On a Wing and a Prayer

Having not been that fussed about Cable or Donino, I’ve been proper excited to get my hands on Angel. I play a lot of Spectrum and I’m a big fan of Aerial so it’s nice to see this trait get more love.

I’m think he’s pretty strong in every aspect, and I can imagine he’ll see a lot of the old tried and tested Dive Bomb and Honed Technique combo. That said, I’ve been playing a lot of Protection lately, and it’s pretty much my favourite aspect now so it made sense to me to stick to the aspect from his pre-con. It’s a pretty good deck but definitely needed a few tweaks.

Angel’s hero suite of cards are really strong and versatile, and most of the time he’ll lend himself to an Aerial focused deck. Avian Anatomy is possibly my favourite card of the 15 as you can use any of his own Aerial attack or thwart cards depending on what the table needs and return the card to hand to do the same ability. Natural Flight is great with this as you can ignore some pretty tiresome side scheme with the crisis icon, thwart the main scheme and return it back to your hand.

Adaptive Plummage is a great card, especially in concert with Avian Anatomy; you can use as Angel to thwart and confuse an enemy, then flip to Archangel and attack and stun the same enemy (including the bonus from Archangel’s once per phase damage ability), or thwart twice or attack twice. Techno-Organic Wings can make this event even cheaper for Archangel (or ready Angel to let him Thwart again).

To compliment these cards, we’ll be adding in a few more Aerial cards. As ever, the first cards I’ll pick are allies and it made sense to pick mostly Aerial ones. Starhawk, Vivian and Cannonball are fairly costed allies that will mostly be used to either chump for my fellow players or exhaust to prevent damage using Aerial Intervention. Much like the versatility of Angel’s hero cards, Snowguard can be whatever is needed on the table, be it more attacking or thwarting power. Warpath is a great ally who can allow Angel/Archangel to play an event in the Villain phase and make use of their respective once per phase abilities.

Ever Vigilant is a great card that can allow Angel to basic thwart, then remove threat from a scheme and ready up to thwart again (especially if the other players on the board are dropping player side schemes).

Angel, much like Ant-man and Wasp, has two her forms and will be spending a lot of time flipping between all three forms, depending on what he needs. Perseverance will give us a tough status card. Between this and Aerial Agility in Archangel form, you can defend more than once per villain phase without much harm.

As we’ll be flipping to Warren Worthington III form, some Supports are very much needed. Moira MacTaggert will give us some extra card draw (and can also be used by other Mutants on the table) and Weapon X can discard cards to get us some of Angel’s excellent cards. X-Gene can sometimes be a difficult card to play, but with how often we’ll likely flip, it shouldn’t be a problem to play. At this point, we can also trigger Worthington Industries to get back a needed Hero-specific card back into our deck (more often this will be Metamorphosis; this can be done in any form, but as we’ll be flipping form often enough, we can save this to use in AE form to trigger the card draw).

The final cards include: Soaring Acrobatics, which can boost Angel’s basic powers once per turn. The Night Nurse as a I play a lot of multiplayer and she’s always handy to assist the board (though this is definitely a flex a lot). Lastly, Team-Building Exercise and The Power of Flight. These round out the deck with some much needed resources which benefit the sheer number of Aerial cards in the deck.

I guess my one criticism of Angel is that he pretty much leans to only playing as an Aerial focused deck most of the time (much like Black Widow and her Preperation theme). That said, I can see a lot more cards around it coming out in future so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of options. As said above, Angel works well in all aspects. This particular deck is great in 2-3 players, as well as solo (I havnt tried him in 4 player yet, but I imagine only minor tweaks may be needed).

Feel free to let me know any changes you would make etc! Cheers :)