The Marvel vs Capcom Crossover We Didn't Know We Needed

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AGE OF APOCALYPSE FULL BOX RUN

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Devil May Scry

Magik is AWESOME!

ahem, ok, on to talking about why. I want to warn you that this deck complexity is HIGH, but I will try to break it down as much as I can. The write-up will be long, but worth it, and I will add videos soon :)

Magik is all about playing with the top card of her deck faceup, then either playing that card, swapping that card to hand, discarding it for benefit, or using the resource icon on that card to boost her basic stats or add effects to her events! This scry is important information on how we sequence our card draw and deck manipulation abilities, and our deck makeup of not just card effects, but resource icons matters in a way it never has for any other hero!

Once per phase, you may play the top card of your deck as if it was in your hand, reducing its resource cost by 1

Bingo! This is straight money. Since the card doesn't take a spot in our hand and we get a reduction on it, that is an extra 2 resources......per phase! This distinction is key, since we can get 2 resources in the player phase and then again in the villain phase, for a total of 4 extra resources per round! On top of our 5 card hand size (or 6 with The Sorcerer Supreme!), we have 9-10 resources worth of card plays every round.

We want to have a decent amount of cards playable in the villain phase to take advantage of her villain phase discount. Remember, actions/upgrades/supports/allies are not playable in the villain phase, so we must include some villain phase interrupts. For example, the extra hand size from The Sorcerer Supreme and extra "hand size" from the top of her deck, make Magik the best user of Mutant Protectors in the game! A heretofore really mediocre card will spring to life here, since we can now play it for free as her villain phase card.

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The Devil Wears Prada

and maybe also skintight leather outfits

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Since Magik is brand new, let's talk a little about her kit

• Exorcism removes 4 threat and confuses if the top card of your deck is or , while Soul Strike deals 4 damage and stuns if the top card of your deck is or . Note that Exorcism can only confuse the villain, which slightly lowers the value of a Float Like a Butterfly build.

• Magic Barrier interrupts an attack (even against a teammate), redirecting it to you, preventing 3 of the damage, and then dealing 3 damage back to the attacker if the top card of your deck is an or . Being non-attack damage is super key since this ignores guard, stun, and retaliate. At 3 damage, this is a really good minion answer, and you can play this for free off the top of the deck!

• Stepping Disc is my preferred event to play off the top of the deck in the player phase. A 0ER ready is pretty strong, allowing her to freely REC in AE and then ready, or get multiple uses out of her upgrade-boosted stats (and Stepping Disc can help put the right card on top of your deck for the stat boost). Just note, it cannot put itself back on top. VERY IMPORTANT, is that you can see the card underneath it before deciding what to put on top of the deck: Stepping Disc comes off the deck, you flip over the next card, ready, then put something on top. Example: if you see underneath, grab Soul Strike, use Limbo to swap it to hand, clear the card you swapped with Legion, then proceed to play Soul Strike and stun. You can even just put Magic Barrier on top for the villain phase later on. It can also grab Limbo or Soulsword, if discarded such as by Shield Spell, and if you haven't used your discount that round, then you can immediately get it into play!

• Soulsword, Magik's Crown, and Mystical Armor all have a stat boost dependent on the top card of the deck, and also a constant effect that is always active. Constant piercing on basic attacks, steady, and retaliate are very good. I'd say Soulsword is the priority of these, Magik's damage is not exactly high or straightforward, her attack event only deals 4 damage, so getting to 3 ATK can be critical. The piercing is very useful with Utopia and Stepping Disc readies, and it helps your small chunks of damage go far. Magik's Crown is actually far less important than you would think. With a 4 threat thwart event that can be recurred with Stepping Disc or Illyana Rasputin, reaching 2 THW is not that important, freeing your basic power up to ATK or REC. The steady can be super useful in certain encounters, but also our sheer number of readies (even Professor X is a ready!) means we aren't hindered by status anyways. The retaliate on Mystical Armor has actually been really clutch. It essentially makes Magic Barrier a 4 damage event and it adds a damage to Shield Spell. Great for minion removal and pinging down the villain

