As I'm quite new to the game and don't have a lot of the cards the "Beyond the Precon"- Decks from Yslo were a fundamental step to learning the game. As Yslo has not published a deck since SP//dr I tasked myself with creating a deck for Magik, only consisting of the Core Set and the Age of Apocalypse Expansion.

Belasco Beat Down

Keeping with her Aspect I tried to stay as close to the Precon as possible so you can get a feel for the new cards, coming from the Core Set. I reduced the count of a few cards like Clobber and Full-Body Charge to include some staples like Nick Fury.

Welcome to the Breakdown

Magik is an incredibly strong hero. Being able to know the top card of your deck alone, enables you to play quite different with cards like [Hulk. But Magik can also interact with the top card in different ways making her quite flexible. The strongest cards in this deck are the following, starting with her identity cards:

• Limbo is the card in your deck. I think it goes without saying why. It enables most of your flexibility. If you need to activate a bonus by having a specific resource on top of your deck or to reduce the cost of a specific card you can use Limbo to switch that card with the top of your deck. Also you can switch the top card of your deck if you don't want to play play it from your hand, like Scrying or Spiritual Meditation.

• Stepping Disc is another great card. It allows you to do similar things like with Limbo but from your discard pile. Need a specific ressourcec or want to play a card again? Put it back on top of your deck. It also allows you to get your upgrades (Crown, Armor and Sword) back, in case you used them as a ressource or had to discard them to effects like Nowhere is Safe.

• Colossus is just amazing if it comes to defense. He can block Apocalypse with two Staggering Strength equipped or any villain for that matter and you still have an Ally standing to thwart or attack on your turn. I really like to play him from the Deck at a reduced cost with the help of Limbo. This cycles the top card of your deck, basically drawing you a new card for your turn. The next best thing to Colossus would be Magic Barrier.

  Age of Aggression

• Hulk is your primary damage. Due to Magiks ability to know what your top card is you can guarantee a -resource to 5 damage instead of 3. Further you can split the damage up to finish of one or two minions.

• Goldballs does the same job as Legion. He allows you to mill your deck. Don't like the top card of your deck? remove it. But he functions as a secondary damage source as well as you can deal up to 4 damage to an enemy.

  Basic Jabs

• Legion is great. you can think of him as a smaller version of Hulk, with the upside that he is way more lenient on the type of resource you discard. He is also more flexible as instead of boosting his attack you can boost his thwart or heal him to keep him around longer. Due to this flexibility he is amazing to discard cards from the top of your deck to find the ones you're looking for.

• Nick Fury is a great addition to Magik. In itself Fury is great as he nearly pays his big cost by himself. He costs 4 cards but draws 3 back. But with Magik you can play him from the top of your deck reducing his cost to 3. Even drawing you an extra card if you had a double resource. And now you have a free 2 Atk, 2 Thw Ally who can block the next incoming attack.

• Spiritual Meditation can cycle through your deck pretty quick helping you find key pieces like Limbo, Hulk, Magik's Crown, Mystical Armor or Soulsword.

• Basic Spell is just a flexible card, which you can target with you Alter-Ego Ability.

• Bloodgem can generate you a -resource in a pinch, as the damage can add up rather quickly, which you can heal of a little with Triage.

War of Change

A few changes I would recommend depending on the cards available would be: First of all I would try to push the deck size to about 44 cards. Something I noticed is that you go really quickly through your deck with the amount of card draw in it. For reference in 4 player games I cycled two times through my complete deck the moment the others went through it once.

The second and rather obvious change would be to include The Sorcerer Supreme. It pushes your hand size even further and every Magik deck on here includes it for a reason.

Further I would probably replace Mockingbird and maybe add Wolverine, Boom Boom or Professor X increasing the amount of your X-Men Allies (Not counting Boom Boom) and allowing you to play Utopia for the Response. Bloodgem could be replaced with The X-Jet or X-Gene or you could play them together.

And lastly you could build around Magic Attack which would prompt you to use your Alter-Ego ability more often allowing enabling you to play Moira MacTaggert for card draw.