Rogue's Gallery

Sounds like a bunch of Guardian outlaws to me!

Sick of Star-Lord turning his allies into Guardians? Then it's time to pull an Uno Reverse card and instead have your allies turn your hero into a Guardian!

And then we give Gamora an Energy Spear and heal her forever.

Through the power of Touched, Rogue can tap into the crazy potential of Gamora and Rocket Raccoon with Energy Spears. And, through the power of Superpower Adaptation, you have the potential to use First Aid SIX times per deck pass to keep them alive forever!

Now, putting Touched on an ally means that Bulletproof Belle won't work and that many of your events miss out on their most powerful effect. So what does that actually mean? It means that we have to be getting HUGE value from our allies when we put Touched on them to outweigh these lost opportunities. And so we have:

Gamora + Energy Spear + Sidearm + Boot Camp = 6 ATK + 1 card draw per use.

Rocket Raccoon + Energy Spear + Sidearm + Boot Camp = 8 ATK with overkill (on minions) per use.

Now, First Aid is just 2 hp from one perspective - but from most allies' perspective? 2 more hp means you can get two more uses from them!

First Aid giving either ally two more uses? = 16 damage OR 12 damage and 2 card draw!

12 damage + 2 card draw? 16 damage? For a 1-cost card?! Now that's HUGE value. And so in using Touched to set this up, both to play our allies and heal them? We're effectively exceeding the value of Rogue's own cards. Even before you've fully upgraded an ally, they are still very efficient. And most of all? It's fun!

Note: Honorary X-Men and X-Mansion are great at healing too, but it's just two hoops too many to jump through on top of playing Rocket Raccoon and Gamora in the first place.

Note: If you're wondering why I've not included the other Guardian toys, I've addressed them each in a later section!

The Early Game:

Rocket: "Welcome to the Guardians of the frickin' Galaxy!" Only he didn't use "frickin'."

Your mulligan priorities are: any of your resource generators and your unrestricted Guardian allies. X-Gene, The X-Jet, Helicarrier, and Deft Focus. Bug, Cosmo, Marvel Boy, and Throg.

Rogue sometimes struggles to manage the high cost of her events and play anything else on the side - resource generators really open this up and it's essential to try and get 1-2 out early. With just one resource generator out, you can play Southern Cross and First Aid.

And Bug and Cosmo are the best Guardians to open the way to playing either or both of Rocket Raccoon and Gamora, but any 2-cost Guardian is great!

You can also play Rocket Raccoon or Gamora on Turn #1, but it requires drawing one of them, a double resource, and either Bug, Cosmo, or Marvel Boy. Which is highly unlikely - but potentially worth it if the stars align.

Once you have a resource generator and Guardian ally in play, the aim of the game is to maintain as much control as you can until either Rocket Raccoon or Gamora arrives. They are high-priority, and once you play them? The game opens up massively and starts to swing in your favour.

There are four Guardian allies in the deck that do not require the Guardian trait to play them - it's important to get one in play and keep it in play until you find either of your two key allies. Simply use Touched on any of them to play Rocket Raccoon or Gamora!

Bug is the third-most important ally overall. While Gambit is also good and definitely the fourth-most important ally, we are building to use Superpower Adaptation on one of our basic allies which lowers his value of letting us grab our own hero events.

The Mid Game

Gamora: “We’re just like Kevin Bacon!”

The general gameplan is to aim to achieve a board state where you have 3-4 resource generators out (potentially including Gamora) and two of Rocket Raccoon, Gamora and Bug out with at least an Energy Spear each. With that said, it's very possible to win with only one upgraded ally and 1-2 resource generators.

Your upgraded allies should take care of most of the damage you need, but Rogue herself can make a big impact between her basic ATK and her various events.

Note that, while Rocket is great for damage, if there's no minion out or if there's a particularly problematic side scheme? There's no harm in him thwarting for 2! You can also use Gambit for the same effect. But usually War Room, 3x Goin' Rogue, Rogue's Jacket and Professor X do all the heavy lifting when it comes threat removal in solo play.

If you draw First Aid? Then Touched can often just go on the villain, letting you unleash stuns, confuse, and later use Bulletproof Belle. Likewise, Energy Transfer is an incredible card you can use after first putting Touched on a non-villain character, benefiting from that placement, and then use it to move it to the villain.

What this means is that, just because you are often using Touched on ally, it doesn't mean you have to miss out on all the status effects that her events can dish out!

If you end up with too many First Aids for your ally-healing needs and no better way to spend it? Play it anyway. Heal yourself or another player/their ally. It's not that efficient when used to heal a hero, but it's also pretty handy! Healing while in hero form can add a lot of flexibility and there are few cards in the game that do so unconditionally like this.

And last but not least, Plan B is excellent for Rogue. Not only is it convenient disposal for any excess cards you might have in hand after playing her big events, but you can feed it the treachery card from her nemesis set (Misled) that enters your hand!

