Snow Flurry Flight (Iceman-Warpath)

At a Glance

Player Counts: 3-4

Play style: Flexible Defensive options and enemy interference, with lots of scaling into the endgame.

Strengths: Good Economy, lots of options once developed, potent plays that rarely gets stopped.

Weaknesses: Economy rarely helps economy. May need to adjust X-Men count depending on approach and team comp. Team comp in general encourages a large side board.

Less well known, but Iceman can just fly.

Cool New Perspective

Well on the Eve of Jubilee's release and another shakeup to the games card pool, I figured I'd finally share an Iceman deck I've been tinkering with off and on since his release. Now this list is far from an "optimal" strategy, and even has some situations it really shouldn't be taken against (solo players, you might want to avoid this one...), BUT I think it's a unique play angle for Bobby that still has made some fun moments that hopefully others may get some enjoyment as well.

A Snowy Path

First and foremost, this decks genesis comes from Warpath opening a new level of usage for Iceman's Frostbites. Though not necessarily a downside, Iceman's Frostbites do have the peculiar trait of stacking and building for one Villian activation. This really tanks the effectiveness of a single activation, but it does mean in Multiplayer environments you're still gonna see the Villian activate with full gusto against a few players, excluding some defends from Bobby. Even in this case, we still don't have the ability to thread in Frostbites into schemes unless it's the Villians first activation of the phase or we taunt one out during the hero phase.

In comes Warpath! An ally who I'm constantly looking to find a home for, considering he has possibly the most unique ally ability in the game. This is gonna be what lets us thread in Frost Bites with more precision, playing our Iceman events which add them after Warpath defends. We can even extend this utility after Warpaths tough status, considering he can always defend against minions who may have been left ineffective with Frost Bites, these two make quite a pair!

Now Warpath isn't an auto include in Iceman for a reason. Some real work and effort is needed to develop him, considering Bobby's suite of resource generators don't have many hits for Warpath. This is why we are running a Power of Flight Package, to both enable him and some other neat pieces that are really interesting with Bobby

Ice Solid Alright, gushy preamble aside, into the card-by-card. Going from common to unconventional.

Bobby's cost curve is far from sub zero, so we're still running EGS, along with the high number of resource generators he can justify. There's not too much to note here beyond the norm. I will say if a teammate happens to be running X-Jet, I'd sooner run Helicarrier than something like a second TBE. This is because one thing I've noticed with Bobby's economy scaling (and especially so in this list ) is that while he can develop many resource generators, they often have a hard time paying for each other. This can create awkward situations in the mid-game where you need to choose between using your resource generators to play an Iceman Event, or floating three of them to develop another upgrade. This is also why Cryo Kinetic perception is your prime SPT target, unless something else really fixes the game state.

Rounding out the usual suspects, What Doesn't Kill Me is awesome to let you keep stacking Frostbites and keep you at comfortable HP so you don't flip down and lose Ice Slide Before you want to. It also works as a ready in the Villian Phase if you defend> defend with Warpath > WDKM, which is just a nice play line to make the table feel better about Assault effects. The healing being a cost is also another reason you might like keeping a weak minion engaged with you for Warpath, as letting a small amount of damage to get through and actually let you play WDKM for the ready could be nice to not float cards.

Utopia is still a mainstay for Bobby, but this is where some of the bigger decisions in sideboarding and play style pop up. Utopia wasn't in the original list I had for this deck, I definitely wanted to approach it with an aerial focused mindset. But the more I've played Iceman with other decks, the harder it was to feel like I wasn't griefing by excluding it. So we have it now with a slimmer line of 4 X-Men allies. It's definitely closer to optimal to run more X-Men allies, but that ground is pretty well tread, and we're trying to preserve some identity here.

You can actually pivot from the Hero only strategy here, especially if your team has good threat management, and use Cool off while focusing on shuffling Snow Clones to increase your utopia procs. You'll be in a good place regardless if your teammates are running any number of X-Men allies. It's in situations where you both want to stay up all game and have no help from your team that you'll want to dip into the sideboard and add some X-Men allies, probably pulling a copy of Ever Vigilant and a PoF first.

Freezing at High Altitudes

Okay, into the interesting stuff! Everyone looks at the aerial gain from Ice Slide with trepidation. Having to wait until you draw an upgrade to play your aerial payoffs is one thing, but now you also spin it to the deck when you have to flip down? Well, since we're commiting to playing Warpath, Power of Flight serves as an interesting glue to hold him together with our other aerial pieces. Aerial intervention is the big one. I like it much more for Iceman than WDKM (when I can actually play it), since Threat removal is much harder to muster than damage mitigation. And it's another case of a Villian phase ready when used with Warpath.

In addition to their normal cost reduction and benefitting from TBE, Storm and Angel are even easier to sneak in with 3 extra doubles in the deck. It's actually really fun how playable Storm is here! Especially with how she helps Bobby's weaker Thwarting. I'll also never say no to running the ever flexible Vivian, especially when we also have TBE lines to player her off turn.

Soaring Acrobatics I actually was not very high on for Bobby during his reveal. But I've definitely come around on it a lot more. Staying up and replaying Ice Slide when needed is a much kinder reality than I anticipated, and Soaring does a lot to help efficiency fix Bobby's fairly chunky Attacks and Thwarts, or added insurance to make Unflappable trigger.

On that note, Unflappable is a protection staple that Bobby loves playing, and we won't say no to something that resembles a generic resource generator. Indomitable is a great panic button to make sure you can defend for a friend or ensure you have your basic activation in the hero phase. The play and forget aspect is always appealing to me, and the fact it can stick around after your shuffle is nice. It's probably the card I'd be most comfortable bumping up to exceed 40 if I were do that.

A Soft Snowfall

That's all I have here! I really wanted to tinker with Bobby a bit before sharing something. I feel like he can be pretty straightforward to build for, so I wanted to find something unique with him that wasn't complete cope (it's still a little cope, but a fun amount), and I'm happy to share that now! Definitely tinker with the list a bit if you want to play a certain way or have specific concerns with a given matchup. This deck is going in a lot of directions, so a little bit of guidance does a lot to enable the experience you want. I hope anyone who plays this enjoys, and I wish everyone a happy Jubilee day tomorrow!