It's definitely not Askani. (2P Cable)

Oo, yellow Cable. Feeling bold today.

Recently, my girlfriend and I started playing through campaigns for Mamps. We had a blast with Agents of SHIELD, and for our second campaign we settled on NeXt Evolution. She took Psylocke, I took Cable. Rather than flitting between heroes every game like I typically would, a campaign forces me to sit down and properly iterate on one deck. I like Cable in the abstract - I love playing controlling Justice decks that build to a strong endgame, and I definitely undervalue mid-game damage - but I'd never quite managed to find a deck for him that really clicked for me.

Around the same time, manut3ro on the Mamps subreddit finally got around to discussing Cable's best and worst cards.. It was close, but ultimately the vote came down on Askani'son, which is.... wild, because it's definitely not Askani.

Outside of true solo, Temporal Leap is easily his worst card. Recycling player side schemes would be strong and interesting, but the trigger condition obviously precludes it from any fun combo shenanigans. As a purely defensive piece it's worse than Under Surveillance. But even beyond Leap, I'd argue that both Precognition and even Telekinetic Force Field are worse cards. I'm certainly biased here, because god Precog is an absolute pain in the ass to resolve, but it's also an effect that needs to scale up to be useful, at which point you should be strong enough to handle most things the deck will throw at you.

Mostly, I don't like these cards because they don't do anything that's practically useful in a game. Askani absolutely can, with the caveat that it only really does those things at 1 or 2 players. We'll touch on this later.

The benefits of Askani

There are several traits that make a hero good at exhausting to defend.

• They have naturally high defence, ideally 3 or above once they have their upgrades out, that reduces the chip damage they take while blocking.
• They have strong in-built scaling (or naturally high enough numbers) that allows them to make progress while stalling the fight.
• Ideally, they have ways to ready, allowing them to block multiple attacks or damage/thwart on player phase.

We've all played as or alongside a green deck at some point that didn't die, but also contributed nothing. A deck that's actually good at defending should be able to bring the game closer to conclusion rather than simply prolonging it. Cable very obviously does this with Tele Blast, an event that scales to unbelievable levels as you clear the side schemes out of your deck. He's also putting cards into play for free for both himself and his allies. The big question are, can Cable survive to scale up and win the fight, and if so, how can we accelerate that process to end fights more consistently?

Askani is the answer. Or, at least, it's an answer. We're playing Marvel Champions - if you play a cheap ally every turn and block, you'll probably be fine. But A) that's kinda boring, and B) a lot of the more modern villains are designed to punish chump blocking, whether through Overkill, mechanisms that trigger when allies die from anything other than consequential damage, or other factors that punish you for not taking hits yourself. But we don't care about any of that - we play 3 allies total, and we're planning on taking most of the hits ourselves. Let's run through how.

At lower player counts, side schemes have less threat. Most of them have hinder or per-player starting threat. Player side schemes are especially affected - in a 2 player game, the majority will have between 4 and 6 threat. With just a little set-up, Cable is more than capable of one-shotting these schemes with a single Thwart. That also means that he's capable of one-shotting them with a single use of Askani'son, paid for by Graymalkin. Since you just defeated a side scheme, both Cable and Graymalkin will ready. In effect, Askani Cable uses his glut of side schemes (and a cheeky One Way or Another!) to defend attacks for free.

Cable is, in this way, able to functionally act 4 times per round. He can defend, "thwart" with Askani and ready, take another action, and ready again turning player phase. That's obviously effective and Cable's very medium attack stat quickly becomes a meaningful clock when he's already handling any threat the villain generates. Because side schemes offer so much tutoring and resource cheating, we setup incredibly quickly and can start enacting our gameplan.

At higher player counts, side schemes reach threat totals that aren't feasible to thwart with a single Askani shot. This forces you to commit resources to bring them into range and your loop quickly becomes too inefficient to justify.

What about all the other cards?

Cable is capable of getting to 6 base thwart in this deck. You don't need to get there, 4 is enough, and that's not hard at all - Technovirus Purge plus any of Heroic Intuition, Heroic Conditioning, and Specialized Training works. Deadpool is excellent for us, partially because the Team-Up is strong, but mostly because his consistent output of 2 per turn for the entire game helps us fix our maths. 6 threat side scheme when we're not fully established? Deadpool can bring it in range. Scary minion we can't handle with just our gun? Deadpool can chip it, or even simply ping off a tough. We have such strong threat control in the midgame that his acceleration icons don't matter, and his ability to provide whatever we need every turn is invaluable.

The side schemes are relatively interchangeable. I start on Build Support if I don't have Graymalkin in my opening, or Superpower Training if I do. They're the most generically useful schemes for your allies and they help you set up your core engine. Technovirus Purge is tempting if you have a thwart event in your hand, but the fail case of ripping your obligation early is too much to conscience. It's worth noting, however, that we really value the third defence it provides, and so we do want to clear it as soon as we're able. If you're forced to flip down, or draw Bodyslide, try to arrange a situation where you can grab it with Professor. The player side scheme limit in low player count can sometimes make it awkward, but it's worth it. Both green schemes help clear chip and mitigate the need to flip down. Lock and Load is easily replaced by any other scheme of your choice, since we're not overly concerned with getting our gun down early.

For Justice! is aggressively fine, but the deck needs to be able to clear an early Technovirus Purge whenever it shows up. A single 2-thwart Cable activation + a thwart event for 3 works, and FJ brings our total count up to 5 alongside our Mind Scans. Clear the Area is a generically strong thwart event that could easily be anything else - consider Multitasking or another damage source like Brains Over Brawn.

After our first deck cycle, our side scheme density should be significantly lower. One Way or Another helps fix this, grabbing schemes from the villain for us to Askani down.

Cell Phone is a meme, really. It comes up occasionally, but mostly it's funny. Deft Focus was a late addition because of how few cards it hits, but it's so cheap that it doesn't really matter if you can't use it every turn, and when you draw your big events that extra resource makes a significant difference.

Finally, Nick Fury and Professor X are just generically allies who can block for you or a teammate, saving your HP before you're established. Nick is also another source of cycling in the lategame where you just want to Tele Blast as much as possible.

Optimal?

This is not the best way to play Cable, and Cable is not the number one hero of the game, but I do think it has merits. It's interesting to play around Askani, trying to setup the side scheme display so there are things for you to finish off on the villain phase, and it lines up really well into modern villain design philosophy. It's also just really fun - who doesn't love having such a big number and knowing you got there by giving your teammate free cards?

So, in conclusion, no, it's definitely not Askani. The card asks something fairly specific of you and falls off hard at higher player counts, but if you're willing to work with it you'll discover an interesting defensive piece that provides more than several of his other cards could dream of.