Kids These Days Always on Their Phones

At a Glance

Player Counts: 2-4

Play style: Control and Support.

Strengths: Consistent access to burst thwart tools, with lots of great support for the team in terms of ramp, flexibility, and efficiency fixing.

Weaknesses: A few different tools to turn on, and turns can be lackluster under lots of hero control.

Family Plan

Hello everyone! With a new wave coming up on us, I still had a few somewhat recent cards I wanted to ramble about. Today, it's Cell Phone.

The game has matured a lot the last few waves and that's manifested in how different the game can feel at different player counts. It's not just that playing multi means you're less likely to lose to Advance now, there are so many strategies that open up going from 1 to 2 player, and change even more at higher counts.

Cellphone is one of the results of these mature designs. Still useful in stat boosting solo, Cellphone breaks new design space in multi my letting you do called actions not just with events, but with basic powers!

Out of the games many heroes, I think Cable is among the best at reaping it's benefits. I'm amazed (at the time of this writing) that only one Cable deck has featured the card, and as a one-of at that!

He does this in a few ways. If he's later in turn order, but everyone wants to reap the benefits of the PSS they softened up last turn, he can still finish it off when things start to secure the ready from the response. If he is going earlier in turn order he can play a PSS, call someone else in to help soften it up, and then go in to finish it himself and still trigger the response. It even lets him use his extra ready better later to help his teammates, ranging from working around sticky encounter abilities or offering his THW to a later played PSS.

Text 3ER43STATS to Save Now!

Now something that makes people less than excited about Cell Phone, is it's perceived lack of output. With a total cost of 3ER for 3 stats of ATK or THW compares to the likes of Haymaker or a For Justice! with no kicker. Both of which have plenty of parallels in the game that have outpaced them. These numbers though aren't where all of Cell Phone's value resides in though. Or even most of its value in my opinion.

Cell Phone is spectacular at efficiency fixing, which is the idea that doing things in a less wasteful way will let you translate tools you otherwise would have wasted into advantage. A very simple example would be having a minion in front of you that you HAVE to remove. Your 2-ATK activation is not enough to clear this minions last 3-HP, so you end up spending 3 resources to play a big attack event and absolutely overkill this minion, but leave you with not much else in the turn besides your basic activation to poke the villain with. A Cell Phone lets you "fix" your basic activation, letting you clear the problematic minion, and now letting you spend the cards that would have went into overkilling the minion into developing your game plan further. The 3ER you spent on cellphone let you save the 4ER of resources you would have spent on the attack, making it sound like one of the most convoluted resource generators ever made.

This is a simple example, and cellphones utility goes beyond that. Being able to save it for later for the perfect opportunity or combining off is also valuable. And always having the +1 to the stat you need is helpful. A 8 damage attack won't remove the last threat from the Hazard Side Scheme you're staring at. You'll discover other unique situations all the time if you bring it to your table, having the friendly character with piercing break a tough is a good example of something that isn't that rare.

This definitely isn't a huge flashy combo play. Kinda like how people don't find saving money to be a very exciting part of your financial strategy. But anyone who appreciates low to the ground mid range strategies or just likes dependable utility cards will appreciate the gameplay that comes from this.

Contact List

Here's the card-by-card. I'll preface by saying that since this deck is so encouraged to play well with your team, definitely coordinate with them to see if there is anything they'd like for you to bring. The PSSs and allies are all pretty flexible, but are safe picks for this decks default game plan.

The three basic PSS are all just appreciated table wide. Specialized can be a bit to wear down, but it leans into our game plan here when we boost our THW. Combat and Surveillance Specialists even have cute interactions with Cell Phone by just letting someone who's later in turn order see there draw sooner and coordinate with the team if it's something that makes a difference, which is nice if you have charges to use anyways.

Call for Backup is also pretty ubiquitous. It can actually be a fairly nice utility tool since we have a variety of enters play effects and setup options with our ally line up. If it's cleared mid phase, Cell Phone even lets you use a players ally that's already taken their turn.

Astonishing is just great for having a flat threat value, which always feels light to deal with in multi games after preparing for heavier threat scaling schemes.

With the upgrades, there's the titular Cellphone, Heroic Intuition to further scale THW, Overwatch to double dip our Thwarting we're doing (hey Cellphone thwarts are doubled!) and 2x Skilled Investigator. No one at your table will fault you going over 40 cards to bring the third. They actually might be mad if you don't.

EGS because. TBE is also more economy, letting you discount some good Cable events once Purge is defeated. These can honestly be replaced with more generic resource generators like the multi-loving Hellicarrier, especially if you want to switch up the allies. However, we run them here because they can let us do something cute with our allies.

Speaking of, we're maxing out on matching traits for TBE. This let's us do the fan favorite play of off-turn dropping in allies, which is really fun with enters play abilities from Marrow, Prof-X(make sure you've purged), and some early phase Blindfold planning (see Prof-X). Deadpool and Pete have good stats, and Wolfsbane has a good THW response. With all of these, after TBE plays them off turn, you can then use Cell Phone to then rush their activation off turn! Your teammates won't mind you jumping in between their plays if you're providing help. There's definitely room for improvement here, but this can be a very fun suite of cards if you want to lean into the decks mechanical theme.

Hang Up

Thank you for reading this far! Like I've said before, this can be a very fun deck to play around with if you want to really look at some multiplayer specific mechanics. But if you haven't been excited enough to sleeve your copy of Cell Phone yet, maybe this will motivate you to give it another look. Happy Gaming!