X-23 & Honey Badger Don't Give A . . .

The focus of this deck is to completely and utterly master threat removal while easily surviving and totally destroying your prey. This is made possible through a combination of X-23's drool-worthy hero cards and a unique way of using the Aggression aspect. You heard me correctly. Massive threat removal . . . in red. Let's dig in, shall we?

The Combo: By building up Combat Training and all three copies of Brute Force, X-23 rests at a lovely 5 Attack. Exhaust X-23's Claws each round to push this to a more impressive 7 Attack. This is what you aim to maintain, but what if you could push it even further? The final glorious piece of this puzzle is Claw Mastery for +2 Attack. Suddenly your meager 1 Attack is sitting pretty at an astounding 9 for the entire round!! Not to mention overkill!

But what do you do with this well of destruction when all of your Brute Forces just fall off the first time you make a basic attack? You'd have to rebuild them over and over again to maintain that beautiful 7-9 Attack. That's taxing on your resources and not at all fun, so why bother making a basic attack at all. Instead, let's abuse that crazy Attack score by dropping Sisterly Bond or an overkill Quick Strike for colossal damage! Remember, this is an attack event, not a basic attack, so Brute Force does not fall off. Then you have Animal Instinct and Smash the Problem for massive threat removal! And even without these thwart options in hand, you can just thwart three times with the help of X-23's Living Weapon ability and her amazing Honey Badger ally. Add in the spectacular new Surveillance Specialist, gained by defeating Specialized Training, and that's 9 removal every round, plus more card draw.

Once you add in a couple of other key draw engines and a few survival pieces, X-23 becomes an unstoppable force of nature that can survive any hit, remove any amount of threat, and slaughter any foe!

So frankly, X-23 & Honey Badger Don't Give A . . .

X-23's 6 Recovery +
Pain Tolerance +
Crew Quarters +
Adamantium Lacing +
Endurance

With your survival kit online, every X-23 card you play heals you for 1 with Pain Tolerance, so play her cards often. Remember, her ability "Living Weapon" is once per PHASE, so if you are sure she will take at least 3 point of damage from an attack in the Villain Phase, it is worth Defending with X-23 to prevent 2 damage and then ready her.

Whenever your hit points are low enough to concern you, make sure to flip down to Alter-Ego where you can recover for an impressive 8 (6 + 1 from Crew Quarters this round + 1 more from it next round). You also benefit from +1 hand-size, use of Danger Room if you need to train up your sister, and can recur Sisterly Bond into your deck for even more sisterly destruction.

Laura Kinney has a wellspring of wonderful cards you want to play in the opening rounds, but at least some are more important than others. You should focus your mulligan to pickup: IPAC and Specialized Training (always for Surveillance Specialist ) to get insane card draw going and a lovely +1 to your Thwart. You also want to quickly build up her Survival Kit (see above). Grim Resolve is a must-have resource generator. Also seek for Sisterhood so you can easily recur Honey Badger throughout the game. As the first few rounds of the encounter come and go, these are the most vital pieces to your kit, so aim to build them before anything else.

From there, you want to get Danger Room to help recur Attack Training on sweet Honey Badger. This makes her a 2 Attack with 4 hit points, so she is better at managing minions and easier to keep healthy with Regenerative Healing. This way you don't have to pay to recur her nearly as often. Also be sure to play Avengers Mansion, Combat Training, and Brute Forces whenever most convenient, and use Build Support and Superpower Training to build more quickly. Finally, Boom Boom and Rictor are played to help Honey Badger_ with minion heavy encounters and the rarely needed (if ever) chump block so your Badger doesn't have to.

As all of your pieces fall into place, you should be thwarting with X-23 three times for 9 threat removal every round. With your deck thinned down to mostly events, you'll be seeing Animal Instinct and Smash the Problem often for constant big removal potential. Quick Strikes and Sisterly Bond are great to wipeout bigger minions that your allies can't handle while also smacking the villain, while your allies handle the smaller minions. Puncture Wounds can help clean house further but I didn't find myself playing these all that often. Then when you're ready, you get to feel truly almighty as you vanquish the villain with a huge closer: Throw down Claw Mastery for your maximum 9 Attack. Then rush in with as many Quick Strikes and/or your Sisterly Bond for a potential 9-38 damage, and finally swing home with X-23 three times for 9 damage on the first then 6 and 6 on the second and third (because of losing Brute Force after the first Attack). That's 21 more, meaning you're hitting for a grand total of 30-59 damage to end your foe in fantastical heroic fashion!!

There is something to be said about just how useful the incredibly potent Symbiote Suit card is for this deck. Most heroes would love it, but not nearly as many benefit from every single buff on the card. +1 Attack empowers all of X-23's main combos. +1 Thwart makes her a powerful base 4, taking her from 9 to 12 removal a round. +1 Defense bump helps you deal with higher damaging villains or bigger minions. Every hero loves +1 hand size. Every hero loves 10 more hit points.

Some consider this card overpowered, and that the extra encounter card isn't a steep enough penalty, so I did not include in the base 40 cards. Add it if you want to take your X-23 into the stratosphere at the risk of 2 additional encounters per round (1 from this and 1 from IPAC).

Phew. All done. If you've stuck with me this far and read all my thoughts, thank you! I hope I wasn't too much of a bore and that you feel inspired enough to try this out for yourself. And to those that aren't even reading this but tried out the deck none-the-less, thank you just as much! I'm just happy to share something I'm kinda feeling a bit proud of.