Unto Dust They Shall Return

I've been looking for the most effective uses for The Raft ever since it was announced (using Operative Skill as a stand-in yellow card), and this is the best one I've played with so far. This deck was able to defeat most standard and expert villains, though I played expert Magneto solo and couldn't gain traction (lost 5 games in a row). As soon as I added another player at the table, though, this deck gained the breathing room to flex and build into something beautiful and satisfying.

The TLDR here is that you put minions in The Raft for thwart, you deal them back to yourself as encounter cards, and then Voltron Dust sweeps them all away again, dealing overkill damage, bonus thwart, and healing using Advanced Suit.

They Are Formed From Dust

To start this combo, you need Dust and The Raft.

Then add some upgrades to Dust, most importantly Honorary Guardian, Attack Training, and Advanced Suit are the most vital at first. Then, anything that boosts Dust's attack like Enraged, Energy Spear, Sidearm, Inspired, and especially Laser Blaster, which will enable overkill. Having Boot Camp down is also a nice addition, but you don't need to max Dust's damage (10 with overkill, piercing, and ranged) to make this work.

And Unto Dust They Shall Return

Dust's response isn't forced, so you can choose whether to attack one minion or all minions (with +1 consequential damage). Enraged also causes Dust to take an additional consequential damage, so to attack all minions she would take 3 consequential damage. In sequencing, this 3 damage will be dealt at the end of her activation. But a minion defeat is the window for Advanced Suit, and it happens before the consequential damage is dealt. So you can discard cards from your hand equal to the number of minions defeated to heal Dust for that amount. This can heal Dust for 2-3 damage if attacking multiple minions, or just 1 if you're sending a lone minion to the Raft with her. Additional healing comes from Triage and Adam warlock's Battlemage ability (discarding a protection card).

When finally set, you will be sweeping the board of minions each turn (there are very few minions in the game that can withstand Dust's boosted attack damage, and you can "soften them up" with other abilities first if you need to). You will get bonus thwart off whatever schemes are most relevant, and you will get overkill damage (usually 3-6 per minion) onto the villain. You will then heal Dust to full before she takes 3 consequential damage at the end of her activation, and put all the minions back into the Raft. Then you will shuffle the minions there, and deal all but 4 back to yourself again. Once you have lots of minions in rotation, you can be a little picky about which ones you want to reveal over and over (Quickstrike is annoying, as are bad When Revealed or When Defeated effects. Alternatively, Guard, Patrol, and Toughness are usually negligible in the face of Shai-Hulud).

Getting There

This deck is intended to build out, so it probably won't surprise you that Adam can get outpaced by the Villain at first. You'll want to choose a modular set with lots of minions (Mutant Slayers and Band of Badoon are my favorite currently), but in the beginning of the game you might need to Karmic Blast the minions off while you're getting set up. Against villains that aren't steady or stalwart, Adam has lots of options to cancel Villain's activations (reducing their tempo), but struggled in solo vs Steady/Stalwart.

I included multiple allies with good "Entering Play" abilities. Agent Coulson / Rapid Response combo is still good, but I there are many other good allies in this deck to recur (so I don't always trigger it on Coulson himself). Psylocke can confuse twice, while Iron Fist can stun twice. Polaris and Pip the Troll both have tough when they come in (recursion pings the tough off, though). Basic defending with Adam isn't bad, but 1-2 damage was usually getting through (included Shake it Off to give him some breathing room after taking attack damage). Under Surveillance can give you similar breathing room on the main scheme. Soul World gives you a full heal when you flip down to Alter-ego once per deck pass. Summoning Spell feels a little bad when you hit Grant Ward, but I'm not sad about any of the other allies being pulled in this way. Karmic Staff will sometimes need to be used to keep Ward loyal, even if the treachery is cancelled by Cosmic Ward. And Quantum Magic can grab the solution to your current problem from your discard pile.

If I've missed some minutia of the rules that invalidates this, please let me know. Also hit up the comments on ways this could be better (or changes you're making to suit your personal playstyle)!