Dreams Don't Die

The fourth and final new player focused X-Men deck, using only X-Men and Core Set cards. Last but not least it's Cyclops. He's all about X-Men and shooting concussive blasts, but in my experience the main focus is on leading a team of X-Men with the blasts being a bit secondary. With that in mind his preconstructed deck is... actually really good! Sure it's not perfect, 3 copies of a situational card like Coordinated Attack is too many and he'd like a couple more allies to make his gameplan (and his Game Times) more consistent, but in all honesty you could probably take his precon through Standard or even Expert and have a good time. Still, the other three X-Men got glow-ups, it's only fair that I give one to Cyclops.

So let's start with what his precon was already doing: play Danger Room and Utopia, and then play X-Men. Now playing X-Men allies readies other X-Men to activate again, and if you're in Alter-Ego they'll come in with the very potent boost provided by Danger Room Training. And with a Training card in play you can play Game Time to get more activations out of them, and with generally flexible statlines all around your allies should be able to adapt to any situation.

Now here's what we've added. The big one is Cerebro. We already want to flip to Alter-Ego because of Danger Room, but now that we're there we might as well also draw some allies for free. Searching the top five cards of your deck isn't the most consistent, but on average you have a 75% chance to hit in this deck. Not the worst but we can raise that to nearly 100% with our not one, not two, but three Psionic allies. As long as you have a Psionic character in play (and it doesn't have to be your hero) Cerebro lets you search your entire deck instead of your top 4. Keep a Psionic out to operate Cerebro and you will have an overwhelming number of options to choose from.

The best of which is probably Wolverine. With a Danger Room Training he can attack for 4 and thwart for 2, the latter of which he can do all game long thanks to his innate healing. And if you don't need either you can just leave him alone for a turn so he can heal up and attack more later on. Our other allies aren't slouches either; Angel is super cheap, Rockslide is kind of like a backup Wolverine since he has so much health he'll stick around almost as long, Dust can attack all minions in play, Nightcrawler and Beast are all-rounders with good thwarting and attacking for a reasonable price. We can buff these allies even further by playing them with Effective Leadership, and activate them multiple times with Game Time and Utopia.

All that and we still had room for a couple Tactics; Lead from the Front and Coordinated Attack; in addition to his own hero cards and the aforementioned Game Time. With three copies of Tactical Brillance, Cyclops's discard pile can become a toolbox with whatever effect you might need at any given time. This is a hero with a lot of options. Search your deck, search your discard, tactically maneuver your allies, and occasionally blast something. Cyclops is truly a leader among leaders.

One last thing to mention: this is the only deck of the four I've built that requires cards from a hero pack, the hero pack in question being Phoenix. I figured people getting into the game now would probably buy all the X-Men cards, but if you have Cyclops and don't have Phoenix I'd suggest replacing Down Time, Cerebro and Marvel Girl with First Aid, The Triskelion and Maria Hill. Even though she's not an X-Men ally, your teammates will love you for giving them extra card draw, especially if you're going first with Field Commander. And Triskelion will make up for occasionally losing the extra ally slot Utopia gave you. That's it, have fun!

Big thanks to royal7 from Discord for coming up with the concept for these decks.