Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee

Card draw simulator

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Derived from
None. Self-made deck here.
Inspiration for
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dr00 · 38773

Note: I spent three hours working on the original write-up for this deck, and the website ate it (despite saving at multiple stages). Then it refused to let me try again for several days. If something is missing, please let me know, but pls be gentle. It's been a long weekend :'(

EDIT: first mistake, Lie in Wait is supposed to be Battle Fury

shadowcat

This Shadowcat deck is primarily focused on defeating enemies while laughing at their attempts to hit you. You are a bit of a glass cannon if enemies manage to land any blows, however. Keep up the pace of the fight and duck into Phased as much as possible to avoid them and hit back with massive damage.

Roll With the Punches

The first thing about Shadowcat is that playing her revolves around getting the most out of Solid / Phased. It's subtlely different from other form changers like Ant-Man, Wasp, and even her closest anologue, Vision. Although understanding the card itself isn't all that difficult, there are some non-obvious implications:

  • Solid's flip response is not forced, so it is always optional.
  • Phased's flip response is forced, so it is always mandatory.
  • Shadowcat's mass form upgrade can flip an unlimited number of times per round.
  • Playing Quick Shift always counts as defending since you can only play it during an attack. This also always makes you the defender of that attack, whether your used your basic action to defend or not.
  • Toe to Toe has two opportunities to flip your mass form upgrade, first from the villain's attack, and second from the attack on the card itself.
  • Surprise Attack can be used any time you flip your mass form upgrade, even during the villain phase, and Solid can pay for it (if it's ready) after flipping from Phased.
  • Ready to Rumble similarly allows Shadowcat to ready after flipping her mass form upgrade, even during the villain phase, and even in the middle of resolving other triggers (like Toe to Toe.

Blow-By-Blow

The main strategy with this deck is to try to stay in Solid as much as possible throughout the player phase and end with your final Attack/Defense in Phased. There are some exceptions, like bypassing Guard enemies, where you will want to flip multiple times in the player phase. Others will be elaborated below.

Toe to Toe Combo

Toe to Toe does great damage for a relatively low resource cost, but usually you have to pay a larger health cost. Shadowcat circumvents that by preventing all damage with Phased. It is ideal to use this while in Phased to start. Here's the sequence:

  • Play an attack event if in Solid form
  • Play Toe to Toe while in Phased
  • Defend the villain's attack and take no damage (even better when you can use Quick Shift since you won't have to exhaust, plus you'll draw 2 extra cards)
  • Form upgrade flips to Solid
  • Toe to Toe's attack resolves, then you can optionally flip back to Phased

Ready to Rumble triggering mid-activation is important here if you don't want to optionally flip back to Phased yet but do want the ready so you can perform another basic action.

It can be used from Solid though, if the villain stunned, Lockheed is ready to chump block for you, or you have Quick Shift. The sequence changes slightly:

  • Play Toe to Toe from Solid
  • Chump block, use the stun, just facetank the damage, or ideally Quick Shift immediately to Phased
  • If you played Quick Shift, you'll flip back to Solid immediately
  • Toe to Toe's attack triggers, and your mass form upgrade can optionally flip back to Phased

Surprise Attack Combo

Surprise Attack is wonderful in this deck for allowing you stay in Phased as long as possible. Its best use is during the villain phase, but you can definitely do some solid work with it during the player phase as well. Here's the main sequence:

Simple, but there are some fun combos during the villain phase.

  • Flip from Phased after defending and taking no damage
  • Exhaust Solid to pay for Surprise Attack to hopefully defeat a minion that would otherwise attack
  • Discard Ready to Rumble to ready yourself
  • Flip back to Phased to defend against yet another attack

Expert Pugilist

One of the best combos with this deck is how it all interacts with ATK boosts from Combat Training and Fluid Motion and readying effects from Shadowcat Surprise, Ready to Rumble, and Battle Fury. One important thing to keep in mind is that, although Ready to Rumble is limit 1 in play, you can discard it to ready and play another one (and again, if you have all 3) in the same turn, so long as you flip your mass form upgrade, which you can do if you just keep making basic attacks. Shadowcat Surprise is particularly useful here because it helps trigger Fluid Motion's ATK boost while also providing a ready to help you immediately capitalise on it.

There are plenty of attack events in the deck: Phase Strike, Press the Advantage, Shadowcat Surprise, Surprise Attack, and Toe to Toe. Press the Advantage additionally combos with Phased and Confused to help accelerate your card draw. It's also a cheap event (that doesn't involve the villain attacking you) if you just want to flip your mass form upgrade and/or trigger Fluid Motion.

