Star-Lord Leader of the X-Men

Introduction

With the release of Rogue I ended up thinking about heroes that could benefit from other traits. It turns out if you make Star-Lord an X-Men it opens up many options. This does mean that this only works in multiplayer, as you need someone to play Honorary X-Men on Star-Lord, but it is worth trying out!

I made a Rogue deck to go with this, that can take advantage of the Guardian trait. But, any X-Men that can give you Honorary X-Men will work.

The deck is partly based on VillainTheory's Cosmic Commander deck, where you switch to Alter-Ego to remove the Guardian trait from your allies and avoid damage from Blaze of Glory. It ends up being a bit of an ally swarm deck with plenty of damage and thwart, with a few extra combos thrown in.

Deck Description

The nice thing is that you can start setting up even if you don't have Honorary X-Men yet. Utopia can be played anyway, and you can use it on allies or the other player. Uncanny X-Men also does not require the trait to play, although you do need it to get the discount. The X-Men allies are all ok to play too. The only card that actually requires the trait to play is "To Me, My X-Men!".

The X-Men allies are generally strong, but the unique advantage of Star-Lord here is that he can use his Alter-Ego ability to stack the deck for "To Me, My X-Men!". It turns out you can play an X-Men ally of your choice pretty much every turn - I will put details at the end.

As you have both Utopia and Knowhere, you can have up to 5 allies out at once. With the discount from Uncanny X-Men you can play a lot.

I tend to not need to use the What Could Go Wrong ability too often. It is occasionally good to ensure that you can play the more expensive key upgrades (eg. Uncanny X-Men Element Gun). Or, using it on Beast sets you up for a nice turn that will likely leave you plenty of allies to defend with.

With the +1 int from Star-Lord's Helmet and Professor X there is so much thwart. Another cute thing - Mirage enters with 3 int once you have Star-Lord's Helmet out too, so is actually useful.

Combo

For the rest of this I just want to go through the combo, which is basically Med Lab shenanigans. Start with Pixie on Med Lab, with the ally you want in the discard.

Turn 1

• Start turn in Alter-Ego.
• Play Pixie from Med Lab, get ally into hand.
• Use Smooth Talker to put ally onto deck.
• Switch to Hero form.
• Use "To Me, My X-Men!" to put the ally into play.
• End of turn, ally goes to hand (after drawing up to your hand size!).

(If you have Uncanny X Men out, you want to ready Pixie with Utopia or Command Team here. Use her once leaving her with 1 or 2 damage out of 3 health)

Turn 2

• Play ally from hand.
• Ideally, play Blaze of Glory. Do stuff.
• Use Pixie so she dies to consequential damage, put her on Med Lab.
• Then, flip to Alter-Ego, which stops your allies being Guardians so they won't take damage.

Then you are back to Turn 1. If the ally did not die in turn 2, you can use them again here to defeat them with consequential damage.

Some other notes:

• On Turn 2 of the combo if you have "To Me, My X-Men!" in hand, you can put it on top of deck for next turn.
• You can play Professor X every turn. He will always be discarded at the end of turn 2.
• Of course, the other great target is Beast. He will need readying once or twice though for this to work. But, that should not be a problem. Especially with the extra resources which can pay for Command Team.
• It's actually quite easy to set up the trick with "To Me, My X-Men!". You just need Pixie and Med Lab.
• Uncanny X-Men does mean that you need readies to keep the loop (except with Professor X). But, it is so worth it for the cheap allies.
• There isn't a way to ensure you draw "To Me, My X-Men!" every single time, but with 3 copies you see it often enough. Smooth Talker can help to space them out or let you save it until next turn too.