Look, Cyclops is awesome for what he is. He steps up to deal with the details so his teammates can just take huge swings, and this hero deck is attuned directly to that frequency.

His stats are solid. 2, 1, 2 with 3 REC and a standard hand size.

His alter-ego ability nets him a tactic card, which is the bread and butter of his strategy. Cyclops slaps debuffs on minions like Nintendo issues Cease and Desist orders. No one is safe.

But that effusiveness has limited use against villains that aren't rampant with minion flu.

The first problem is that the debuffs aren't permanent unless Field Commander is in play. Sure, a debuff lasting a single round can cripple most minions...so long as you or your teammates also have the means to exploit the debuff the same turn. But there's only a single copy of Field Commander, so these Tactic cards aren't reaching full potential until that is in play.

The second problem is that Cyclops' second best upgrade is his Ruby Quartz Visor, which generates a resource to pay for his optic blast and gives it Piercing and Ranged. But unlike so many other heroes in Marvel Champions, this iconic and essential upgrade is not tracked down during setup or as part of an alter-ego action. So you have to wander though your deck hoping to encounter the only piece of kit that Cyclops is known for. Are we also going to have to play through our decks for Wolverine's claws when that hero is released? Seriously, Cyclops can't control his optic blasts without the ruby visor. Why is it not part of the setup?

But you know what? It's not a big deal, because you can't even use his optic blast unless the target has an upgrade on it.

Okay, I know what you're going to say: Villains can have upgrades, and Cyclops has a bunch of debuff/upgrades he can slap on enemies, all of which let him take 3 point stabs each turn. And you're right. Except that Cyclops' debuffs only last one round when applied to the villain, even when his Field Commander upgrade is active, which means Cyclops needs every hero in play to capitalize on his upgrade once he plays it. That requires a lot of moving pieces, and becomes much less viable in the mid-to-late game.

All of which is to say that Cyclops is excellent at handling minions. So long as you can put a debuff on them. And have spare resources. Or have come across his visor. And hopefully found his Field Commander upgrade. FInally, once all of those pieces are in play, then maybe you can settle in to the business of decimating the underlings you may or may not encounter.

If it wasn't clear already, I'm trying to point out that Cyclops is a very situational hero. When it's the right situation, he...eventually gets things done.

Still, you have the benefit of stacking his deck with any and all X-Men allies, which is pretty cool. And before the end of the year, there will very likely be enough X-men to make that an awesome ability. But as it stands now, all of Cyclops' effectiveness relies on specific enemy cards being in play. Rocket Beam only reaches its potential with a debuff (and is actually a 'Ricochet Beam', wtf?) and the same is true with Cyclops' innate Optic Blast.

I'm also disappointed that there is only one copy of Full Blast, as it seems like a signature ability. Looking at Cyclops' innate 15 cards, there is limited damage and threat mitigation. Furthermore, I really feel like his visor should give him a +1 ATK, particularly since he doesn't get to start the game with it. It's odd that Cyclops has no buffs to his own stats in his deck.

Speaking plainly, Cyclops feels a lot like Black Widow did two years ago. A very technical hero that leans hard into a specific keyword, and when crucial cards are in play, they shine.

But Widow at least dished out damage and used the keyword cards to manipulate encounter deck cards, which are always present. Cyclops relies on 'infecting' other cards that aren't guaranteed to be present in order to reach his potential.

I guess I am worried that Cyclops is poised to succumb to the same fate as Widow: Keyword Starvation. Widow needed Preparation cards, and Cyclops needs Tactic Cards.

In my opinion, FFG should have just made Cyclops use Preparation cards. There would have been an existing pool, which means he would have revitalized a stagnant hero while also benefitting from those older cards. Instead, we will probably get to watch Tactic cards die on the vine like Prep cards did.

It all hurts because there was an obvious opportunity to give new life to long-dormant cards, as well as supercharge a new hero who frankly needed it. This Cyclops feels like he was created by people who only ever saw the crappy 90's cartoon of the X-men where they were all unaccountably 'shiny' and overwrought with angst.

Oh well, I always preferred Iceman anyway. He had better be one of the final X-men revealed for this cycle.

