Charge De Gunboat

Surprise, It's another gunboat deck!!!

I hadn't played Gambit in a little while and I wanted to play him in something other than the normal Protection deck. I was trying to find something different and I realized that his Charge De Card hero ability synergizes with Gunboat Diplomacy. The other most important thing for Gunboat is the ability to keep your allies on board, once again Gambit has synergy with that as he likes to defend with his 3 defense.

To get set up we need some allies and Children of the Atom so that we can give our X-Force allies Mission Training boosting our gunboat efficiency. The primary targets are Bishop and Pete Wisdom but really any of our allies will do as they all have at least 2 thwart before Mission Training. Build Support is included to help us find CoTa quicker, we also have Utopia as a secondary target. This also provides a great benefit not just from the ready but we can also have another ally since all of our allies with have the X-Men trait from CoTa allowing us 4 allies.

Bishop especially has great synergy with Gambit as every time he's attacked Bishop builds his charge counters to later use for explosive attacks. You can remove up to 3 at a time for +2 damage per counter removed. With Mission Training on him, we have the ability to potentially use this ability multiple times.

Pete Wisdom becomes a 4 thwart with Mission Training and he heals 1 damage each time that a treachery is resolved allowing him to stay on board even longer.

One of the other interesting things with Gambit is that his thwart cards are AE focused. To help deal with threat in hero form or if we are just unable to flip down, we have Under Surveillance to increase the main scheme's threshold by 4 and Impede which removes 3 threat and if it was the first card played that turn it comes back to the hand giving you another resource.

Since Gambit has some AE focused cards, we also have Vigilante Training which allows us to shuffle Gunboat back in. This is especially great to use near the end of a deck pass guaranteeing to draw one for your next turn.

The Combo

An example of how this Gunboat combo can look is something like this:

-3 charge counters on Gambit

-Bishop out with Mission Training

-Pete Wisdom out with Mission Training

-Operative Skill out

Play Gunboat from hand exhausting Bishop and Pete which would normally be 7 threat removal and 7 damage, however with Operative Skill we can push this to 8 threat removal/damage since we "thwarted" and then remove 3 charge counters from Gambit to push the damage to 11 since we played an attack event. This is about the maximum damage we can achieve from the combo but for a 1 cost event to clear 8 threat and deal 11 damage is pretty impressive.

The rest of the deck is designed around survivability for Gambit, we have Endurance to give him some extra health as the harder hitting villains can punch past his 3 defense.

Generation X can be a swiss army knife based on what you need to do.

Need to take out a minion with tough like his nemesis? Grab Charged Card

Want to push to finish the villain or clear multiple minions? Grab Royal Flush.

My primary target for it is usually Natural Agility as it can pretty much keep us from taking damage since it adds a charge counter when played and reduces damage by the number on your identity.

Against non steady/stalwart villains you can also grab Creole Charmer with it to remove threat and get a confuse in AE.

Allies

Bishop and Pete have already been addressed the rest are:

Rogue who can be paid for free if you have 4 or more charge counters on your identity. She brings a tough and the beauty of that is you can exhaust her the turn you play her with Gunboat and keep the tough allowing her to block an attack during villain phase.

Dazzler brings solid 2/2 stats and a confuse.

Hope Summers bring solid 2/2 and she can search for a superpower card in your deck which is what all of Gambit's hero events are. Feels great to get her out and then grab natural agility to set up for the villain phase.

Deadpool provides solid 2/2 and is a great target for gunboat as the exhausting doesn't deal consequential and prolongs the acceleration token coming out.

Deathlok brings solid 2/2 stats as well but the great thing with him is with CoTa out, he can grab mission training from discard since he is now an X-Men.

Shadowcat brings 2 thwart and her when enter play allows you to negate icons on a side scheme in play for the remainder of the round.

Other Considerations

Specialized Training can give Gambit 4 defense and card draw when he defends however it didn't make it out enough and Gen X felt better.

One Way or Another helps you get set up quicker with the card draw it brings and could be subbed in but I dropped them as the deck typically gets set up pretty quickly.

2nd copy of CoTa can be added if you're having trouble getting it out, I had 2 but with 1 and Build Support that has worked well enough.

Lay the Trap is a fun one for the extra damage but was dropped in favor of other PSS as well as things to help with survivability.

Overall, this deck has been a ton of fun and performed really well. I would love to hear any feedback or experiences with the deck!