Gambit: Passive Aggression

Deck concept

Gambit is an obvious choice for an alter-ego focussed deck because of his Thief Extraordinaire ability. Rather than the regular Justice approach, though, I thought it would be interesting to try Aggression, now that Psylocke is available.

Card choices

Tac Team is a card I used to play a lot when I only had the core set, but it doesn't get that much love now. With Sky-Destroyer in play, though, it puts out decent damage, bypasses Retaliate, and you can squeeze a little extra damage out of each one with Dum Dum Dugan. So I decided to make this a crossover X-Men/S.H.I.E.L.D. deck.

Playing the deck

The deck is designed to be played mainly in Alter Ego, but you won't wan to be exclusively in Alter Ego as you need some charge counters (ideally 4 or more) to discount the cost of Rogue. Ready to Rumble allows you to use Thief Extraordinaire even on turns that you go over to Hero side. I can't stress enough how important this ability is. The threat removed isn't always great but the ability to choose which card you put back on top of the encounter deck is huge, especially when the villain is confused. You can avoid Advance or cards like Hela's Cloak that would completely wreck your strategy, and remain in complete control of the game. That's also why Crew Quarters is a key piece here, letting you recover any damage you take in Hero form without exhausting, which would make you miss another Thief Extraordinaire opportunity. If you have plenty of HP left, you can couple Crew Quarters with Weapon X for an extra resource.

As you are using Thief Extraordinaire every turn, The Thieves Guild is an incredible card too, even if you don't get the card draw it is still one threat off a scheme every turn. Fantastic value.

How to lose with this deck

As a confuse lock deck, this is obviously weaker against Steady and Stalwart villains. It also takes a little while for the deck to thin out and give you reasonable certainty of a confuse every turn. Try to hold Psylocke on the bench for as long as possible and always use another source of confuse in preference to her.

You can also struggle if several minions come out of the deck at the same time. That's another reason why it is important to go into Hero at least once and build up a few charge counters so a fully charged Royal Flush is an option in cases like those.

Conclusion

This is definitely a deck for control freaks. With Confuse and Thief Extraordinaire you can have a grip of every part of the game and just whittle the villain to nothing.