He REALLY wants you to focus on his enemy upgrades, which consequently drains your hand when you do (-1 for 0 cost, -2 for 1 cost), and EVEN MORE to Optic Blast. Which leaves you 2-3 cards to other stuff like play events or actually field precious allies. Of course, FIELD COMMANDER and RUBY QUARTZ VISOR are built to counter this, but (1) you may or may not draw them, (2) they take up precious rounds to build out if found mid-game and in solo, and (3) Field Commander doesn't stick with Villains.

In short... multiple resource generator options seem to be necessary when building him.

I like the ideas here. Making him a master tactician for the X-Men makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, between wanting to run tactic cards, but also having access to all X-Men allies pulls him in too many directions. A lot of the good tactic cards like Ready for Action are about sparing a few good allies instead of running like 13 because you have access to so much. And while a true leader, I never saw Cyclops as "everybody's friend". If they ever make a Prof. X, that's where this ability would belong. What I think would have made more sense is either allow him to play Training cards from any aspect (but the Danger Room card kind of wants multiplayer decks to actually work together to use those) OR I would have loved to allow Cyclops to be able to play Team-up cards for others. So if the table has like a Wolverine (hero or ally) and a Colossus (hero or ally), a Cyclops player can play Fastball Special, as if the brilliant tactician recognizes the combos of his teammates and calls for the maneuver. Since already we see 5 different team-up cards for the X-Men alone and they are always basic heroes and even most of their ally versions are basic too, this would have been awesome. But instead we kind of just got a watered down version of Adam Warlock's ability. It'll become more valuable as more X-Men allies get printed, but at the end of the day, if I wanted a bunch of allies, which are unique cards anyways, from various aspects, I'd just play Warlock.

As a bit of a Cyclops fan (the character in general, as well as in Marvel Champions) I'd like to go over some of the criticism which this hero has faced, and why I don't (or at least, don't entirely) agree with it. A lot of the commentary seems to put him as a "low-mid tier hero". While I'm not going to say that he's an X-23-level monster, I'd also argue that he's not nearly as bad as portrayed. He's actually a pretty solid, dependable character; and a lot of fun to play.

So why does the field commander of the X-Men get so much grief? Let's have a look.

First, what seems to be a bugbear of many: his economy.

While it's true that he has no built-in resource generators, the cost curve of his hero kit is also relatively low. 9 of his 15 identity cards are zero- or one-cost. The only card that is higher than two-cost is his signature ally. He does love X-Gene, but basically every X-Men hero does.

Weapon X, Moira MacTaggert, The X-Jet etc. are all staples for a reason. Sure, you're going to want to take at least one or two of them for resource generation, in almost every deck - but that's true of most heroes. He's not a "rich hero" like some, but he's not a pauper. Quite a few heroes have more resource issues than Cyclops.

Then let's look at his deck-building ability.

One of the previous reviews said they didn't see that ability to be particularly beneficial or worth building around, which seems crazy to me. For a start, he can always take every two-cost X-Men ally - which is really powerful. He can always have Shark-Girl to take advantage of his enemy upgrades; Armor. to take a couple of hits from the villain; Sunfire to remove villain attachments; and Pixie to bring those cheap allies back to hand. He can always have Kid Omega in his deck, if he wants.

And if you're playing him in Leadership and have Uncanny X-Men out, all of those allies only cost ONE resource to play. If you don't think that's good, I don't know what to tell you.

On top of that, he can have whichever of the more expensive, powerful X-Men allies he wants as well - whether that's Rogue, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, or Monet. You can build him to take advantage of any ally interaction you want.

Playing in Aggression and worried about threat? Doesn't matter, you can still use the higher-thwart allies like Marvel Girl, and stack the encounter deck with Blindfold to prevent an unexpected Advance. Playing Justice and you need more heavy hitters? You can still take Wolverine and Goldballs for some muscle. That flexibility is strength.

And of course, you can always include Beast to help boost your economy.

Because he likes plenty of cheap allies, Cerebro is also a good idea. Sure, he isn't psionic and won't get the full-deck search... Unless one of the many psionic allies he can take is in play. Which includes his signature ally, of course.

The X-Men trait in general has a tonne of cards that help an ally-heavy team, so it's no surprise that the X-Men tactical leader wants to lean into those - cards like Danger Room, Utopia, X-Mansion; as well as the Training upgrades / Game Time package. This isn't a thematic miss; it's completely appropriate for the character. (I'd suggest more so than for some lone-wolf heroes, who suddenly have a big supporting cast of allies in-game because it's efficient).

