Category 7 Hurricane Ororo

Thanks for checking out my take on the Storm ally and Player Side Scheme (PSS) combo. Jean's PSIONIC powers unlock a ton of powerful cards to unleash Storm's Omega Level mutant abilities, letting her wreak havoc all over the board state.

For a point of reference, I primarily play two-player games and Storm easily handles all of the thwarting for both players.

First things first. At minimum, we need Storm and a PSS to start the shenanigans. Unfortunately, there's no way to fetch a PSS, but we have a few ways to find Storm and power her up:

1. We maximize our chances of pulling Storm by including fetch cards like Cerebro (which tutors our entire deck because of our PSIONIC trait) and Call for Backup as one of our PSS's.

2. Danger Room not only let's us power up Storm with a Danger Room Training (DRT) for free, but if we can get it down early enough it will keep paying dividends as we cycle through our supporting allies.

3. Forge and Build Support help us fetch (in priority order) Cerebro, Danger Room, X-Mansion (to keep Storm healthy), or any of our other supports once we're setup.

   • You can see both our PSS's (Call for Backup and Build Support) are pulling double-duty for us. They not only help us get setup but are integral to the combo.
     
     I've never needed both for setup, but having the flexibility to use either of them as needed and the other for storing threat is HUGE.

OK...we've got our girl out with a DRT Upgrade attached and a PSS to dump extra threat onto. Now what?

1. Get your Category 7 hurricane going (I know Cat 7 isn't a thing, just go with it) with Psychic Kicker, giving Storm a ready AND +2 ATK / +2 THW for 1 ER. Just incredible.
   
   (Do you see where Cat 7 comes from? 'Cause she can move 7 threat in a single activation with her 2 base THW +2 moved to a PSS with her ability +1 for DRT +2 for Psychic Kicker. Clever, right?! Shut up. This is the best I can come up with...)

2. Abuse Game Time and especially Soul Sisters for the readying AND healing to get multiple actions and really clean up the board.

3. Unleash the Phoenix Force. There's really no reason not to do it. It will activate God-mode for your hero-specific events and Storm can usually one-shot Consume the World. Blasting down Dark Phoenix's 12 hit points shouldn't pose too much of an issue when you have a 9-damage Unleashed Telekinetic Attack in hand.

4. Keep Storm healthy with a mix of Soul Sisters, Innovation, Triage, and X-Mansion.

5. All of your allies are X-MEN, so you can tutor for any of them with Cerebro while in Alter-Ego and drop free DRT Upgrades on them with Danger Room. And, of course, each one plays an important role in the deck:

   • Forge helps fetch your setup Supports.
   • Triage keeps Storm in the fight longer.
   • Pixie can recur Storm in a pinch or another useful ally (for example, Triage to for a second round of healing).
   • Cyclops helps you get UNLEASHED faster (and is just damn good with DRT on him).
   • And Angel, well...he doesn't REALLY fit...it was just too hard to pass up a 3-ATK, 4-HP ally for 3ER (if you get that free DRT from Danger Room).

Thanks for humoring me this long. If you've come this far, here are some other ideas you might consider to customize to your play style.

• Other ways to dig for Storm:

  • I considered Caliban, but you have so many combos that help you pivot if you miss on Storm, that brute-forcing the rest of the deck felt wrong.

  • Suit Up definitely has to be considered, but ultimately I decided that having the resources to spend 3 ER to fetch Storm and then 4 to play her was just too unlikely.

• Why not more Upgrades?

  • I did have Inspired in here originally (I really wanted to hit Cat 8 for the deck title). I also think that Advanced Suit, Power Gloves, or Reinforced Suit would all make sense.
    
    Honestly, I just preferred the simplicity of letting Danger Room pull DRT for free on my allies. Everything else felt unnecessary and like it cluttered the deck.

• I'm worried about healing Storm or recurring her if she's defeated:

  • This is something that I think will be different for everyone. I settled in on what I felt like was enough.
    
    For healing, options to consider are the aforementioned Advanced Suit or the tried-and-true First Aid.
    
    For recursion, standbys like Make the Call or Rapid Response make sense. I had Med Lab in the deck for a while, but never ended up needing it.

  • Just keep in mind that if you decide to go with Rapid Response it's a Hero Response while Danger Room is an Alter-Ego Response, meaning you won't be able to re-pull a DRT Upgrade if you choose to Rapid Response Storm.

• You have six allies and didn't include The Triskelion. Why?

  • It was actually the very last cut I made to get down to 40 cards. I went back and forth, but with their 2-HP, Forge, Pixie, and Triage usually didn't stick around long enough to clog up my ally limit.

• Phoenix has tons of events. Why not include X-Gene?

  • It was definitely under consideration, but I felt like The X-Jet fit better with Forge and Building Support, which both target Supports, not Upgrades.

So, like...is that it?

Yeah, pretty much.

I think it bears mentioning that Soul Sisters is stupid-powerful in this deck. 2 ER to heal 4 damage and get another activation for potentially 7 threat from Storm and 3-THW or 3-ATK from Phoenix. In this deck it's one of those cards that's basically an auto-play when you get it.