Colossus Just Wants To Paint But Keeps Getting Punched

This deck is inspired by the Night Guard deck by Herowannabe, but built to use Leadership instead of Justice.

The core idea is to make maximum use of Armor Up in order to keep your hand size up and get a steady stream of Tough cards from Colossus' Steel Skin ability.

Other than your first turn and maybe your second (depending on how you're doing on allies and threat), you should always end your turn in alter-ego. Two cards out of 40 may not seem like much, but Colossus' Aspiring Artist ability in combination with the heavy card draw and deck thinning this deck has will enable you to consistently have an Armor Up in your hand.

Ideally, you start the villain phase in alter-ego. When the villain activates, you play Armor Up to flip, gain a Tough card, and draw a card with Moira MacTaggert. You take the hit from the villain and draw another card from Iron Will, replacing the Tough with Organic Steel if you have one in play, leaving you with a seven card hand.

Key cards to get out early include Uncanny X-Men, Moira MacTaggert, and Honorary X-Men. The X-Men supports are all good, but there's no particular order you need to get them. The X-Bunker won't do anything until you have finished Build Support. Piotr's Studio will help you get to your Armor Up cards faster and more reliably, and will draw you other Colossus cards to use as resources for allies and supports.

Once you have Uncanny X-Men, Team Training and/or X-Mansion in play your allies will be very durable, even more so with Danger Room Training. They will do the vast majority of your thwarting and attacking until the end game, except for the occasional Steel Fist when you get a hand full of Colossus cards or there's a particularly nasty minion you need to deal with. Towards the end of the game you will likely be full up on allies. Cycling Marrow, Triage, and Beak aggressively is fine, as their enter play abilities are very strong. Mirage makes Cerebro work better, and if you can use Danger Room to give her Danger Room Training when she enters play she can stun anyone with SCH 2 or lower.

Your allies shouldn't need to block for you unless you run into swarms of minions or the villain gets a lot of extra activations. Colossus' job here is not to make basic attacks or thwarts but to take the punches so his allies can get the job done.

Always hold Armor Up when you get it in your hand. If you have two Armor Up, hold both. Don't spend them, just hold onto them and use one per turn. With all the card draw you get, you won't be short on resources.

If you need more protection against encounter cards, add Stepford Cuckoos. If the villain gets many extra scheme activations, you can add Professor X. (He's not in the main deck because you don't need him during normal play as the villain never schemes other than through encounter cads and you're tight on space for allies.)