• Limbo ties the whole room together. It is a once per round guarantee that you can satisfy one of the goals (play a card from the top of the deck, line up the right resource for a kicker/Legion, or swap a different card to hand). Just note, that for the villain phase swap, you have to do it at the start of the villain phase, even before step 1! So try to plan out your villain phase and subsequent hero phase as much as you can. What's nice is that you can swap Magic Barrier to the top of the deck, after having already seen if there is an underneath! I do like to prioritize the villain phase swap, since the player phase has more control over the top deck already, and if you draw Shadow of the Past, having Limbo already spent isn't that big a deal. If you can even clear Ruler of Limbo same turn, you will be able to use Limbo twice that round!! If you haven't played Limbo and get Shadow, it very kindly will put Limbo into play for you! In some cases, you can even use Limbo before you flip up and stack the deck with Ilyana! Whenever you see Limbo, you should always play it immediately

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The Devil's in the Details

"something may seem simple, but in fact the details are complicated and likely to cause problems"

Each card on top of our deck has 4 main uses:

• We can play it off the top for a discount, if it is playable

• The resource icon can turn on our various kickers

• We can swap it into hand with Limbo

• We can discard it off the top with Legion

This is the main sequencing puzzle of Magik, when to use the discount, when to use Limbo, when to use your events or basic actions with the matching kicker, and when to use Legion. And ooo what a puzzle it is!

Cards We Want to Play at Discount

• In the villain phase we have 7 targets, x3 Mutant Protectors, x2 Magic Barrier, x1 Shield Spell, and x1 Colossus. Colossus pulls excellent triple duty in this deck, as a , as a villain phase top deck, as a player phase top deck. Despite having fewer villain phase options, we can recur all of them except Mutant Protectors using either Illyana Rasputin's interrupt or Stepping Disc

• In the player phase, allies/upgrades/supports/Stepping Disc/Scrying/Spiritual Meditation are good targets. I would caution against playing Exorcism or Soul Strike from the top, even with X-Gene, as the kickers are usually blind. There is some sequencing we can do to guarantee them (Illyana to put Magic Barrier on top, then Stepping Disc to put Soul Strike and play it off the top for example), but it requires a lot of our sequencing resources. For example, if we play Exorcism from the deck and want to guarantee the trigger, that will usually take up our top deck play, a Stepping Disc stack, and an Illyana stack. But, if I play Exorcism from hand, it will only take one of the ways we can stack our deck and still preserve our top deck discount. I will often loop Exorcism with Illyana/Stepping Disc in the early game, and Soul Strike in the late game, preferably to draw them with Limbo or Moira MacTaggert immediately, or to pass them to my next turn. It definitely feels like there are more than 2 copies of each! Looping Exorcism in particular, really mitigates a lot of threat, even without the kicker, freeing Magik up to basic ATK/REC and use Legion for damage instead

• Stepping Disc is the sequencing glue that ties everything together. Being able to recur any Magik card from your discard pile means you can setup any resource icon you need for an in-hand event or basic power, you can draw any card you want with Limbo and then play it, or you can guarantee yourself a villain phase play with Magic Barrier. Colossus is also targetable with this, meaning you can guarantee having him in the villain phase, for either his own effect or Mutant Protectors (though the former is better if the resource difference doesn't matter)

• Scrying, either played from hand or the top of the deck, can set up a card we want to play, with the matching kicker! Whether it is at the end of the turn to set up Mutant Protectors or the start of the turn to set up Soul Strike, Scrying is just a free card. Spiritual Meditation is in a similar boat, even giving us an extra card in hand, at the cost of our discount play. Either of these can hit a double resource as well, for extra value. Note that for Spiritual Meditation, you get to see the top card of the deck before you have to select what to discard from hand!

