Unleashed Fortune

A Paired deck, to be played Duo or Multiplayer with Phoenix: Gift of the Phoenix. (https://marvelcdb.com/decklist/view/46841/gift-of-the-phoenix-1.0)

OK, this deck is a lot more complicated than it's sister deck. There are two main goals for Rogue here: draw cards from defending, and to maximize the value of her events.

Draw Cards

First, Unflappable is the quintessential green card draw, and the old ways are still good (especially considering that they are enhanced, not replaced, by the "new" green card draw)

Change of Fortune is a fun minigame to play around. You'll want to play this deck against a minion-heavy scenario, and/or ditch the "recommended" mod set for a minion-heavy one. Trying to play this deck against a scenario with low/no minions isn't going to be fun, OK? My favorites so far are Band of Badoon, Mutant Slayers, and Temporal.

On turns when neither you nor Phoenix draw a minion, "Come Get Me, Bub!" can guarantee that you have some tables to turn (proverbially speaking).

There are multiple ways to defeat minions on the Villain phase. Riposte and retaliate damage are the two most obvious ways. With Electrostatic Armor and Dauntless you can deal two damage back passively to an attacking enemy, and if you put Touched on the villain, that goes up to 3 passive damage back. Many times, Rogue of her partner Phoenix can damage a minion down to this threshold, and Rogue can retaliate it to death without even having to play any extra cards.

When Touched is on Phoenix, Rogue also has the bold Psionic keyword, allowing her to play Psychic Misdirection. I'd like some confirmation of this, but playing an event that causes a minion to be murdered by the Villain seems like it should trigger Change of Fortune. Any rules specialists out there, let me know. I originally included Psi-Flail Strike instead, but found that this was a little too expensive to kill minions with. But cancelling the villain's attack and killing a minion at the same time is a change of fortune indeed.

Unleash Your Events

Goin' Rogue and Southern Cross are lackluster without their kickers, but Rouge's Touched upgrade allows you to choose which kicker you want. But why stop there?

Dauntless will give you passive retaliate all the time (even when Touched isn't on the villain). This has to be maintained by keeping health high, but Endurance, Energy Transfer, and "Come Get Me, Bub!" will give you the flexibility to keep Dauntless online.

You can normally only get Aerial by applying Touched to an ally, but once Phoenix has her Phoenix Suit upgrade down on the board, she has Aerial passively all the time as a bold keyword, and when Touched is applied to Phoenix, you gain Aerial (because Phoenix has it) and Stalwart (because Touched says so).

So now Goin' Rogue gets all three kickers: 5 thwart, confuse, and draw a card. Southern Cross will be 8 damage, stun, and draw a card. This value is busted, and once you're rolling with this, not much can slow you down.

What's more, once Phoenix is Unleashed , Rogue is too. Superpower Adaptation can steal any of Phoenix's fantastic unleashed events like Telekinetic Attack (now 9 damage with overkill) or Telepathic Trickery (now 4 thwart, stun, confuse).

Deft Focus and X-Gene can keep the party going, letting you play 2 sometimes 3 events per turn, and every copy of Superpower Adaptation becomes a chance to tutor the event you need from Phoenix's discard. The party doesn't stop at this point, and the villain can rarely get a word in edgewise. If they're not steady or stalwart, they can be locked down and pummeled into submission. If they are steady/stalwart, you lose some control, but you don't lose tempo (because 8-9 damage repeatedly is still going to end them).

Surviving

In the initial turns, before you get this card draw and/or event powerhouse rolling, usually keep Touched on the villain, so that I can make use of Bulletproof Belle if I happen to draw it. I almost always grab Bulletproof Belle with Jocasta when I play her, and it's such an efficient card that I'll save it in my hand if I have it and make sure Touched is on the villain so that Rogue can throw down. Also, note that it doesn't just cancel an attack on you... as long as Touched is on the villain, you can intercept any attack (which is now directed at you for zero damage, so you can retaliate), even one originally directed at your partner.

Threat in the early game is managed by Phoenix, mostly (with her 3 base thwart and ability to ready with Utopia when playing allies). Later in the game, once you're set up, Phoenix will probably be Unleashed and lose her good thwarting power, but by this point you'll be in charge of thwarting with Goin' Rogue and Telepathic Trickery, with Phoenix's allies assisting.

Phoenix's nemesis set is a challenge to deal with, but isn't likely to come into play early in the game (I mean, you ARE running Standard III, right? The clearly superior standards set... right?). Later in the game, when you're built out, Dark Phoenix is more of a nuisance than a threat. You can even bring her health down and Change of Fortune her into more card draw. Rogue's nemesis set is more challenging, because Mystique and her side scheme shuffle Misled into you're decks. This both hits the duo where they're weak (OK, maybe not weak but weakest) by adding thwart to the main scheme and taking up useless space in your hand. Mystique sucks. The times that I've lost with this duo, it's not been to the villain's attacks, but stupid Mystique shenanigans involving the main scheme.