Rogue Stronger Protectors

Who cares about Ronin decks!

Everyone and their grandmother is making decks with no allies, but Rogue can lose a lot of synergy in an ally-less build. The goal for this deck is to pump your defense with upgrades, use Mutant Protectors to cheat into play expensive X-Men allies, keep them alive with Stronger Together, and then ready them with Hangar Bay so they're free to use basic powers on the next turn.

Early game

Prioritize upgrades and supports. This thins your deck (more on this later). Priority are Resource generators, followed by your DEF upgrades (besides Innate Reflexes, which you should play turn 1). Hangar Bay isn't really that big of a priority, but it is nice once you get rolling. Nightcrawler to prevent damage in the meantime if you have him. Deft Focus and either X-Gene or The X-Jet let you play Energy Transfer or Goin' Rogue with no other cards in hand, which can be relevant as the combo is usually 4 cards and they may be the only card left in your hand.

Why no Specialized Training

In solo, Specialized Training requires you to thwart 5 threat for Defense Specialist, a notable +1 DEF upgrade, which can draw cards when you use basic defense powers. However, I seldom found myself defending in the traditional sense, and frequently the 5 thwarting even in solo is a little distracting compared to slapping down other upgrades and supports.

Symbiote Suit and Math

The combo relies on 3 cards + a resource (either from upgrades/supports or from hand). Symbiote suit is a huge boon for multiple reasons.

1. It increases DEF, thus the effectiveness of Stronger Together
2. It increases hand size, to give you more options for when the combo does fire
3. It also increases your chances of drawing the combo by about 67-72%

Figure 1. The percentage chance you will draw all three combo pieces on a newly shuffled deck

On a newly shuffled, fresh deck, the probability of drawing all three together increases significantly once you've played all upgrades and supports and thinned your deck. Symbiote suit also significantly increases your chances of drawing all three pieces, with about 1 in 5 hands from a newly shuffled deck will have all three pieces. On the likely chance that you don't draw all three pieces, the math usually improves (even if only slightly) for your second hand, but this is so variable that trying to visualize all possibilities becomes cumbersome.

If all three copies of either Mutant Protectors or Stronger Together get discarded, you can always put Touched on one of your protection allies and use Superpower Adaptation to get it back and try again on the next hand.

Thankfully, even if you're missing Stronger Together, Mutant Protectors can be played for its usual goodness with Colossus or Polaris. Mutant protectors doesn't provide resource savings on Armor, but is an okay tempo play and improves considerably with Hangar Bay. And if you didn't pull Mutant Protectors but have Hangar Bay in play, then Stronger Together on it's own can keep your ally around and kicking (great with Rockslide for some free chip damage).

Multiplayer considerations

Rogue is actually arguably the among the worst X-Men hero to try this combo due to the sheer number of events in her deck (spoilers: the best is Magik if you use The Sorcerer Supreme and Symbiote Suit since you get a 7 card hand also can look at the top card for either event). However, a cute interaction in multiplayer is to use Touched on another player's identity and contribute your DEF towards them regardless of their team affiliations with Stronger Together, which is a unique interaction with Rogue. If you want to lean into defending for more players, Specialized Training becomes a more attractive card, since you are more likely to basic defend for yourself or others, but the likelihood of someone else at the table providing it also increases.