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Resources We Want on Top of the Deck

This is a good time to pause and go over the resource breakdown of the deck:

• 16 (2 upgrades/supports)
• 13 (3 upgrades/supports)
• 10 (3 upgrades/supports
• 5 (2 upgrades/supports)

Now you might be wondering if having as the most frequent is a weakness, meaning fewer confuses/stuns and less relevant stat boosts. My answer is no! And for a few reasons:

• As already discussed, we have a few ways to guarantee the status on our player phase events using Scrying, Stepping Disc, Illyana Rasputin, Limbo etc. However, guaranteeing the on Magic Barrier is much harder to do. Blind firing Magic Barrier from the top of the deck is still good as a prevent 3, but because of our aforementioned damage scarcity, we really want it to hit the kicker as often as possible, particularly for high minion count scenarios. With about 50% of the deck triggering the damage, we have really good odds to blind fire Magic Barrier off the deck for 3!

• The next reason that is actually really good for us, despite giving the worst stat boost (+DEF) from our upgrades, is Legion! Legion turns any on top of our deck into 2 damage. Yet another way that we can overcome the drawback of a low damage attack event. Importantly, Legion does nothing when discarding a , so specifically having is very good here. By far it is the resource I most often want to see with Legion. If we compare having an on top to having a , Magic Barrier + Legion is getting us 5 damage, while the would only get us two damage if we can make two basic attacks that round!

  • One nugget with Legion, is that we often want to cycle the top of our deck to something playable. If we get stuck with a Mutant Protectors or Shield Spell on top of the deck, that is taking up the spot of what would otherwise be a free card. Legion is great at cycling past the chaff and getting us to value town! And if we have already used our deck discount, perhaps on Stepping Disc, we can use that Stepping Disc to set up an ideal Legion discard!

  • In a perfect limbo, we would play a card from the top, use Legion, and then have a showing, turning on every kicker without more sequencing. It doesn't always work out this way. Sometimes, we will need to sequence our basic actions and events for an early , then try and clear the to make way for a playable card or a good Legion target. If we see a double on top of our deck we can swap it to hand with Limbo, going up +1 resource on the turn, on top of our other pluses. Figuring out when to Limbo/Legion/play the top and all of these choices will take some practice, but hopefully making you aware of the possibilities and presenting some guidelines can help!

• As far as the other resource icons, is actually surprisingly the least valuable on top of the deck. Since we can loop Exorcism with Illyana or Stepping Disc, the +1 THW from Magik's Crown is really unnecessary. Likewise, Professor X is an easy confuse off Mutant Protectors. Since we can only use a confuse every other turn at most, the confuse kicker is the one we will least often need to hit! This surprised me, since confuse is typically way stronger than a stun or 3 damage. For this reason, it wouldn't be unheard of to cut Spiritual Meditation! I've left it in, since it is easy enough to play around the excess and the card has other benefits, but something to consider for yourself.

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SSStylish Combo!!!

Mutant Protectors how do they work?

This is a 2-card combo that most heroes would have to put together in hand with some difficulty! You need both an ally and Mutant Protectors, just one or the other and there's no combo. Particularly, you would like to have an ally with some kind of enters play ability or that could survive the attack. Magik has the benefit of being able to play Mutant Protectors off the top of the deck and +1 hand size from The Sorcerer Supreme, giving her 2 additional cards to draw into a favorable ally for Mutant Protectors. We can even use Limbo to swap an ally from the top of the deck to our hand, in exchange for putting Mutant Protectors from our hand to the top of the deck. Just know that Mutant Protectors cannot put into play an ally from the top of the deck, since Magik's constant only allows for the playing of card from the top, not putting into play. For this reason, it is best to have Mutant Protectors on the top of the deck with an ally in hand. It can even be a good idea to use it against a minion attack that the ally can survive, for example, if the villain is stunned.

After the combo, we'll still have a 4-5 card hand size with a player phase -2 still to trigger, and hopefully an ally in play and an attack blocked!

Now let's add some wrinkles.