Stamina Training

This deck is notable in that it doesn't include the basic double resources or actually any resources at all. There are only 12 cards in the deck that cost 2 or more resources, and many of them can utilise the deck's many resource generators, often using 1 or fewer cards from hand. As mentioned, there are a few resource generators to help keep the engine running smoothly.

There's extra card from Assess the Situation, Press the Advantage, Hall of Heroes, and Kitty's Room. Assess the Situation is also a resource, either right now or an extra card next round. Always save it to spend last, but definitely spend it if you can. It's not worth it to hold back just to draw an extra card if it means you aren't playing a card this round, but it definitely helps smooth out resources with awkward hands where you would otherwise end with additional cards. It's generally a good idea to use Hall of Heroes at 6+ counters so that you can flip, draw 3, then draw 3 more on the next round before flipping back up, but since just over half the deck (21 cards) is events, plus the 2 copies of Phased and Confused, you won't always have much to do with your extra cards, so just flip whenever you can. You can still accelerate some extra card draw with Kitty's Room.

There are a few resource-specific generators or cost-reducers. The X-Jet, Deft Focus, Martial Prowess, and Solid. The X-Jet is valuable in that it can be shared with any X-Men hero. In multiplayer, coordinate with your group about who should take it if there are multiple X-Men heroes at the table. Deft Focus gets a lot of return on investment, allowing itself to trigger on many of Shadowcat's cards, so many in fact it's faster to list which cards don't work with it (Lockheed, Quick Shift since it's 0-cost anyway, Kitty's Room, and Phased and Confused). That means it works with literally everything else; all other events: Airwalk, Phase Strike, Shadowcat Surprise, and other upgrades: Acute Control and Intangible Interference. Martial Prowess will help pay for a second attack event per round to keep Fluid Motion at maximum. And finally, Solid is very... solid. It provides a for any Attack or Defense event. Although there are no relevant Defense events, there's 14 Attack events here. Additionally, Surprise Attack will always get the bonus damage when using Martial Prowess or Solid to pay for it.

There are a few other surprise efficiency cards in Acute Control, Intangible Interference, and Marked, although the former are a bit scenario-dependent. That said, Deft Focus can easily play them onto the board to get them out of your deck if you have nothing better to do with your hand or in early setup. Acute Control is often a bit superfluous, since ignoring is enough for most side schemes, but in multiplayer, you can still help your team clear them so others can thwart the main, while also thwarting the main scheme. Intangible Interference is less consistent, as not every scenario has Guard minions. Thankfully Hellfire Pawns can help you get value out of this if you ever draw Shadow of the Past. And finally, Marked allows any attack, whether it is a basic attack or from an event to have Overkill. Additionally, it's not always necessary since you can ignore Guard minions, but it helps squeeze all of the damage out of every attack. Most of your Attack events are lower to moderate damage, and Toe to Toe only targets the villain anyway, but Kitty's ATK can boost quite high.

Back Up Plan

This deck has the capacity to completely invalidate a lot of damage. However, you might get overrun with minions, and thankfully there are some solid tools. As mention previously, Surprise Attack can help keep Shadowcat in Phased during the villain phase and also defeat minions before they can activate. In general, the deck is efficient at clearing minions from the board, which will account for most of the damage anyway. In the event of an unlucky Assault or something similar, you have Kitty's Room to help you heal. Although Ready to Rumble cannot trigger in Alter-Ego (even if you use your Alter-Ego power to flip her mass form upgrade), it can aid in keeping tempo after healing before flipping back to Hero form later in the same turn.

Southpaw Form

There are quite a few flexible slots in the deck. If you feel like you won't get value out of Press the Advantage, Get Over Here! is a good alternative that costs even less but requires a minion in play. Clobber is also a solid Attack event that can be played multiple times per round if you have no other such events in your hand. These options are especially relevant against Sabretooth I, who heals every time you use Toe to Toe, drastically lowering its value.

Since Marked is mainly for getting the most out of your basic attacks, you could opt instead to use Hand Cannon. It's more expensive, but it can be played whenever you have it, not just when there's a targetable minion, and can additionally boost your ATK even further.

This deck excels in multiplayer but can function solo and can cover some threat with cards like Lockheed, Airwalk, Acute Control, Phased and Confused, and her own basic THW. However, an easy fix to help her handle more threat would be to simply add Smash the Problem which will combo well with her up-to-5 ATK. Alternatively, Chase Them Down and Looking for Trouble will both go a long way to themselves triggering often, helping to trigger other cards, and of course add some extra thwarting.

