Storm vs Mansion Attack (Heroic Roulette)

Welcome to the fourth deck in my Heroic Roulette series with Mutant Genesis. You can see the first three decks here:

Round 1: Cyclops Protection vs. Sabretooth https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/30931/cyclops-vs-sabretooth-heroic-roulette-1.0

Round 2: Colossus Justice vs. Project Wideawake https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/30937/colossus-vs-project-wideawake-heroic-roulette-1.0

Round 3: Wolverine Aggression vs. Master Mold https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/30957/wolverine-vs-master-mold-heroic-roulette-1.0

Matchup:

Besides Magneto, Mansion Attack is the scenario I struggled the most on. I had started by using Storm against Sabretooth, which was successful, and I tried to win Mansion Attack with Cyclops, who could not get it done in many tries. The game is tremendously long, as heroic requires you to defeat all four villains, and the main schemes have an incredibly low threshold at 7. Unlike the other scenarios in the wave, this one is also unpredictable in that the order of the villains and main schemes is different every game! The Basketball Court and The Courtyard are the schemes you really want to stay on while The Cafeteria and The Atrium make life far more difficult. You also hope to avoid seeing Toad too early as he can really slow you down.

While Cyclops did ok at keeping pace with the villains and the encounter deck, his closing speed is abysmal, and eventually you'll get that Advance turn that costs you the game. Storm, thanks to Thunderstorm and her generally more powerful attacks and upgrades, can finish the game much faster. The choice of leadership is to keep the villain stunned and confused as many turns as possible with Rapid Response and Make the Call.

Gameplan:

The game is pretty straight-forward with one catch. If the Atrium (steady) comes out as the first scheme, you should be fine with letting it advance to the next scheme. This is slightly less true with the the Cafeteria (retaliate), but only because you don't want to risk going into The Atrium next. If you get the Basketball Court (toughness) or Courtyard (+1 ATK) first, hold on for dear life to stay there. We need to stun and confuse the villains a lot, so them getting steady is the worst case scenario.

It's also important to kill minions immediately when they are drawn. Lots of encounter cards - Brotherhood Beatdown, the cycle of Pyromaniac effects, and Under Siege - punish having other minions in play.

Card choices:

Black Knight. One of my favorite choices for this scenario. Every villain is tough, and every minion will be if The Basketball Court is your scheme.

Mockingbird, Professor X, 3x Make the Call, 2x Rapid Response. The stun/confuse suite that should keep the villains pinned down most of the game

Weapon X. A fantastic answer to Mystique's encounter cards like Infiltration. Also dumps Mockingbird and Professor X into the discard for Make the Call if you've just reshuffled.

The end

This is where I'd love to be giving a teaser for my next deck showing how I beat Magneto on heroic with Phoenix, but after about 20 tries of it I gave up. I even played a few games proxying some Next Evolution cards such as the double-psionic resource but still lost. I hope to complete the series one day, but that will not be any time soon.

In the end, I won 4 out of the 5 Mutant Genesis scenarios on heroic difficulty, each with a different aspect. I look forward to taking the challenge again with the release of Next Evolution. Hope to see you then!