Personally, I usually prefer to play ally-light decks. But Cyclops directing a team of X-Men is so thematic that I don't mind it for him... And it's definitely effective.

One of the comments talked about him not being "everyone's friend"... And he isn't. He's a leader who can wrangle disparate groups of mutants into a cohesive force. That's what his deck-building ability is about, and I actually think it works very well.

Finally, let's address the eye-beam elephant in the room: his hero ability, and the Ruby Quartz Visor.

His hero ability is a built-in attack which does 3 damage to an enemy with an upgrade attached. It also costs you a resource, although if you have the Ruby Quartz Visor it generates the resource for you, and it gains piercing and ranged. The argument is that he should start with the visor, like Wolverine's Claws or Captain America's Shield.

Given that the game often makes you "find" key parts of a hero's equipment, I don't think this is uniquely a Cyclops issue. Tigra doesn't start with her Sharp Claws in play, and they're a physical part of her body. Besides, "Cyclops needs to find his visor" is a recurring plot point in X-Men stories. So I have very few issues with the thematic side, or any hand-waving we need to do there.

Mechanically, is it an issue? Not really. Early game I tend to treat his hero ability as a more powerful version of Plan B: it's a resource sink to turn a left-over resource into damage. It's not the main focus of what you are doing. Late game it's very good, but you need to have built out for it. That's also pretty common; it's how you play the game.

Then there is the upgrade attachment requirement. Cyclops has several of these in his kit. Yes, they are temporary until you get Field Commander out. And they are always temporary on the villain.

But if they stayed on the villain they would be stupidly strong. All the aspect attachments in the game can only go on minions anyway, because they'd be too strong on the villain. Some other hero's attachments go on the villain; but these also fall off within a turn (e.g. Bamf!, Frostbite, Touched). It's one of the ways the game limits broken combos that would make it easy. Speaking of which, having a hero that adds those in the game makes Cyclops that much stronger - a lot of the criticism seems to be solo focused (which is fine, but it's not the only way the game is played). He's still good in solo, but he's even better when he has a teammate to collaborate with.

Yes, this game is a bit of a power fantasy - it's never going to be LOTR LCG levels of difficulty. But it still needs to provide some level of difficulty. Imagine if Cyclops could drop Practiced Defense and Pinned Down on the villain and give them a permanent -3 attack?

The question just needs to be whether Cyclops is strong enough for the game to be fun to play - and in my experience that's very much the case.

Is it a problem that the X-Men field commander does best when he has a team to, you know, command? YMMV, but I really don't think so.

In my opinion, the key to playing Cyclops is realizing that he is starved for resources. Having no resource generators among his identity-specific cards, The X-Jet is almost mandatory (well, it is for most X-Men decks), but I'd also consider cards like X-Gene (even if Cyclops only has 6 identity-specific events), Clarity of Purpose if you're playing Leadership, and the recent Organizational Support. Once you've taken care of resource generation, you can focus on building the rest of the deck.

I don't consider Cyclops' ability to include X-men allies from any aspect to be particularly interesting, beneficial, or worth building around. Typically, you'll want to focus on your aspect's allies anyway to get the most out of your aspect's specific resource generators (The Power of...). Yes, a handful of X-men allies are so powerful that you'll want to include them even if from a different aspect (Polaris, Wolverine, Psylocke, Beast), but nothing unmissable.

Unfortunately, I think Cyclops remains a relatively mediocre hero, and I also think he's much better suited for Aggression decks than Leadership (as one might - and should - expect). Cards like Take That! are what really make Cyclops shine, and having a large number of allies is only beneficial with one of his signature offensive upgrades, Exploit Weakness and/or when using his Constant Training ability in combination with cards like "To me, my X-men!" to fish for allies. Clunky - and expensive - mechanics, although sometimes rewarding with the right draw.

Personally, I house-rule Cyclops in a way that makes his Ruby Quartz Visor much more relevant, a true signature item like Wolverine's Adamantium Claws or Captain America's Shield. As Scott Summers, instead of searching for a Tactic upgrade, his Constant Training reads as follows: "Action: Search your deck and discard pile for the Ruby Quartz Visor upgrade and add it to your hand. Shuffle your deck. (Limit once per round)."