Unleash This! #6, The Quicksilver Combo goes Modern

You guys know the Quicksilver, Mutant Avenger + Quicksilver, Mutant Avenger + Legendary Battles combo I love so much, right? Well with the release of MEV, this combo is entirely re-enactable with Nightcrawler, Man of the Cloth.


We've known for over a year now that he can do similar things, but there really wasn't a reasonable substitute for legendary battles. Add to that, Quicksilver doesn't even have to be a part of the team attack whereas Nightcrawler requires it (which was mostly useful in cases where your opponent has exhaustion tricks). Well I just told you guys a moment ago that MEV fixed this problem, and how? Sewer Rats.

Now, I know this looks painful, and it is, but being able to team attack an entire board is completely worth it.

And the Marauders have some decent synergy with the X-Men. All we have to do is look at Gambit, [version] Sewer Rat for that; All of a sudden your stun effects work.

Then Sewer Rats combos greatly with X-Men Assemble. Nightcrawlers get bigger, and can stun bigger guys on their own. not too shabby. You have Cutting Loose for a +4 turn long pump, pretty much (two for each, team attacking together ...)

Then Gambit has off initiative tricks. His 6-drop, the Traitor. Three-Card Monte. Random. Well ... maybe that's taking this a little far with the Gambit support, but you get the idea. Let's see how it turned out:
---------------------------------------------
4 Gambit, Sewer Rat
4 Gambit, Le Diable Blanc
4 Night Crawler, Man of the Cloth
4 Random, Alex
1 Gambit, Death
3 Gambit, Traitor

4 Mobilize
3 Clash
4 Carrying the Torch
4 Underground Movement
4 Divided we Stand
4 Sewer Rats
3 Three-Card Monte
3 Cajun Charm
4 X-Men Assemble!
2 Graduating Class
3 Cerebro
3 Asgard
--------------------------------------

The basic idea of the deck is to get a gambit out on 2, preferrably the MEV one so you have both X-Men and Marauders out. Otherwise, Sewer Rat allows you to Graduating Class / Cajun Charmlock on initiative.

Underground Movement is there to push vulnerable characters into the hidden area (like your Nightcrawlers).

Clash and Carrying the Torch bypass uniqueness for ya. I guess you could get out multiple copies of gambit, but I'd make sure that the Nightcrawler combo is ensured first.

Three-Card Monte/Cerebro/Asgard are there to ensure that you hit with Gambit, Traitor. Basically TCM their X-1 cost dude, where X is the number of cards in your hand. That leaves you with one card in hand to swap out with cerebro/Asgard to get whatever character you want to stun their 6 with Traitor's ability.

Another way you could go, if you tweak the deck, is to shift out Gambit on 1, play gambit on 2, put 3 more shift counters on gambit on 3, with odds you can stun someone / Cajun Charm them, random on 4 off init stun their 2 exhaust their 4 brickwall then bring out a nightcrawler on 5 and a fresh gambit 2 if need be, gambit on 6, then the 2nd nightcrawler on 7 to team into their board then. Or you could avoid gambit 6 and go 2 nightcrawlers for evens on init, but that seems to be a harder route.

This deck hasn't been played at all, and might have very low consistency. That said, I'd love to hear your input. In hindsight, this deck doesn't have any off-initiative control until turn 6. Since that's the case, take odds if at all possible.

- Alex "OSM" Lloyd