that he can search for a Tactic upgrade when in alter ego.

Depending on the aspect played by Cyclops, the targets for Mutant Mayhem may vary greatly, but I've prepared some decks that I find interesting, fun and powerful, to complement Echo's. All of them give you access to powerful X-Men allies such as Dazzler, Psylocke or Polaris; plus Shadowcat and the X-force ally Marrow, which are trait-locked. Also, Cyclops can make you a mutant with Honorary X-Men, allowing Utopia to ready you and Triage to heal you. But each aspect introduces some idiosincrasies that are fun to explore:

• Leadership deck: This gives you three additional copies of Mutant Mayhem for even more Beautiful Chaos! And another copy of Call for Backup for extra-efficient first-turns. It also brings Mission Leader to the table. Drawing more is always nice, isn't it? This is, probably, one the most efficient complements to Echo's deck, but an all-Leadership table may sound boring (and involves some repeated allies), so I'll propose some more colourful options for you.

• Justice deck: Since you have a lot of X-Men and X-Force allies around, why not include some Gunboat Diplomacy in the mix? This is wondefrully efficient event that you can also play multiple times with Echo! Also, sometimes you will have allies that you cannot activate (for instance, because you return them to the table with Mutant Mayhem after the turn of the plaer who controls them has finished). Gunboat Diplomacy can be great also in those cases. Sometimes, Gunboat Diplomacy can be more efficient than simply activating the allies, especially if their THW stats are relatively high (say hi, Chuck!). Cyclops also willingly brings with him some useful upgrades, such as Skilled Investigator and Heroic Conditioning, plus access to new X-force allies, including Feral and Cypher.

• Pool deck: This is the most insane and the most risky (but also the most fun) Echo-Cyclops combination I've found so far. The main idea here is to play Live Dangerously to get +2 hand size for the whole table... without the inconvenience of those annoying little icons. Wait, what?! You can do that? Yes!!! You can achieve it by recurring Shadowcat every single turn with Mutant Mayhem. It takes some time to set up and it is not extremely robust (you depend on finding Shadowcat early and on nothing bad happening to her afterwards), but I assure you that it is very doable and really worth it. Two extra cards per player per turn! Also, since the icons on Live Dangerously reset at the beginning of every round, you can use "I Got This" before targetting Shadowcat again with Mutant Mayhem. And of course, you can also tuck copies of it under Echo for further use! Plot Convenience is... convenient to store Live Dangerously or an extra copy of Mutant Mayhem that you were not able to play on a given turn, or even some aspect events or allies. Finally, Get Rage-y is very useful to get extra activations of allies before recurring with Mutant Mayhem. I assure you this is a lot of fun, indeed!!!

I have not come up yet with interesting Protection and Aggression Cyclops decks beyond the obvious, but I may revisit this write-up in the future if I eventually build them. Feel free to develop your own and leave a comment with your build-ups!

THE MORE THE MERRIER: Some additional things that you need to consider when using this deck in multiplayer are:

1. Mutant Mayhem is an Alliance card. This means both that you can target allies from different players and that several players can help paying the resource cost. For instance, if your turn has ended and you draw an additional card from Mission Leader or Skilled Investigator, a good way of spending it may be to use it to pay for a copy of Mutant Mayhem (or Gunboat Diplomacy or any other alliance card) played by another player.

2. Cell Phone is a very useful card in multiplayer games and, in this context, even more so because you will find yourself recurring allies from players out of their turn. And the +1 to the stats is always very welcome!

UPGRADES? WHAT UPGRADES?: Echo has a lot of interesting upgrades, but for this deck only Choreography is central. Muscle Memory is helpful to get copies of Make the Call or Get Ready from under Echo (or any card to use a resource, sometimes). Echo's Katana is nice to have, but not indispensable by any means. Improvisation is not useful in solo games (no attack, defense or thwart events here). Its usefulness in multiplayer games will depend on the events other players carry and on how much you plan to recur them.

Ok, so we've covered all the fun parts! But before closing up, let's talk about the elephant in the room...

I WILL SURVIVE!: Echo's main weakness is its low HP count. For that reason, you need to be very careful when the enemies attack you. You can defend, but with a stat of just 2 you will have to eventually flip down to alter ego. In fact, that can be very good, because with Choreography and Echo's ability, you will return to hero form with 8 cards in hand (Echo simply loves it when the villain is confused and she can go to alter ego safely, by the way). And The Rez will help you heal up to 3 HPs for free (usually, you will have Mutant Mayhem tucked under Echo, giving you that sweet 3HP-healing). Endurance is also a very nice upgrade to play for some additional health.

Another option is to resort to chump blocking. Of course, you do not want to block with the allies that you plan to recur, so that's why I've included cheap allies such as Beak, Pixie and Kid Omega. Incidentally, their "when played" abilities might also be useful if you need to target them with Mutant Mayhem because there are not better options in play.

In multiplayer games, surviving will be much easier. There might be heroes who defend you, and there will likely be many more allies ready to stand between you and those pesky villains and minions.

CONCLUSIONS: Let's be honest: this is probably not the most powerful solo deck for Echo. Not even the most powerful solo Leadership deck for Echo (have you tried her with Strength In Numbers and Strength in Diversity? That is crazy powerful indeed and easier to set up). But it is a lot of fun. And reasonably powerful too. I confess I've not tried it yet against the hardest scenarios in the game, but I defeated Expert Klaw, Expert Unus and Expert Ultron on the very first try and consistently thereafter.

In multiplayer games, the deck is much, much more powerful. I've played crazy turns, clearing all the minions and side schemes in play or dealing 40+ damage to the villain just by recurring allies. I even once had Professor X with ATK 2 after playing Lead from the Front twice and a couple of copies of Mutant Mayhem. But be warned: there can be so many options with Make the Call and Study the Tape searching on everybody's discard piles; with Mutant Mayhem being able to target six or seven different allies (especially thanks to Children of the Atom); with so many different aspect events to potentially tuck under Echo... It can be very, very overwhelming. Instead of trying to find the optimal combination, it might be helpful to have some preferred strategy (for instance, always recur Beast and Caliban; or Dazzler and M with Children of the Atom; or... you name them) and stick to it. It will probably get you excellent results anyways.

In any case, I hope you've liked my deck and this write-up. Are you willing to embrace and enjoy this (beautiful) chaos?