The Magik Gunboat

Gasp! Bando did a write up?!

Preface

If you're newer to playing Magik, I highly recommend checking out @journeyman2's Devil May Scry! as it offers a wealth of information on how to effectively play her kit.

Gunboat Diplomacy is the name of the game here. The idea is simple—build up Magik and her allies THW to get some big Gunboats.

Allies

Pete Wisdom is our main target for Gunboat Diplomacy and contributes a whopping 4 THW with Mission Training attached. In ordinary circumstances, Magik can't play Mr. Wisdom, which is one of the ways Children of the Atom will come in handy. More on that later.

Gambit is another great target as he can also get a high THW value on top of the encounter deck control he offers, depending on the encounter card tucked under him.

Professor X is one of the bet X-Men allies in the game. In this deck, he’ll provide 3 THW for a Gunboat and additional survivability by stunning a minion and chump blocking.

Our remaining allies offer more utility to help get this deck going, while also being potential targets for more sweet Gunboats. Feral and Wolfsbane cab both help with deck cycling off of their basic thwart to get us more of what we need. Colossus and Triage are mostly there to help with our survival.

Events

Gunboat Diplomacy is the core strategy of the deck. As such, it's vital that we have reliable ways of getting to it. Thankfully, Scrying, One Way or Another, and Spiritual Meditation help us out there by providing additional card draw to cycle through the deck even faster.

Player Side Schemes

Build Support is a fantastic way to help us get Limbo or Children of the Atom out and is also a nice target for our namesake Gunboats. Magik also has a slew of handy identity-specific events to grab with Generation X.

Supports

Children of the Atom has multiple uses here. Primarily, it's to get Pete Wisdom out, but also offers us some flexibility later in the game by allowing Triage to heal any of our allies, not just the printed X-Men, or allowing for easier double Gunboats. Have two X-Men allies and only one X-Force ally out? Not a problem, because with Children of the Atom, they're all X-Men and X-Force.

If you've spent much time at all with Magik, or if you read through @journeyman2's wonderful writeup, you know how important Limbo is to Magik's kit. Here, it's essential for ensuring that we can consistently get the +1 THW bonus from Magik's Crown before we play a Gunboat. When we don't have a Gunboat handy, it offers a ton of utility in helping set up bonuses for any of Magik's identity-specific upgrades or events, making sure we're not stuck with a resource on the top of the deck, etc.

Our remaining supports are simply there to help with card draw when changing forms and to pay for things.

Upgrades

Heroic Intuition is another priority when setting up as it will offer a persistent +1 THW to help fuel bigger Gunboats.

We have a full set of Mission Training to use with all of our allies to, again, fuel bigger Gunboats.

Lastly, we have more goodies to help with card draw and to pay for things.