Our War Games

Magik is ready to play some games, and with her magical abilities... the House always wins.

Without further ado, let's introduce the games Magik will be playing today!

Let's start with some simple Rock, Paper, Scissors.

With the ability to always know exactly what's on top of your deck, this is no longer a game of chance. You can win every single time, making this a 2-ER Avengers Mansion. This is a card that is so dirt cheap and useful that you will just never not want to play it.

After that, we can play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe

Legion works great with Magik because of his self-healing. He's practically invincible on his own. Except for the fact that every healing activation means he can't use one of his other abilities to remove 2 threat from a scheme or deal 2 damage to an enemy. What a waste! But with Tic-Tac-Toe, you can move damage from Legion to it to keep him alive AND use one of his more useful abilities. And best of all, when you get 3 in a row, all that damage you moved to it gets blasted at an enemy's face. You can move damage from Legion to this card over the course of seven turns, keeping him alive, then use the last damage to erase a minion from existence or get the final blow on the villain.

Remember to try to place tokens in a pattern that leaves a diagonal line through the center empty to maximize the value of the card.

OXX

XOX

XXO

The longterm value of using this card to heal Legion can be seen as about 21 damage (since it allows Legion to do 14+ extra damage or thwart and then does 7 itself) for an 8 ER investment. You probably will fire it off sooner in most games, but the point is that this is an incredible card for keeping Legion alive and able to actively keep thwarting and dealing damage.

Speaking of this deck's ally game, Legion won't be alone. Cosmo is a persistent ally in this deck that doesn't take consequential damage and lets you cycle through your deck to find better cards to play from the top. Either of these are great candidates to attach a Sidearm to. And then there's White Fox that can be played for free if discarded by Legion, Cosmo or War or Magik's own Scrying spell.

For the next game, we have Blackout

This is here mostly for completionist reasons. Why have every other metagame but exclude this one? But it does provide an important niche for the deck, giving it more consistent ways to thwart, letting you get that last threat off a side scheme or keeping the main scheme down to zero, or just giving you something extra to do with spare resources. It's certainly earned its spot in this deck, even if it isn't as flashy as the other games you'll be playing.

But now we come to the real powerhouse of the deck.

Now it's time to go to War .

Imagine a 2-ER upgrade that can stay in play and can exhaust to instantly deal 6 damage to an enemy, eliminating a minion without investing any resources beyond the initial 2.

With Limbo, which is the highest priority to get into play in any Magik deck, you can very frequently put either 'Pool Inspection or Da Bomb onto your deck and use War to hit for 6 damage. What, you didn't think those big 6-cost cards were made to PLAY did you? No way! You absolutely can if you really need them. But the real purpose of these is ammunition to fuel your War machine.

(Not to be confused with War Machine)

But, you might ask, what about the damage it deals? Won't that be a problem?

Not at all! Because you see... the REAL game being played by Magik here is...

A Game of Life

To keep your life from dipping too low, we have Healing Factor. And if that's not enough, we have Crew Quarters for when you need to flip down. And if you think Magik's life pool is too low, you have Endurance to beef it up. After all, an Endurance on top of the deck would be effectively 0-ER which is an incredible deal for +3 extra maximum life.

With all these upgrades, if you were brought down to 3 life, you can flip down and recover 3 that turn... have Crew Quarters healing 1 then and another 1 next turn.... then heal 2 with your Healing Factor... then recover again before flipping up. And hey, you're back at 13 life already!

(Exorcism makes flipping down much safer in solo play compared to other characters.)

In fact, healing is so easy and automatic that you might want to find other uses for that life you'll be overflowing with. Use Weapon X in alter-ego for an extra draw. Use your Bloodgem for its wild resource. This deck makes Magik a Bloodmage, and your blood is POWER.

It's said that a life well spent is a good life, so spend the Hell out of your life when you have it to spare and be prepared to heal it all back again.

End notes: Some other explanations for cards in this deck... Nick Fury is a good way to sift through your deck and is practically a free activation and block while at full life if you can get a triple resource in your hand. Avengers Mansion has great value if you can get it out early. Especially with Triple Resources. If you miss the Mansion early, it's still not useless. Both it and Fury can also double as decent alternatives to fuel War if you can't get Da Bomb or Pool Inspection on top that turn. 3 copies of Spiritual Meditation are of course an automatic include in every Mystic deck. X-Gene is great to help pay for Magik's events since you will want to use Soul Strike and Exorcism to stunlock the villain as much as you can. You should definitely get your value out of this a few times over. Stick-To-Itiveness is just a good card even if it doesn't play in to any particular strategy in the deck.

One omission experienced players might notice is The Sorcerer Supreme. The reason this isn't here is just because I don't own Doctor Strange, and it's now out of print and overpriced. If you have it, consider replacing Stick-To-Itiveness with it. Even without that card, I find the deck still plays really good.

Speaking of good things... I didn't include Git Gud in this list but you should consider having it on standby to toss into your deck on a rematch when you can drop it for 0. It's not bad for its cost normally, but I'd prefer using those resources on cards that can actively help me in the moment instead of a contingency for a worst case scenario. But for 0 cost after a loss, I would say it's too good to pass up.