Portal the Damage Away

Magik is my favorite hero in the game to play and I have had this deck on my mind for quite a while but just hadn't gotten around to playing it. The premise of the deck is to utilize Shield Spell regularly to avoid damage which Magik is uniquely able to do since her AE response allows her to put a spell card from her discard pile onto the top of her deck. The main reason I hadn't played the deck was trying to figure out what else would have synergy with this deck.

I kept mulling it over and settled on doing a "perfect" defense style deck, which evolved into dealing damage during the villain phase as well. Once again, Magik has Magic Barrier which can deal damage if you have a or on the top of your deck as well as her Mystical Armor which gives retaliate as well as +1 defense if she has or on top deck. Not only that but Digging Deep has synergy with Magik's events and upgrades to hit kickers as well as being drawn when discarded by shield spell.

Where the perfect defense comes in is that Shield Spell will still trigger both Unflappable and Hard to Ignore since it constitutes defending. Even without Shield Spell we can achieve perfect defense with a combination of Northstar, Riposte or Magic Barrier. The beauty of Magik is that she can play a defense event from top deck during the villain phase meaning that unlike other perfect defense decks that start hero turns with sometimes 3 cards, we are almost always going to have a minimum of 5 cards and a lot of the time more.

Once set up this is how Magik can look:

Unflappable- draws 1 card when we take no damage from an attack

Hard to Ignore- remove 1 threat from the main scheme when we take no damage

Flow Like Water- deal 1 damage when we play a defense event

Dauntless- gives retaliate when our hit points are at max of over

Mystical Armor- gives retaliate

The Sorcerer Supreme- gives +1 hand size in hero form

Limbo- allows us to swap a card from hand to top deck once per phase

Limbo is the most important part of setup as always for Magik and this lets us ensure that we hit the kicker for Mystical Armor giving 3 defense as well as the kicker for Magic Barrier or we can use it to put a defense event on top deck to play and not sacrifice hand size.

A villain phase can look like this:

Northstar out to negate boost icons, or on top deck to give us 3 defense. Defend the villain attack dealing 2 in retaliate from Armor and Dauntless. Draw a card from Unflappable and remove a threat from Hard to Ignore. Now we are starting hero phase with 7 cards, while also removing threat and dealing damage during the villain phase.

OR:

Have Digging Deep top deck and play shield spell from hand still triggering Flow, Dauntless, the Armor, unflappable and Hard to Ignore. Discard the appropriate number of cards from your deck to avoid the damage and you will also draw any digging deeps to your hand. Pulling 1 would still give you a 7 hand size for your hero turn as well as draw from Unflappable. This would also deal 3 damage and remove a threat.

OR:

Play Riposte while at 3 def pushing you to 5, use Northstar if needed to cancel boost icons. This will trigger all the upgrades as well which would result in 1 card draw, 6 damage and 1 threat removed. The same can be done for Magic Barrier.

Numerous different ways to achieve perfect defense and all relatively easy to continue doing. Indomitable is also included to give us a ready when we basic defend. Endurance allows us to more easily keep dauntless online.

The allies in the deck all lend to the strategy as well since we are in the mood to discard cards, play events and flip regularly to recur Shield Spell.

Jocasta can grab a defense event from discard, main choice would be shield spell.

Brother Voodoo lets us grab an event from the top 5 cards of the deck when played. Great to use after flipping from AE to grab the spell we put on top.

Need to remove threat? Grab Exorcism.

Kill a beefy minion? Grab Soul Strike.

Set up perfect defense? Grab Shield Spell.

Cosmo also discards a card from the top and if you call it right which is the easiest thing to do since Magik can see that card, he takes no consequential. Digging deep is the preferred card for this as we would then draw it.

Legion also gives benefits when he discards a card. can deal 2 damage to any enemy, removes 2 threat from any scheme and heals Legion for 2.

Professor X needs no introduction but he can give us a confuse to safely flip or take a hit if we do not have our defense set up.

A hero turn can look like this with Cosmo out:

Have digging deep top deck, play Exorcism to remove threat and get the confuse. Use Cosmo to attack/thwart call resource to negate the consequential and you get your digging deep. You still have the ability to swap a card to the top with Limbo as well as play a card from the top.

Stepping Disc is used a lot to grab Exorcism when it is needed or if we are somehow without a defense event Magic Barrier.

I have played this deck quite a bit and it performs extremely well. It has beaten a variety of scenarios with relative ease for the most part. I have also had numerous games where I did not take any damage from an actual attack. The only damage was from indirect or retaliate.

Against Expert Venom the only damage was from stage 3 retaliate and at one point Shield Spell negated 9 damage from all his boost cards.

Against Expert ESN took 1 hit early before being set up and then the rest of the game avoided all villain attack damage.

Against Expert Juggernaut was routinely able to avoid his 5 attack on stage 3 with a momentum counter.

Also tested against scenarios with starting side schemes like Project Wideawake and had no issues dealing with the threat as well as avoiding damage.

Shoutout to Tjjj in the discord for suggestions on the deck when testing it!

I would love to hear any feedback on the deck or experiences playing it!