Wolverine Rush (2PCG)

So my son and I have been playing the new game for a couple of weeks now, and we do enjoy it. We've tried a variety of deck types at this point. The ones we seem drawn to the most are Star-Lord, Thanos, Magneto, and Storm, but we've also been experimenting with some others. Of these others, I believe my favorite is this Wolverine deck I've been working on. It hasn't been tested exhaustively, but so far it seems pretty good.

One thing you'll notice about it is that it plays at least as many Guardians cards as X-Men. I don't know about anyone else, but I find it very hard to build decent 2PCG decks that don't do that, even aggro decks. Yondu seems to end up in every deck I build, along with Even the Odds, and Give 'em a Lift is really solid in aggro decks.

Main Character 

Wolverine (X-Men) 

Supporting Characters - 25

[1 - 4]
4x Yondu (Guardians)
[2 - 11]
4x Agent Venom (Guardians)
4x Daredevil (Avengers)
3x Namor (X-Men)
[3 - 6]
4x Rocket (Guardians)
2x Gamora (Guardians)
[4 - 4]
4x Storm (X-Men)  

Plot Twists - 16

4x X-Factor (X-Men)
4x Even the Odds (Guardians)
4x Give ‘em a Lift  (Guardians)
4x Open Fire

Locations - 19

4x School for Gifted Youngsters (X-Men)
4x Knowhere (Guardians)
4x Fortress
4x Training Ground
3x Laboratory

The mulligan condition for this deck is a 2 drop and one or two cards that will allow the L1 Wolverine to stun an opposing character, so either Open Fire or Training Ground. The key to winning with this deck is to level up as quickly as possible. He gets an XP every time he stuns any character in a solo attack, but generally you want these to be attacks against their main character. Aggro decks can win very quickly in this game, but they can also run out of gas very quickly as well. You can only afford at most one or two turns where you don't wound the opposing main character. The L2 Wolverine 's ability to heal can sometimes buy you an extra turn or two to finish the job, but that's about it. If you are down to topdecking cards and have two wounds left to inflict, you probably aren't going to get it done.

If you are going first, attack with Wolverine and a pump into their main character. If you are going second, Yondu is a good play on your first turn, but not a necessary one. This deck is OK with underdropping, so he can be equally useful later in the game, to take out an opposing Cosmo or other troublemaker with cost 3 or less.

All the 2 drops are solid, and there are a lot of them, because turn 2 is the one where you don't want to miss or underdrop. You need someone else to attack with besides Wolverine early on, and Yondu can't do the job, usually. Agent Venom is a 3/3 who can grow to 5/5, although when you add the counters you become susceptible to Even the Odds. Daredevil is a 3/3 who becomes a 6/3 when attacking a main character. That means you can attack a supporting character with Wolverine and wound their main character with Daredevil, increasing the chances of avoiding a wound on Wolverine. Namor is a 3/2 with flight who doesn't stun back when attacking the back row. With an Open Fire, he can generally stun an opposing main character.

The best 3 drop is generally the 4/1 Rocket, because he can get back a used plot twist or location for you from the KO'd pile. That is a potentially game winning effect. In the few games I've played with this deck, the difference between winning and losing has often been a single plot twist, which you have or you don't. (I induced a scoop the other night when Rocket got back Even the Odds, for example.) Gamora is a 3/4 who KO's any supporting character she stuns while attacking. Her job is to help keep the path to their main character clear.

Storm is a 4/6 4 drop that I play here both because of her great effect, and because of her flight. When the game goes a little longer than you would like, it really helps to have Give 'em a Lift, to give Wolverine flight, and someone to team attack with. When you are going for that last wound, it's nice to only have to worry about stunning their main character, because this deck doesn't have a lot of big bodies to take out front row blockers.

This deck plays a full complement of special locations for both X-Men and Guardians. School for Gifted Youngsters is for use with Wolverine and Storm. Knowhere is for Rocket, Yondu and Venom. Of the basic locations, Fortress (Green) is needed for Venom but more especially the L2 Wolverine, who uses it to heal wounds. Laboratory (Blue) is used only by Storm, and perhaps should be dropped to two copies. Training Ground (Red) is the key one. It is used by Wolverine to get +3/+0, by Yondu, and by Rocket. Obviously the deck is heavily dependent on red locations, but each character that needs them has eight ways to get one. The takeaway here is simply to save the special locations for use as reds or, later in the game, as greens.

Three of the four plot twists are purely offensive in nature. The fourth, Even the Odds, is multi-purpose. You can use it to shrink pumped up opposing attackers back down to size, or to remove a defender's counters to push through an attack. In my opinion, it's simply too good and too versatile not to play in any deck that plays a significant number of Guardians characters. Underwhelming as it is by the standards of the original game, Open Fire is the best generic attack pump in this one. The L1 Wolverine generally needs one of these or a red location to stun an opposing main character. X-Factor is not a pump, but it does allow your biggest character to attack twice if he doesn't get stunned back during his first attack. Some people would play Squad Tactics here, but so far I think X-Factor is a stronger play.

The MVP of the plot twists is Give 'em a Lift. The only bad thing about this card (and this goes for Even the Odds as well) is that you have to have an upright Guardians character in order to use it, but that will normally be the case when you are attacking and need flight. The +1/+1 counter is nice, but it's the flight that is critical. Against decks that don't play their main character in the front row (as this one does), you need to be able to hit the back row, and often that requires leapfrogging a blocker rather than attacking him. Storm and Namor have flight on their own, but everyone else needs a little Lift.

This isn't the best deck in the game, by any means, but it is a fun one that is well worth giving a try. From what I have seen so far, though, aggro is not nearly as strong as control right now. There just aren't enough strong pumps available that don't rely on having a specific basic location available, so winning with an aggro deck requires average to above draws in order to win consistently. (If you watched the video of the finals of the 10K, you know what happens when an aggro deck gets bad ones.) A control deck can often survive three straight turns of poor draws; an aggro deck generally cannot, at least not against control. Once Star-Lord gets Drax in front of him, for example, it is very hard for an aggro deck to win, since the aggro deck will be running on fumes, and now has to go through Drax to get to Star-Lord. But the game will get awfully boring awfully fast if you are just playing with and against Star-Lord, Thanos and Magneto all the time, so my plan is to keep one aggro deck and one control deck built at all times. This one should see heavy rotation in the aggro slot alongside Storm.