How does Defensive Energy interact when we play the Defense event from the top of the deck? Well, according to the Learn to Play and RRG 1.5, we put the event on the table declaring our intent to play it, before paying costs! So as soon as Mutant Protectors comes off our deck, we flip over the next card. Now, we have the option to spend Defensive Energy and draw that recently exposed card if we wish. Why would we do this?

• It could be an ally that Mutant Protectors can put into play! Just note you must have had an ally in hand as a valid target before initiating Mutant Protectors. But once we have drawn that ally, we can select either to put into play!

• It's a double resource! This makes the ally completely resource neutral!

• We want to line up our player phase discount with something else or leave a different resource on top of our deck!

• If we are spending this on Magic Barrier, it gives us 2 tries at hitting an or !

Now you might be saying "journeyman2, Mutant Protectors was played for 0-cost, so how can you spend Defensive Energy on it?" Dear reader, I will direct your attention to the rulings in the Works Cited section at the end of this write-up. Ruling #57 directs us to the entry in the RRG under "Cost" where resources can be generated beyond a card's cost, and Defensive Energy only cares about being "spent", which is different from needing to be "paid". These are the nuggets that you come to me for, allowing us to get a desired outcome within the realm of the rules.

Finally, Defensive Energy has a lovely to turn on our abilities!

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Russian Olympic Limbo Team

• Colossus deserves top billing because this guy does it all! If you have him left in hand and Limbo unused, I will often default to passing him to the top of the deck where he stays flexible, something you can repeat every turn if you wish, similar to Wiggle Room or Unleash Nova Force in Ms Marvel or Nova respectively. Put him to the top, hit your triggers, and then have him available to bounce into play next phase. Even swapping him with Limbo at the beginning of the villain phase can be good, turning on an in-hand Magic Barrier, guaranteeing a boosted basic power, and having a playable card on top in the player phase. If I know he won't get played, I'll try and keep his on the deck. One neat trick is that Stepping Disc can put him on top of the deck!

• Legion is the other premier ally here, offsetting our stats and cycling our top card! is the best; if you have a for Exorcism, you likely don't need more thwarting from Legion. Just make sure to walk the tightrope between wanting for our basics and for Legion!

• Forge, Angel, Armor, and Triage are important 2-cost allies, meaning they can be played from the top of the deck for a single resource! A 1ER Utopia trigger is very nice, especially when 3/4 of these allies also boost a stat beforehand. Triage is great here to heal off Bloodgem damage. Any of these allies make for good Mutant Protectors, even if they don't survive. Forge gives you a search, Triage can still heal you, and Angel and Armor are just good chumps (Armor even twice!) An example of the value, to play Forge normally costs 3ER and you get a refund of 1ER, for net -2ER. But, if you target Forge with Mutant Protectors from the top of your deck, he blocks an attack and is resource neutral instead!

• Polaris is another good Mutant Protectors ally, I'll often choose to tough Magik and let Polaris eat the dirt. But, if you want to trigger Bloodgem, keeping the tough off Magik can be relevant and Polariscan instead save herself or give a pseudo-heal to Legion or Rockslide

• Rockslide is another great Mutant Protectors target, but even moreso, the damage he brings is excellent. While on top of the deck, his gives Magik 3 ATK, and then you can play him off the top for another 3 ATK. This burst potential is something to be aware of

• Nightcrawler is another great on top of the deck. His 2/2 statline is also very flexible, while being cheaper than Longshot or Storm. Notably, he can be an emergency button to save Magik or a Mutant Protectors ally. The abundance of and The X-Jet helps

• Karma does not trigger her ability off Mutant Protectors, since she requires being played, rather than put into play. But playing her off the top of the deck answers a minion and gives you two allies for 3ER. Just be careful with Utopia, as while you will get a ready from Karma, the minion she controls will also turn off the ally extension. Magik's nemesis set minions Witchfire (1/3/4) and S'ym (2/2/5) are excellent targets! Since she is the most situational ally to play from the top, it is a good thing she is for Legion!

