Kittypool's Five Finger Discount

This deck is built around the idea of reducing the cost to play cards for explosive turns, benefiting from powerful 'Pool aspect cards while minimizing the trade-offs, and a couple readys for good measure.

Stop paying full cost for cards

• All of Kitty's identity specific events are Superpowers, so Deft Focus and X-Gene are the core setup pieces to allow you to play these events for little to no cost. The X-Jet gives you yet another generator, and of course, Kitty comes with her own built-in generator when she's in Solid mass form. That's up to four effective resources per turn.

• Deadpool Corps Ship allows you to play 'Pool allies without paying their cost. Since they don't take consequential damage, and Kitty can often defend safely from Phased form, it should be relatively easy to keep allies on the board. Although it's better to defend without exhausting in phased form when possible, between allies and events, your basic powers are not the main attraction (most of the time). Regardless, you don't need to chump block as much as some heroes, so you can get a lot of value out of these allies in exchange for a single encounter card.

• Self Confidence, Self Control, and Self Preservation are nice triple energies when you have full health. Speaking of....

Mutant Healing

• Healing Factor provides 2 HP of recovery each turn (and is also a Superpower, so can benefit from Deft Focus)
• X-Mansion and Kitty's Room can also provide a little additional healing. Since this deck will prefer to spend most of your time in hero form, it helps to make the most out of your time in Alter-Ego.
• Symbiote Suit gives you an extra 10 HP for survivability, and don't forget your REC also counts as a basic power that benefits from the +1.

Stay ready

This deck also has several ways to ready. Even if you do exhaust for a defense or recovery, there is often a way to ready.

• The eponymous Shadowcat Surprise is an identity-specific event, a superpower, and an attack, meaning that you can discount it with Deft Focus, X-Gene, and/or Solid (only two of these are needed since it's a 2 cost card).
• The classic Ready to Rumble is great because it can be triggered either by flipping your identity or your mass form. This is especially nice when you basic defend in Phased form.
• The 'Pool aspect also gave us a a cheap ready option in Stick-To-Itiveness. Unlike cards like Ready to Rumble and Tenacity, this is not discarded giving you a 1-cost ready each round. You can't use Solid as the kicker, but X-Jet will work.
• Professor X also gives a ready option, along with a 3-threat removal and a chump blocker.

Basic powers

With a 2-2-2 stat line, Shadowcat is already a pretty versatile hero. I already mentioned Symbiote Suit which adds 1 to each of those, but if you have Laser Swords, it sort of adds 2 to your attack (by ensuring there is a Hazard icon in play). Once Stick-To-Itiveness is in play, you should aim to defend in every villain phase and use a basic power in every hero phase.

Hand size and Draw

This deck really doesn't have much by way of card draw or tutoring. Mulligan can be a good way to work through your deck, and since Kitty Pride can flip her mass form once a turn at will, you'll usually have your choice of drawing or healing from Kitty's Room. The biggest help in this regard will be the extra card from Symbiote Suit, along with in-play resource generators so you can play most of your hand each round.

Although you always want to end your turn in Hero Phased form, it's especially important if you have Quick Shift in hand. This lets you take no damage without needing to exhaust and lets you draw two cards.

Live Dangerously gives you an extra 2 hand size, at the expense of a bunch of icons. Often, Shadowcat doesn't mind these, however, since she can ignore Crisis, and negate the extra damage from the Amplify icon when defending. It also pumps up her Laser Swords. Once you've got the Symbiote Suit, that extra hazard icon can be brutal, so I prefer it early game to help get my setup cards out quickly, or late game to go for the kill, and I try not to keep it around too long.