Drakow · 70
"What kind of gambler would I be, if I did not put my life on the line?"
Overview
The idea behind this build is to deal massive damage through the use of Counterattack. Engage the enemy on our terms and initiate an enemy attack with Toe to Toe, pray that our below average health is enough to survive, and then strike back with Counterattack and the 5 damage from Toe to Toe. In addition, we have "You'll Pay for That!" to further capitalise on inviting the villain to attack us.
Value Town
All of the above mentioned cards are each 2 ER. Assuming the villain hits us for 5 damage, with those 3 cards played, we swing back at the villain for 10 damage and remove 5 threat from any scheme. Assuming that every 2 HP lost is 1 ER, then for 8.5 ER + 'X' we generate 15 points of value (PV). Which is not amazing but not completely terrible either. 'X' is an arbitrary ER value based on the ER value of the boost card(s) the villain flips while attacking us.
However, the interesting thing about conditional based cards like "You'll Pay for That!" and Moment of Triumph (more on that later), is that once the condition is met, playing multiple copies of the card in the same timing instance window, nets a significant gain.
Going back to our previous example, but let's say we played 2 copies of "You'll Pay for That!", then for 10.5 ER + 'X', we get 20 PV; a difference of 9.5 vs a difference of 6.5 as per our original example. Now pairing multiple copies of a card is not hugely likely, but it is worth baring in mind when it does come up (and assuming there are schemes in play where you can make full use of the threat removal - multiplayer most likely).
Inviting all of this punishment onto ourselves is not sustainable in and of itself. We will die very quickly. We will therefore be needing to recover our health quite a bit so Moment of Triumph will help with that. The best case use of this card is when it is paired with a fully charged Charged Card. If we take the best case scenario and use this 2 card combination on a very unfortunate Ultron drone, then we deal 6 overkill damage and heal ourselves for 6 HP; effectively 12 PV.
But what is an accurate estimated cost of such a play? To answer this, we need to estimate the ER cost of a Charge Counter (CC). The short answer, is as follows;
1 ER ~ 2 CC
I will provide the calculation breakdown below, but if you want to skip ahead then please feel free to do so.
Calculation Estimate
A fully charged Royal Flush generates 9 points of value, however it afterwards, gives 1 CC back. So in terms of absolute value, you spend 4 ER + 'Y' for 9 points of value, where 'Y' is the ER of 2 CC. By comparing the scaling curve of other similar wide spread / multi target cards, a reasonable deduction can be made that the value of those 2 CC is approximately 1 ER. This tracks reasonably when you consider Molecular Acceleration, Natural Agility, and Gambit's own Charge de Card ability. All of these also give 1 CC and if 1 CC directly translated to 1ER, the value of those cards / abilities would likely be too powerful.
Value Town Continued
So going back to our previous example, Moment of Triumph is 1 ER, Charged Card is 3 ER and 3 CC is approximately 1.5 ER, therefore 5.5 ER generates 12 PV in the best case scenario of blasting a massive hole through an Ultron drone. Remember, just like with "You'll Pay for That!", multiple copies of Moment of Triumph can be stacked without paying any additional CC cost (but still need to pay the natural 1 ER cost of the card itself). So if we did play 2 copies of Moment of Triumph in our above example, then 6.5 ER generates 18 PV: a difference of 11.5 in comparison to 6.5 with 1 copy of Moment of Triumph, which is absurdly effective.
Supporting Cards
The rest of the deck is built to support the above 2 examples given previously. Specialized Training is to grab Front Line Specialist for the extra health which will be direly needed. "You'll Pay for That!" can potentially clear Specialized Training in one fell swoop, when playing solo.
Gambit's Guild Armor and Natural Agility will help us stay in the fight and allows us to play more risky with our health. Rogue and Triage also help boost our survivability by taking multiple attacks and healing our health respectively. Triage can be replaced with Down Time.
Aggressive Energy when paired with Moment of Triumph, can convert its damage boosting effect into healing instead (or in addition if paired with a fully charged Charged Card). Similar concept with Keep Up the Pressure.
Professor X, Psylocke and Creole Charmer help confuse the villain so we can safely go into Alter-Ego mode where X-Mansion can provide us with additional healing and Mutant Education can shuffle our best cards like Molecular Acceleration, and our attack events.
Heroic Exclusions
We do not use Return on Investment (ROI) / Value over Time (VOT) cards like Avengers Mansion, Helicarrier and The X-Jet as these cards are too slow tempo on heroic difficulty.
Conclusion
Blast the villain into oblivion, with well timed counterattacks, ensuring we manage our health so that we do not die in the process.