Stone Cold Stunner

Aka Iceman 3:16

Deck Pitch: We're running in, hitting them repeatedly, stunning them with our Signature Move, and leaving them dazed and unable to recover.

Our Signature Move in this case is setting them up with some stuns. It might be a little tough, but our goal is to achieve some level of Stunlock. Then while they are stunned, we capitalized on them being less likely to activate and stack a ton of Frostbites on them. That way when we flip down to Alter-Ego we can shuffle a lot of key Ice cards back into our deck and minimize their ability to scheme.

This is my deck inspired by The Winning Hand's first episode on Iceman. To highlight the character card over some of his other tools in his kit, I'm trying to lean into things specific to his abilities on his Alter-Ego and Hero sides. So that means applying a decent amount of Frostbites thru basic activations and shuffling cards back into his deck.

Hitting them with the Stone Cold Stunner

About 1/5th of our deck is cards that can cancel activations. Critical Hit, Drop Kick, Mockingbird and Frozen Solid all are here to keep the Villain from doing what they want to do. I tried to include a lot of Fist resources to enable Drop Kick, but we may still be relying on Martial Prowess and Helicarrier to help ease the burden of paying for it. Critical Hit takes some set up to get off since you have to have already defeated a Player Side Scheme, but Chill Out! can take care of one of those so it should be achieveable. Frozen Solid is also a bit pricey, but we still have a few things to help pay for it and it has the added benefit of denying the Villain a chance to Scheme. Mockingbird is kind of a last resort since she doesn't play into the X-Men theme, but she's still good to drop a stun on the villain and then eat an attack for you.

Our basic gameplay loop is to try and stun the villain and stack some Frostbites on them. Then while they are busy not activating and not clearing the Frostbites, we are using our basic activations to keep them piled on. Spoiling for a Fight and Surprise Move have a great bit of interaction since you can go fishing for a minion, ready back up, swing at that minion and trigger Freeze! and Surprise Move together to apply the upgrade you need to allow Surprise Move to work. If this isn't able to defeat the minion then that's still one more card you can shuffle back in when you flip down later on this turn. But hopefully this lets you ready back up and get another punch on the Villain.

Smashing a Drink

We have a couple good reasons to flip down every so often. I think our Cool Off priorities for cards to shuffle back in have to be Frozen Solid and Chill Out!. They are another source of lockdown and our primary method of managing threat. But if you're trying to rush down the villain Arctic Attack is the way to go. Ice Slide is another good call to shuffle in since flipping to Alter-Ego discards it then you put it back in your deck immediately. The Snow Clones are good if you need more allies on the field, but I think they may be secondary to managing the game state or pushing for the win. They are good to shuffle back if in your are looking for more ways to re-ready and you have Utopia in play.

We also are running Assault Training so we can refresh our Aggressive lockdown utility. Can't hit them with a Stunner if we don't have it in our hands. Just have Assault Training down and you can use both activations of it to put stuff back in our deck on back to back turns.

Focus on keeping the villain on the backfoot then hold them for a three count and you'll take home that win soon enough.

--- Munkey