16 comments

Oct 03, 2022 Drewooo · 1

My favorite part about new cards is seeing a dr00 deck. Been playing shadow cat the most and I wasn't aware of some of these combos yet. Cheers!

Oct 03, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@Drewooo thanks for the kind words! It's been a journey trying to get this out. glad to help out. enjoy! Shadowcat is just so damn fun

Oct 03, 2022 LeahLorenna · 298

Pretty bold to go completely without any resource cards! :) But I like the idea behind it. A very cheap deck where you won't be missing them anyway. Wish there was a little bit more space to squeeze in Battle Fury to have more opportunities to ready her again. Since she will prevent a lot of damage it seems like a good choice and would even get more value out of Fluid Motion as well ^^

Gonna try out this deck hopefully before the weekend :)

Oct 03, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@LeahLorenna Battle Fury is totally the card i meant, not Lie in Wait lmao. i'm blaming the fact i had to make this deck like 5 times, but i think it was that card in every version <_<

Oct 03, 2022 LeahLorenna · 298

Hihi, I understand :D My first Jean deck that I published after redoing it a couple times I forgot to add the resource cards and was surprised why I suddenly had a few spots left. So I added bunch of other cards instead and was kinda happy to get something else in that I didnt have space before. Only hours later I noticed and had to delete it xD

But as for Lie in Wait I thought you added it because you mentioned in your Back up Plan that you can sometimes get swamped by minions. So I thought it was a good addition :)

Oct 03, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@LeahLorenna hmm true. I guess there are 3 ready to rumbles anyway. I think I mainly meant it as part of the strategy for clearing minions, but I'll definitely test out Lie in Wait now :D

Oct 03, 2022 teamcanadahockey2002 · 6597

Lie In Wait plus Looking For Trouble could be interesting. You could have Lie in Wait down and then play Looking for Trouble to pull a minion, triggering Lie in Wait which is an attack

This could provide another way to flip your form...

Oct 04, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@teamcanadahockey2002 that's a good point!

Oct 04, 2022 phtephen · 2

I built a Colossus Deck using Fluid in Motion with a bunch of other attack modifiers, but there's definitely cards in this deck that would work great for that deck.

It's fun having new toys to play with, but this weekend's website issues were definitely not fun.

Oct 04, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@phtephen yes, they were so frustrating lol. i almost didn't post it. i didn't like Fluid Motion that much when it first came out cos i think it was trying to do multiple things, but i think it's found a decent home with this box. Colossus is really great with it too with Limitless Stamina and 3 ATK with all of his upgrades, and you want to use steel fist as much as possible anyway lol

Oct 06, 2022 Maestro88 · 1

@dr00 sorry, but i can't see any use for Press the Advantage in this deck. How you can stun the enemy?

Oct 07, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@Maestro88 thanks for your question! it triggers off of confusion too, so that's why the write-up says it combos with Phased and Confused

Oct 07, 2022 Maestro88 · 1

@dr00 ok, makes sense. But is consistent enough with only two source of confusion? I use Drop Kick in my Shadowcat deck, with Solid, Martial Prowess the fist resource is not a problem, very solid card and is more source for the trigger of Press the Advantage eventually (but i can't use it). By the way even Gatekeeper is intresting for Acute Control! (Sorry for my english xD)

Oct 13, 2022 dr00 · 38773

@Maestro88 hey, your english is fine! the point of Press the Advantage isn't to draw a card. the point is it's a cheap attack event to trigger Fluid Motion. so you deal 2 damage and then get a +1 ATK boost. if you draw a card, even better, but it's already worth it at that point.i think if there is a concern about Press the Advantage if you think it's worth it or not, you can simply use Get Over Here! instead. i prefer Press the Advantage simply because it can attack the villain or minions instead of only minion (like Get Over Here!). Drop Kick is a great event, and i agree it's not too difficult for her to play, but it's much more expensive. if i were to include it, i would probably take out Fluid Motion and retool the deck a little bit

and yeah! Gatekeeper is really cool for Acute Control

Jan 17, 2023 Judicator82 · 117

This deck is truly the bee's knees. Kitty becomes a weapon of destruction; she dealt an easy 19 damage in one turn, readying twice.

I replaced the X-Jet with a Helicarrier since Jean (her campaign partner) is running it. This Kitty build LOVES free resources to play more copies of Press the Advantage and Ready to Rumble

Thanks for a great deck!

May 26, 2023 dr00 · 38773

@Judicator82 hey, glad you enjoyed it! that sounds like a great swap to me. now that Rogue is out, have you tried X-Gene? that and Deft Focus make playing her events so easy!