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Writer's pictureAstrodar

The Stormlight Decks: Highstorm and Bridge Four

Updated: Dec 10, 2024

Warning! There are some incredibly mild spoilers in this article for The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This is the first book in the Stormlight Archive, a series that is an absolute favorite of mine. If you haven't checked out this series, definitely give it a go! If you want to avoid any and all spoilers on the book, just check out the deck links here:



The spoilers below are single sentences that explain what a highstorm and Bridge Four are in the most general terms possible.


 

I am a huge fan of the interactions between heroes in this game. I've been playing a lot more two player and two-handed games, and I've started building hero decks that are meant to work in concert with each other. For this article I wanted to show off a couple decks I've been having fun with, and suggest a few ways you could make the concepts work for you!


When I was playing these decks, I took them up against my Evil Scientist campaign.

  • Dark Beast with Temporal

  • Zola with Mister Hyde

  • Mutagen Formula with Ransacked Armory

  • Mister Sinister with The Doomsday Chair



The Highstorm (Storm Leadership)

I love the Stormlight Archive, so this deck is lightly themed around the highstorm. For the uninitiated, the highstorm is a fierce storm that washes across the land every few days, leaving destruction in its wake, but also infusing gems with an energy called stormlight. The premise of the deck is to infuse and empower someone else's ally swarm, but also having the option to spread damage across the board. I'll hit the two sides of the deck separately.


Empowerment

Your role is to build up your partner. You can do this in a number of ways, namely through supports, permanent buffs, and temporary buffs.


Supports:

Team Training and Uncanny X-Men both give additional HP to their allies, and Uncanny X-Men will help them easily afford more allies.


Permanent Empowerment:

You can use Danger Room Training and Sidearm to buff individual allies. I would avoid putting these on allies that are higher priority for blocking, such as allies with "when played" effects.


Temporary Empowerment:

You also have targeted temporary buffs through Leadership Skill and Cell Phone. These look similar, but serve different functions. Cell Phone is an action, so it will let you activate and empower a character someone else controls on your turn. Leadership Skill is of course usable at any time an ally is activating.


Your remaining temporary buffs are through Lead from the Front, which you can play to really empower the swarm, and Thunderstorm from your weather deck. These will help boost the ally stats across the board.


Card Empowerment:

I included limited card draw in the deck through Maria Hill and Mission Leader. Both of these will give a small boost to your partner. Additionally, you can help them get allies on their board with Call for Backup and New Recruits.


Tempo Empowerment:

Finally you have empowerment through readying. Command Team will be the primary method, but you also have Phoenix that can enter play and ready an X-Men ally. Just keep an eye on your timing for this, as it can't be played off turn unless you use Team-Building Exercise.


The Storm

The highstorm is a dangerous thing to be out in. For this reason, I have included three area of effect (AoE) damage sources. Squirrel Girl and Sunspot will both work to deal AoE damage to enemies, and Kid Omega will allow you to either damage enemies or clear some threat. Additionally, Storm has some AoE damage in her kit with Blast of Wind.


Play Lines

Essentially you are looking to build your board while opportunistically buffing your partner. All the while, you'll need to be managing your weather deck to buff friendlies or debuff enemies. I don't flip down a lot with Storm. I find it is important that she stays up in order to change her weather supports at the appropriate time. There are very few allies to block for you in this deck, so you'll want to use Flash Freeze when able. If you find yourself going to alter-ego more, you could switch Team-Building Exercise with Med Lab to help recur some of your allies (or your partner's allies). During the mid to late game, you'll be purely focused on powering up your partner with Lead from the Front. By the time they have 4-5 allies out, you can really burn down a villain stage.


Different Partner

If you are looking to run this deck alongside a non-X-men partner, there are some nice little packages to swap out. Just substitute some of the cards below for cards you don't think you'll need or that are X-Men specific.

  • Guardians

    • Major Victory for Phoenix

    • Guardians of the Galaxy for Uncanny X-Men

    • Laser Blaster and/or Comms Implant

    • C.I.T.T. if you want to ready their hero

    • Blaze of Glory for or alongside Lead from the Front (I'd also include ally healing like Rally the Troops)

  • Avengers

    • Mighty Avengers

    • Sky Cycle

    • Power Gloves

  • Champions

    • Patriot

    • Champion Mobile Bunker

  • X-Force

    • Children of the Atom alongside X-Men stuff

    • Uncanny X-Force



 

Bridge Four (Cylcops Aggression)

My second deck is using Cyclops Aggression to build Bridge Four, a rag-tag group of "expendable lowlifes" forced into the front lines of a war. For this, I was looking to get a solid crew of allies and ways to bring them all together.