The End Game:

Rocket: "That's for if things get really hardcore. Or if you wanna blow up moons."

Gamora: "No one's blowing up moons."

Rocket: "...You just wanna suck the joy out of everything."

When it comes to ending the game, this deck doesn't have one incredibly high-damage combo in its pocket to obliterate the enemy. Instead, it overwhelms with incredible tempo.

Once you have reached the point of 3-4 resource generators and 1-2 upgraded allies? The game should largely take care of itself. You can deal devastating damage, remove buckets of threat, and Rogue is naturally very tanky with high survivability. Control the board and feed the excess resources and ally-uses into the villain's face as damage.

Then you win.

However, with just three resource generators in play or two with a double resource in hand, you can play 2x Southern Cross on one turn. You can even keep one in hand when your turn ends to try and fish for another if the board is well-controlled but you know the villain's final form is deadly.

If you put Touched on an ally, you can deal 16 damage with 2x Southern Cross! And ideally you'll have an ally or two with 4+ ATK along with Rogue herself! In solo play, using your allies and Rogue alongside 2x Southern Cross will end most villain's final stages in one go - even on Expert.

If Gambit is out, it's those times near the end of the game that Superpower Adaptation really shines on him here to get you those Southern Crosses.

The Other Guardian Cards?

Rogue gives up a lot by focusing on trait-specific cards - so if they're not reliably giving you as lot of value? They are generally not worth keeping. Read on if you want to see the reasoning on why I didn't include each, else skip this section!

I originally included all of the Guardian cards, and multiple games were going by where I would barely play them or I would play them and wouldn't get value from them. Simply put, they were very inconsistent or completely unnecessary.

• Knowhere seems like an auto-include in a deck focused on Guardian allies, right? But when the deck is about keeping said allies alive, you're not playing that many of them. A Knowhere on Turn #1 is great, but once any two of Bug, Rocket Raccoon or Gamora are in play? A mid-to-late game Knowhere isn't getting you much value at all.

• CITT seems great in combination with Rogue's Jacket, but trying to play it and other stat boosts alongside the rest of the Aggression Guardians' kit is just too much setup for not enough gain. If you were focused heavily on your ATK stat, then maybe, but otherwise it's my opinion that Plan B generally outclasses it.

• Booster Boots is a good card in a deck where you don't want to block with allies - but on a hero with with so many stuns, confuses, and tough cards (that are used despite it often touching an ally), it will only occasionally be useful. Worse is that it comes with the risk of discarding Gamora or Rocket Raccoon! And that can really shut down your plans.

• Honorary Guardian was great when I had more of the above cards in play. After trying and removing each of them? Honorary Guardian only serves to make it slightly easier to play Rocket Raccoon or Gamora. But since Touched already makes that easy, it was just not worth keeping.

• Angela can be good, but she is something of a "win more" card in my opinion. She's great if you're already ahead and set up, but bad if you're behind and struggling. If you already have two minions out, a nasty side scheme, and you're low hp? You are not playing Angela and creating another problem for yourself. If you are already setup with no trouble in sight and Rocket Raccoon is bored? You are probably winning anyway. There are exceptions, and she gets better in scenarios with weak minions and should likely be included there anyway, but against tougher scenarios she just wasn't ever hitting the table.

• Groot and Drax are both good allies in very different ways, but Rogue doesn't need the defense and Energy Spear already turns allies like Bug and Gamora into villain slayers.

Alternative Cards:

In addition to experimenting with some of the additional Guardian cards featured in the previous section, there are some other cards with great potential with Rogue and may better suit your playstyle or make great substitutions for cards you don't own:

• Angel - He's 2-cost for Rogue, can deal 4 damage and then block. That's great value. More importantly? He is a basic ally and has Aerial. This means we can put Touched on him, use Superpower Adaptation to draw First Aid, then move Touched with Energy Transfer and retain his Aerial trait to power up our other events.

• Vivian - Much like Angel, she is another Aerial hero who can help us fetch First Aid while also having an incredibly useful response!

• Assess the Situation - Much like the Storm hero, Rogue likes cheap cards to play around her expensive events. And nothing gets cheaper than a 0-cost card. Play this to bank an awkward resource and regain it on the next turn as another card. Digging through our deck faster with it also helps us find our best cards sooner.

• Beauty and the Thief - If Gambit is in play? This card is one of the best. The issue is that Gambit is not always reliably out and, if playing solo, there is not always 4 threat to remove. Sometimes, unless the villain has schemed, there is only 1. And this, combined with a hero who has tons of threat removal, can often just make it unnecessary. With that said? Definitely include this if in multiplayer with Gambit.

• Skilled Strike - So you've got out Bug or Throg but your other allies are hiding. What do you do with Superpower Adaptation? Ideally, you pitch it to play a different card. But, if you can't, then you need an Aggression event to find with it. I originally ran this deck with 2x Skilled Strike and, while I didn't use it much, it's certainly a nice cheap option to have if you want one.

Good luck and have fun!