Bishop - History Lesson

"Keep shootin', punks!" ~Bishop

Player Count/Type : 2-4p / Timmy
Power Level: High
Complexity: Medium
Key Cards: Mutant Education, Ready for a Fight

"This deck lets you consistently recycle your signature events and absorb/redirect multiple villain attacks per turn" ~D.M. Tip

Class is in Session

I absolutely love Temporally Displaced, Bishop's Alter-Ego ability, but not every card in his kit has the Temporal trait. This is where Mutant Education comes in. In most aspects, I don't tend to flip down often enough to make use of a card like this, unless I'm grabbing a discarded Bishop's Uniform, but Protection let's us take advantage of Ready for a Fight.

We can use both of these together to consistently go down to Alter-Ego and trigger Temporally Displaced and play Mutant Education, ideally with Ready for a Fight in play. Flipping down often also lets us take advantage of our huge recovery stat and stay extra healthy, which is important against heavy hitting villains.

Mulligan Priorities and Setup

1. As with most Bishop decks, your Uniform is the number one priority.
2. Secondly, look for cards to build out your board state like Symbiote Suit, Avengers Mansion, and Helicarrier.
3. Next, Bishop's Rifle is a solid to play for a consistent source of damage.
4. Lastly, X-Mansion and Enhanced Physique round out setup cards. Both of these are nice-to-haves, and not entirely pivotal early on.

The Roster

A few notes on why specific cards are included:

• Lockjaw is a solid staple for almost any Bishop deck because he gives you a resource sink you can use from your discard pile. In this deck, he also gives you a resource to pay for Ready for a Fight. I actually started this deck without him in early drafts, trying newer cards like Nick Fury, Sr., but it's hard to teach a old dog new tricks.
• Nick Fury is yet another solid OG. Both him and Lockjaw also benefit from The Power in All of Us. Because you won't need Nick's free block most of the time, you can use him to block for a teammate.
• Mutant Education is one of the core cards we're building around. That said, the stars won't always align to use it at every opportunity. However, when you can pull it off, you have a variety of options depending on your situation. More on this later.
• Taunt is such a killer card for Bishop. I actually started with only 2x copies, but because of Energy Absorption's discard effect, I found it works better with 3x. You won't always have the health to play it, but it at least provides a to pay for Ready for a Fight. If you have Taunt in hand, remember to save your Uniform trigger until after you've Taunted. You'll likely have more resources in hand after a series of attacks, versus after the first, provided you can survive the attacks.
• What Doesn't Kill Me has always been a go-to staple for my Bishop Protection decks. The ready provides flexibility to either get an extra Attack or Thwart in, but it can also let you Recover if you flip down after. This is the only card that fully takes advantage of The Power of Protection, but, in a pinch can also help you play Ready for a Fight.
• Ready for a Fight needs to introduction. We make special use of this card by flipping down to grab a Temporal card, using Mutant Education, and Recovering to keep our health topped off. On a minor note, you can also get a little healing from X-Mansion.
• Enhanced Physique is a great resource sink for all of our resources, allowing us to extend those resources into future rounds. This specific upgrade lets us more easily play Ready for a Fight, which helps to keep gameplay smooth.
• Symbiote Suit is shunned by many, but it really shines here. Attack and Thwart boosts give us added flexibility, extra recovery is solid, and hand size is fantastic, but most importantly, the extra health gives us plenty of breathing room to absorb damage.
• 11 Resources might seem kind of low for some, but trust met on this. You don't want half a deck of resources with nothing to spend them on. With more resources, you could end up with giant Rifle shots when the stars align, but you'll be pretty stagnant most of the game. I've played as low as 9 resource effectively, but around 11 is a sweet spot for me. It's enough for Energy Conversion to have a big enough impact, but not too big. It's also enough to regularly pay for the rest of your cards without worrying too much. At the end of the day, you'll still have extra resources on many turns that you can pour into Super-Charged and your signature allies, or even Lockjaw. If none of these are an option, hold a few over into the next round to guarantee some healing from your Uniform.

How to Play this Bishop

If you play enough Bishop, you start to get his rhythm down.

Take damage -> Draw cards -> Heal -> Big plays -> Repeat

The nuance is knowing when to take hits and when to avoid them. It's a dangerous game, but with careful planning, you can be successful time after time.

1. Try to stay healthy enough to take two max hits from the villain OR take at least one hit and have a blocker available.

   • The reason for this is two-fold. First, there are many encounter cards that trigger an extra villain attack. Second, you want to be able to manually defend for another player and/or Taunt to get the most out of your Energy Absorption ability.

2. Always save your Uniform response for the last attack you can reasonably take without getting knocked out. If you have Taunt in hand and can reasonably take a villain attack (remember to account for potential boost icons), you don't need to trigger the Uniform after the first attack. If you wait until the second (or even third), you'll have more resources in hand and heal for a much greater amount.

3. Prioritize Thwarting and Recovery. Because you want to stay healthy, you may have to flip to Recover and sometimes you'll have to do so without Ready for a Fight. If your team is controlling threat well, push damage if recovery isn't needed. But if you prioritize threat removal consistently, you can usually feel more comfortable flipping down to Recover.

4. Use Energy Conversion wisely. You'll usually want to use this on the first attack you take in a given round so that you can stack your deck with more resources. In multiplayer, it's a great way to take a hit for a teammate and take minimal damage. You've saved them some hurt, filled your deck with resources, and controlled the amount of damage you've taken, which lets you more easily plan out the number of attacks you can take this turn.

5. Don't be afraid to defend for another player. Your defense event, Energy Absorption works whether you are exhausted or not, so the player order doesn't matter here. You can take a second hit at the cost of an exhaustion to grab more resources, but more importantly, you can pull that classic Bishop move by stepping in front of an attack meant for another. This isn't a "Defend the Table" deck, but it does provide this flexibility if the situation calls for it.

6. Flip it & stick it. Mutant Education can be tricky to use effectively, so don't go out of your way to make it happen every time you see it. It's here to augment Bishop's natural rhythm. When you need to flip to recover or pull a Temporal card, use this to stack your deck with what you need. That might be more Stored Energy, or maybe some Concussive Blasts or a Super-Charged to help finish the game. Many times this will be Energy Conversion so you can control your incoming damage and take more attacks in a given round. Knowing what you need is half the battle.

7. Temporally dis-what, now? Bishop's alter-ego response can grab several key Temporal-traited cards and you need to be using this often. Usually when a hero flips down, their turn is just about over. However, Bishop's Temporally Displaced gives you several options to finish playing cards in your hand. Often times you'll have too many resources and not enough to spend them on. Early game, you'll want to use this to grab your Uniform or Riflefrom the discard pile. Midgame, you'll want to grab a signature ally or a Stored Energy to play Lockjaw for additional utility as you stabilize the board and deal with threats. Late game, you'll want to grab a Stored Energy to stack counters on Super-Charged, noting that its Action can be used in Alter-Ego.

8. Finish strong. Super-Charged is a game ender, so don't forget to utilize it. It's one of Bishop's primary damage sources and it's worth focusing on mid-late game to close things out. Your team will thank you for it.

Time to Go

And that's about it, folks. That's how I pilot this Bishop deck to successfully redirect the enemy's attacks right back at them. It's a ton of fun to play. I enjoy the tension on certain turns where you try to push how many attacks you can take, especially against heavy-hitting villains or mod sets stacked with triple boost icons. Most of these principles for Bishop can be used in other aspects as well. Finding ways to heal and take advantage of his kit in different ways is always a blast.

Until then, "Keep shootin', punks!"

Peace!