Let's get real here. We are ripe with choice on which X-Men Cyclops can bring along, so you can't really go wrong. I honestly don't think the build is all that important beyond having enough allies to swarm. I'm going to go through the choices I made for the deck, but it is by no means gospel.


Events:

I wanted this to be an aggressive deck, so I included Team Strike. Thematically it lets me bring my crew together, and it acts as faux healing. Since I'm already building up my allies ATK, this lets me tap into their ATK more without dealing with consequential damage. This is also great against retaliate, because just my hero will take the retaliate damage, saving that ally HP for later activations.


Supports:

  • Boot Camp is there to buff the ATK just a bit more. Honestly, since Storm is already buffing us, this is a pretty low priority. However, it's added consistency and it can help close out games.

  • Stepford Cuckoos are a great way to avoid any treacheries that will undercut your build. All around they are pretty great regardless of build.

  • Team-Building Exercise is going to help further discount allies. Most of the time you will use this on your turn. However, there will be times that you'll get a card draw from Maria Hill or Mission Leader after your turn that lets you afford one more ally, so keep an eye out for when you might want to save this!

  • The X-Jet is a nice resource to be able to share when needed.

  • Utopia is giving you an X-Men ready, which often with this deck will be an ally, not your hero. It also gives you an extra ally slot.

  • X-Mansion is a great way to keep your allies out on the board. You'll be flipping a lot with Cyclops, so it should be easy to trigger. If you find that you aren't flipping during your games for whatever reason, this is an easy cut to thin your deck.


Upgrades:

Since Scott can search for a Tactics upgrade, I wanted to include a bit of a toolbox for him to choose from. I included The Direct Approach to capitalize on the boosted ATK of allies and Marked to help avoid retaliate and to avoid wasting damage from your buffed allies. I also included Gatekeeper as an additional cheap thwarting option, but keep in mind this one can't be pulled with Scott's AE ability..


Allies:

As for the allies, take whatever combination pleases you. Here are the allies I chose.

  • Beak and Triage are cheap, impactful allies. With the boosted stats, they swing above their weight. Generally they are not sticking around, and will be the higher priority chump targets.

  • Psylocke is just good stuff. Her confuses will help Cyclops flip.

  • Professor X is the chumpiest of our chump blockers, but he will help Cyclops flip and help manage threat. Also, keep an eye out for when you may want to ready a boosted ally over confusing the villain.

  • Wolverine's big ATK, piercing, and natural healing make him a high priority ally to have out. He's a great target for Team Strike and Rogue.

  • Rogue is great for getting a really amped up ATK stat. You can use her alongside Marked to make sure you're not wasting any damage. Additionally she's another way to essentially avoid extra retaliate damage, because only one ally takes the damage instead of two.

  • Polaris is one of the best allies in the bunch. She drops in, gives you a tough to help keep you healthy, and helps you avoid blocking with allies. Since she doesn't have the tough on herself, she can immediately start swinging. With 2 ATK, she hits a lot of breakpoints with Storm boosting her stats.

  • Nightcrawler is another ally that is solid value. The extra HP from Team Training and Uncanny X-Men help him stay out until you really need him, but he is also a great defensive option when the time comes. He also becomes super cheap to cycle once Uncanny X-Men and Team-Building Exercise are out.

  • Gambit I am somewhat mixed on. I really like him being able to grab an encounter card and lock it out of the deck, but it's a gamble on if you'll get anything of real value.

  • Colossus provides a block for you, but also tends to be slower than Polaris, since he has the tough on himself. There are plenty of times in this deck where I have burned the tough by activating him just to push extra damage though. He's another solid target for Rogue (after his tough is gone).


All in all, the three allies I played the least were Psylocke, Gambit, and Colossus. Those would be early swaps for me. If you were swapping out Gambit and Colossus though, you may want to look at dropping The Power in All of Us. Ten targets is already at the threshold of dropping it for me.


Feel free to bring whatever X-Men to the party you like. I have a lot of fun tailoring the group of allies to particular scenarios, just like Cyclops would when putting a team together.


Play Lines

Essentially you're looking to quickly build out your board and support your allies. I flip a lot with Cyclops, nearly every turn. This helps avoid attacks, meaning you have to block with allies less. This also gives you access to two or three additional cards across a single flip down. You want to build up a couple allies, keeping one ally slot essentially rotating with blocking allies. This could be chump blocking with Triage and Beak or using that slot to cycle Nightcrawler in and out of play. By the late game, you'll have a board of 4-5 allies that can really work the board.

 


So there you have it! Those are the Stormlight decks I have been running. I love that Storm can shift to support whichever team you want beyond X-Men, and that is where I will be taking her next. Which hero would you pick to build Bridge Four in another team?

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