Protect the Children

Nelson All Over Cards just released a fun podcast with BoomGuy of WinningHandPodcast where they discussed the card: Serve and Protect.

If you haven't checked out the podcast, you really should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_AxOFnHlj4

They do a fantastic job talking about the times to play Serve and Protect, and give some really great ideas on decks and ways to get value out of this card. I thought I would share a deck that I have using this card with an idea which I haven't seen posted on the CDB which involves using Nick Fury's ability to get schemed on in Hero form in order to make sure you can trigger Serve and Protect when you want to.

At lower player counts, I think it's harder to get value out of Serve and Protect, just because you may only be preventing the initial threat placement at the beginning of the villain's turn. Preventing 1 or 2 threat only just feels bad. But on Nick Fury, this is really quite helpful, as the villain will fully scheme when you're in Stealth form.

One of the bigger problems though, is that Nick isn't X-Men or X-Force. However, I've found that running Multiple Man is great here, as I'll very find on of the three of them using an aggressive mulligan. Then, once you can get the next copy of Children of the Atom down, you're up and running. Also, if you can keep all three of them around, you have more places to spread around Tough cards between.

I find that my pattern is that when I play Serve and Protect, I end up breaking cover and going to Assault form on my turn so that I can use one of my Tough cards up as my block during the next villain's turn. Then, I can either use Covert Surveillance or Concentrated Fire in order to return to Stealth form for the next round. If not, I'll use Ready for a Fight to drop down into Alter-Ego form and make the switch that way.

Hot Take: I think that Serve and Protect provides so much value, that I'll often keep it in my hand again until I'm ready for it. It essentially blocks 3 activations for 3 ER, which is crazy effective! Sometimes it'll sit in my hand for two turns until I'm ready to head back to Stealth form, but I like to have it in my hand, rather than hoping to draw into it.

In this deck, I include Enhanced Physique just so that I can always play Ready for a Fight if needed (as this deck is low on Physical resources). I also like Build Support because it can pull Children of the Atom early, or the Fury's Flying Car later. And I like Return the Favor because I can use it to try and find a treachery, which can often result in another villain activation - giving me more ability to either use up a Tough on a Multiple Man if it's an attack, or to play Serve and Protect again another time if it's an scheme activation (just make sure you have 2 Multiple Men ready before you do this). And Intelligence Analysis is always there in case of an emergency.

Hope that you find this one to be fun to play. Make sure to check out Nelson and BoomGuy's podcast if you haven't already.

Until next time Champions...