Pedroq · 739
Multiplayer Defend the Table deck. Protect your teammates with allies beefed up by Protective Training. The allies act as mini heroes with their beefed up 6-7 HP. Hangar Bay allows allies to defend multiple attacks and Northstar deflates the villain's attack activation.
Setup
Danger Room is the key card of the deck. Prioritize playing it as soon as possible. Hard mulligan to find Danger Room or Forge turn one.
The X-Jet and Moira MacTaggert are your resource generators along with the classic Priority Target. X-Mansion, and Hangar Bay enhance our strategy so they are nice to have supports but I don't prioritize them over Danger Room and the resource generators. Build Support always a great player side scheme to include, it picks up the slack on finding any of the supports we missed/havent played.
Danger Room Protection
Primarily, the deck aims to defend with allies. Danger Room tutors Protective Training to beef up your allies with +3HP. Forge and Nightcrawler are the "scrawny" ones among the bunch but everyone else is 6+ HP. Allies are likely to survive an attack so Hangar Bay can ready them. That ally may be used as a chump block or activate in the player phase before they can be used as a chump block in the following villain phase.
In Multiplayer, if players need defense, then play your allies, defend for other, survive. One ally can defend 2-4 times across several rounds. If the table doesn't need the defense, then the allies can activate for steady stream of stats. One ally can last an entire deck cycle allowing for consistent supply of 2 THW/ATK per ally. Game Time and X-Mansion provide more tempo from the allies.
Combos • Northstar can assure that the villain's attack is not boosted so our allies are likely to survive 2-3 attacks. Practiced Defense reduces villain's attack, which combos well with Northstar to defend without defending. Northstar can effectively "defend" 6+ times by nullifying boost cards. Northstar's interrupt is not limited by exhaust or times per round, only by his HP. • M can trigger her response after you equip Protective Training so you can defeat a minion with less than 7 HP. • Game Time readies an ally after it's defended so they can add tempo to the board then go back to defending. • Nightcrawler can defend with a 5 HP pool. Survive the attack then bounce to hand protect another X-Men hero or other ally that is defending at low HP.
Cyclops Tings
Playing Cyclops outside of "To Me, My X-Men" has felt difficult to do the fun Cyclops things (which is a skill issue, I'm working on it ... slowly). But protection and Protective Training addressed that issue for me.
MrSelfDestruct's Get This [Villain] A Shield deck highlights the great combo of Energy Shield and Optic Blast. Can readily target the villain since the upgrade remains attached. Northstar nullifies boost icons so Cyclops can take undefended damage from the villain. Leaves Cyclops ready to Full Blast. You can afford all your Ricochet Beam and Tactical Brilliance sine you don't have to spend on an ally every turn.
No longer do you feed cheap X-Men allies to the Villain, but instead lead a line up of beefy X-Men allies that push tempo and protect the heroes.
Piloting
In solo, the deck is fun but plays slow. Build up allies that will stick around on the board for a long time. You can build up 3 allies with protective training. The allies can provide consistent thwarting and damage, along with Cyclops' activation. Make the most out of the expensive ally you played, whether thwart/damage push or defensive. You have 9 allies so you're going to come across ally cards frequently. Replace the allies when necessary to get more tempo out of the turn and refresh the ally HP.
In multiplayer, bring an Uncanny X-Men for the leadership player to share with you. Read the table and adapt to the needs of the table. If the table needs defenders then you have it covered with beefy allies that can defend and survive. Have heroes that want to take damage or spin wheels, then Northstar is there to facilitate. Lacking a damage pusher - Goldballs and Wolverine are there. Lacking thwart - then plenty of 2 THW allies that will stick to the table for 5+ turns.
MCDC Exclusy At MCDC 2026, one of the campaign scenarios featured a special design where there were two villains. The Punisher and an Underling villain. Punisher attacked attacked the Underling villain aiming to kill them. The heroes goal was to protect this Underling. Northstar was an MVP. He weakened all of Punisher's attacks, protecting the Underling without costing the heroes an exhaust/defense. The steady line up of beefy allies protected against any encounter card attacks and provided decent tempo against a relatively challenging scenario. Posting the deck as I met some new friends that borrowed the deck and enjoyed the build.