The Full Blast of Hope! (every turn)

Cyclops: "Full Blast incomiiing!!!"

The villain: "Nooooooooo, not again! That's TOO SOON after your last one!"

Your partner: "Are you talking with the cards again?"

Overview:

• Play Style: Full Blast recursion through ally recursion.
• Fun: Very high (unleash tons of damage while thwarting effectively)
• Difficulty: Easy to Medium (follow the game plan, play key allies asap)
• Power level: Strong to Very Strong ('cause Cyclops is Strong by default :p )
• Recommended Player Count: Any (even more impressive in multi with bigger health pools)
• Number of cards: 42, but 2 PSS. 40 cards version at the end.

This deck has crushed multiple Expert villains, including Magneto and Apocalypse 1 and 2 (all bad match-ups on paper)

Concept:
Full Blast is super strong and fun to play, BUT it requires to jump through a lot of hoops (attach an upgrade to the enemy, exhaust your hero, spend a resource, have Full Blast in hand and play it...), AND it's difficult to recurse. This deck tries to solve all those problems to deal 11 overkill damage almost every turn!

Full Full Blast combo:

• "attach an upgrade to the enemy": Attach Coordinated Effort to the villain forever, and often find/draw Cyclops' Upgrades with Mutant Education and Phoenix (for minions).

• "exhaust your hero": Always be ready with Utopia and a lot of allies being played.

• "spend a resource": Trigger your Optic Blast ability easily with Ruby Quartz Visor resource (a very good upgrade in this deck!).

• "have Full Blast in hand": Recurse Full Blast! Play Phoenix, Hope Summers and Dazzler (pay their cost once for the entire game). Then Mutant Mayhem 2 of these 3 to get: Full Blast, and another Cyclops card, and/or a confuse effect. Almost always choose Dazzler, and then either Phoenix or Hope depending on where you left your Full Blast :p

  • Mutant Education can also be used to reshuffle Full Blast in a thin deck, or just before you replay Hope.

• " and play it": Play Full Blast itself with X-Gene.

• And finally, the Psychic Rapport is incredibly good here (both readying you and finding Full Blast or an attachment). Nice to see a team-up being played :)

• This is so efficient at getting Full Blast in your hand that I must remind you that: Cyclops hero ability is limited to once per turn, so it is sadly impossible to Full Blast twice per turn. But you can keep in hand for next turn!

Note: I created and first playtested this deck before the release of Coordinated Effort. It already went fine because you can plan ahead with your Mutant Education which upgrades you'll need next turn(s). But now, it's even easier to target the villain! :)

How to play this deck / combos:

1. Early game

• Mulligan hard for Hope Summers, Children of the Atom, or any support card in general!
• Forge helps you play X-Mansion, The X-Jet and/or Utopia. He's a good target for Mutant Mayhem in the first turns if you end-up with a hand without supports/upgrades to play.
• Pixie allows you to discard Dazzler and/or Phoenix as a resource if it eases your setup. You should still focus on playing those 2 asap to unlock Mutant Mayhem shenanigans ;)
• Use your alter-ego ability aggressively, you want to take all upgrades out of your deck asap to see Children of the Atom or other key cards.
• Whenever you don't really need your alter-ego ability for resources, look for Coordinated Effort and play it on the villain. That's a "permanent" upgrade on an enemy. You can also discard it and replay it as you're able to recur Cyclops' upgrades rather often.

2. The full Full Blast combo

• Well, I already explained it below the "Concept" section, go read it again!

3. Surviving

• You have only 10hp and you want to keep your expensive allies in play. how can you survive then?
• Honorary X-Men give syou 1hp and eases your life when it comes to The X-Jet and Utopia.
• Use your basic 2 DEF often. Utopia will ready you to use your Full Blast.
• Defend with cheap allies: Forge, Pixie, Triage, Professor X. Don't forget to play Utopia as it will give you a 4th ally slot for those expandable allies, you don't want to lose Dazzler, Hope or Phoenix!
• Triage heals you, and can be replayed with Mutant Mayhem in a pinch.
• X-Mansion often heals your allies, but can heal yo if you know you're about to Mutant Mayhem your allies anyway!
• Confuse the villain with (Dazzler+Mutant Mayhem, or Professor X. It will allow you to basic heal very often and trigger a lot of alter-ego things (see below). You should almost always should Dazzler for 1 of your 2 picks with Mutant Mayhem!
• You want to change form every turn if possible.

4. Managing recursion

• You should always be aware of how many copies of Mayhem you have left in your deck, you want to draw it as much as possible once you have 2+ big allies.
• Also be mindful to regularly add from 0 to 2 Cyclops cards in your deck with Mutant Education. Yes I think you can choose 0 as long as you could have a target and still draw with X-Mansion.
  • Full Blast is not always the right call, it depends on if you prefer recurring Phoenix or Hope.
  • Your Temporary upgrades are nice so you can draw them immediately with your alter-ego ability. This is obviously much better if you can still go in hero form after that.
  • Phoenix or Ruby Quartz Visor if you didn't play them yet.

Other cards to consider:

• To go to 40 cards, you can remove 1 Honorary X-Men and 1 Mutant Education. Honorary is very good to have but doesn't break the combos. Mutant Education isn't needed "as much" now that Coordinated Effort is in the deck... but it helped me so many times to get the perfect upgrade or even Full Blast that I'm reluctant to cut it myself :p
• Find a friend and make them play Energy Shield on the villain. Less relevant now that Coordinated Effort is a thing.
• You could add 1 more Children of the Atom, but this is your main mulligan target already and you draw reasonably well. In 2+ players, it's better to have 2 as at least you can get rid of the second copy.
• I tried Med Lab, Won't Stay Down, Command Team, Weapon X and Deft Focus. All okay cards but I had to cut them, Mutant Mayhem is just better here.

Anyway, enjoy, have fun,
and don't forget to drop a like/fav, it's always appreciated :)