• Professor X is yet another great Mutant Protectors target. Losing out on his 3 THW really doesn't matter as much with our readily available thwart event! All of his options here are equally flexible. I've Mutant Protectors'd him in and stunned a big minion that would have attacked after the villain. The confuse is of course valuable, and eases the sequencing of Exorcism, or assists it for steady villains. Even the ready is relevant, either to get another use of Magik's boosted stat, or to ready an ally that is exhausted from Mutant Protectors!

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• Moira MacTaggert is a little spice here since she can immediately draw what you put on your deck with Illyana Rasputin, without having to use Limbo or your deck discount! This plays well with not wanting to play Exorcism/Soul Strike from the top of the deck. Additionally, if we haven't stacked the deck, we get to see what she would draw before we decided if we want to draw it! Sometimes, leaving a card on top to play/see the resource of is better, rarely, but should be noted

• X-Gene and Bloodgem are both important on top of the deck, though the former is not playable from the top (like Moira, you must have the Mutant trait, which is alter-ego only). With a lot of 1-2 cost cards, these can be fairly clutch. Bloodgem is trickier, since the damage an add up, but even if you only use it 1-2 times, or it gets Caught Off Guard, it is still giving us great value, especially on top of the deck. Triage and our REC can heal back up, but Magik often has excess health in this deck already, with all of the different ways she can mitigate attacks. Defense events, chumps, stuns, flipping, and readies that give REC access, all mitigate the downside here

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• 44 cards! There are a couple of reasons I think Magik can really go above the minimum deck size:

  • Spiritual Meditation and Scrying are 4 cards that practically don't take a deck spot. Cantrips mean you draw through your deck just as fast as if we had 40 cards no cantrips. They do make the mulligan slightly weaker, but not to any noticeable degree
  • Illyana and Stepping Disc recursion means we are much less draw dependent than other heroes. With an effective 7 card hand size in hero form, we will never truly be locked out of good plays, even with defense event protection!
  • Magik mills, draws, and cycles her deck exceedingly fast! She plays 2 cards off her deck each round, has a 6 hand size, mill in the form of Legion and Shield Spell, and then plenty of card draw with Spiritual Meditation, Scrying, Taunt, Moira MacTaggert, and Defensive Energy. I do appreciate a slightly thicker deck here, though if you want to cut the Spiritual Meditations and Taunt go for it. I personally have not noticed a huge difference, and appreciate the deck cycling
  • One little wrinkle that makes it hard to cut to 40, is that some of the least played (but still valuable) cards like Nightcrawler and Taunt, provide her with the rare and valuable for her Soulsword boost and Soul Strike stun. Cutting down any or really makes a big difference in minion heavy encounters, but the added cards are all useful for their effects! Really interesting deckbuilding and balancing decision

• Cut the doubles! For the longest time I didn't have the basic doubles in here, and it plays fine without them. She essentially gets a free double every phase already. However, it was slightly harder to get built out, and being able to add a double to hand with Limbo, Scrying, or Spiritual Meditation is good economy. Because I also recommend not using your top deck discount on Exorcism or Soul Strike, the doubles are good here to pay for those. I think you could run anywhere from 0-3 doubles and be happy. It's just a shame to see one on top without a way to draw it to hand, since it is taking the spot of a playable card on top

