Magnets, how do they work?

I built this deck a few months back for the upcoming MC/DC convention. I was already planning to publish it soon, but the Winning Hand just did their episode on Multiple Man, so it's perfect timing!

I've play tested the deck few times at 2 players just to make sure it works, but its really meant for higher player counts. I will report back with my experience playing it at the con. If you are attending, play a game with me and you can see it in action!

Multiple Man is great if you can get all three copies out at once. Key word here is if. It will only search your hand and deck, so it doesn't count any copies already in your discard pile. This is where Magneto comes in. Whenever you change to alter ego, his survivor ability can shuffle the top 3 cards of your discard back into your deck....and there's 3 copies of Multiple Man. Huzzah!

Play multiple men, chump block with all three, shuffle them back in, repeat. Its a simple concept, but less simple in practice. There are a few issues that need to be addressed here.

1) They all need to be next to each other on top of the discard, meaning they all must leave play around the same time. This is actually easy to work around. At higher player counts, you can almost always get 3 chump blocks in a turn. If not, any Jamies left over can simply attack or thwart at the start of your turn to be defeated by consequential damage (they should already have 1 damage from activating on the previous turn). While getting a total of 2 damage/thwart isn't the most cost effective use for a Jaime, its certainly better than nothing.

2) You have to flip from hero to alter ego when the Jaimes are on top of your discard to trigger Survivor. This usually isn't difficult, since you already want them to chump block while you are in hero form. But we also have Ready for a Fight, which lets you flip forms more often, and offers the added freedom to flip down to alter ego the turn before you chump block.

3) You have to trigger survivor before adding anything else to the discard. This is the biggest issue. You have to commit to flipping to alter ego before discarding any other cards. It doesn't matter how much you want to play that Metal Shards. Too bad, recycling Multiple Man takes priority here. In order to offset this, I've made sure that most cards can be played in alter ego. Every support and upgrade besides Wrapped in Metal can be played in alter ego, and if you use Helicarrier and The X-Jet to pay for Wrapped in Metal, you can play it in hero form without messing anything up. Lockjaw is here in case you don't have anything else to play in alter ego, you can always pull him from the discard.

4) You should avoid magnetic pull while your Jaimies are still in the deck. This is a trade off. You are losing out on a lot of Magneto's basic power, in exchange for a near limitless pool of chump blockers. This is a supportive deck that focuses on keeping everyone at the table alive over anything else. But once your posse is in play, pull away!

Other stuff

The 3 Jaimies already take up all of our ally slots, so might be wondering why there's 3 other allies here. The thing is, multiple men aren't always in play. Nightcrawler and Polaris provide a lot of added defense whenever Jaimie isn't around. Polaris gives an extra tough card either to herself or Magneto, and I like having her for thematic reasons as Erik's daughter. Nightcrawler is pretty nice because if you use his ability on the turn that you draw a Multiple Man: he goes back to hand where he can pay for Jaimie, and he removes himself from play to make room for all of your Multiple Men.

If an endless supply of Jaimie clones isn't enough survivability, we also have "Come Get Me, Bub!", Astonishing X-Men, Dr. Sinclair, and Pinned Down to mitigate damage. There isn't a ton of for Dr. Sinclair, but this card is mainly here for other players to take advantage of.

Moira MacTaggert fits here thematically, as she's worked alongside both Magneto and Jaimie Madrox. She also works really well in the deck with how often you'll be flipping, and she combos with Ready for a Fight. It's also worth noting that RFAF can trigger off of a scheme from another player, and you can defend that attack with Jaimie or any other ally.

It's time to teach the Insane Clown Posse how magnets really work