Temptations of the Devil

I want to make a special mention of Taunt, a card that had been in the deck at max copies for awhile thanks to a very niche ruling. Please see Ruling #60 in the Works Cited. If you play Taunt into Mutant Protectors the ally will enter play exhausted, but the attack will continue into Magik. Since the ally is not taking damage, the ally is guaranteed to survive! Counting the resources, if one of the cards is played from the top of the deck, it is 3ER expenditure followed by draw 3, turning the ally into a net neutral, though potentially costing Magik some health. It's been a cool combo when it goes off, getting some expensive allies into play without taking damage. An ally like Armor doesn't mind being exhausted to save her tough anyways. You could even get Polaris into play and tough Magik to survive the Taunt attack. This also works without Mutant Protectors on Colossus ally! Taunt, play Colossus, who doesn't exhaust like a Mutant Protectors ally, but the attack comes into Magik instead! Another sequence is to Taunt, play Magic Barrier, and then play Colossus! This works vis-a-vis the same ruling, and the attack will still go to Magik! With all our other damage mitigation, Magik usually has some extra hp to take a Taunt attack. However, it competes for her hp with Bloodgem and competes with the player phase top deck discount also has a lot of competition and despite being a cool combo, it isn't relevant often. Still something you may want to try out for yourself!! I've left one copy in, and it does help us hit our rare kickers.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled deck with a word from our sponsor

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Purgatory

• Cerebro is an interesting way to filter for Mutant Protectors targets and can be grabbed off Forge. You can search one, then pass it to the top of your deck for next turn's Mutant Protectors. You can even just pick one with the resource icon you need or one you'd like to play with the player phase discount. With Legion being a perennial fixture with the Psionic trait, the search is always on. However, we really don't want to use it the turn we flip down, since then there are fewer Mutant Protectors targets left in the deck for future turns. It is possible to loop Colossus with Cerebro and Stepping Disc, though it is kind of weird sequencing, needing to Stepping Disc, flip down, and then Cerebro Colossus to hand, likely at a time when you can't trigger his interrupt. Something to be mindful of, is not to have too many cards that aren't playable off the top of the deck, and Cerebro is not playable off the top. I currently like Moira MacTaggert more in this role, but wouldn't fault anyone for experimenting with this

• Iceman is ok, but he doesn't do much off Mutant Protectors or being played normally, and he doesn't stop the Quickstrike from Witchfire either. resource was also not useful. Storm and Longshot were both in for awhile, just as nice 2/2/3 allies with situationally useful abilities (Longshot paid dividends in Project Wideawake). But both ended up being cut

• Side Step, Jump Flip, Anticipated Attack, and other villain phase cards didn't make the cut, because the ally from Mutant Protectors, the damage from Magic Barrier, and the full and cheap block of Shield Spell (that can also cycle the top card of the deck) were all much more useful. No defense events that require basic defending are good here

• Player Side Schemes are nice plays off the top of the deck. Build Support to get Limbo early is ok, but with her card cycling, I never had trouble getting Limbo (often from the top of the deck). Specialized Training would be my pick to include, since it makes her less reliant on the top card of the deck for stat boosts. Even Front Line Specialist is alright, giving out two more uses of Bloodgem!

• X-Mansion, Mutant Education, Weapon X were all messed around with, but between Stepping Disc and her alter-ego ability, she has a lot of recursion already! With Weapon X, you could load the deck with Stepping Disc and then draw that card, but most of the cards we want to play in alter-ego are other cheap build cards, which isn’t noticeably sped up by this cute combo. These one directional combos with Weapon X and Cerebro ended up being much simpler with Moira MacTaggert

• Atlas Bear is kind of neat card cycling, since you can play her from the top for 2ER and she can draw you 3ER, for a net +1. Turning off Utopia is a downside though

• Digging Deep just doesn't work well with Legion and it's a complete gamble off Shield Spell

• Resourceful was suggested to me by Man-is-Obsolete, and it does a lot of what she wants! 1-cost card to play for free off the top, and a wild for her triggers. Could be considered over the doubles

Works Cited

Defensive Energy can be spent on a 0-cost card https://hallofheroeslcg.com/latest-ffg-rulings-post-rrg-1-5/#57

You can play Mutant Protectors off Taunt, but the attack will come to your identity https://hallofheroeslcg.com/latest-ffg-rulings-post-rrg-1-5/#60

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Thank you so much for sticking it out through this incredibly long write-up. This deck reveals depth at 2 plays or 20 plays, and I hope you enjoy it