Cable Review and Aspect Pairings – Marvel Champions

Cable is one of the two stars of the NeXt Evolution expansion, and he’s rapidly become one of my top 5 heroes. In this article we’ll take a look at what Cable is good at, what he’s bad at, and quickly show you our favourite decks for 2-player expert difficulty.

• Insane scaling over the course of the game
• Will become stronger with future releases that contain player side schemes
• Can flip other players’ forms
• Psionic is an incredibly powerful trait to gain

Cable’s power increases over the course of a long game to unbelievable levels in a similar way to Iron Man and friends, starting weak and working through their decks to become insanely powerful, but doing it through a completely different method – using defeated player side schemes. As Cable can use basically any side scheme, regardless of aspect, this means that so long as Fantasy Flight Games keep printing side schemes, he’ll just keep getting stronger.

In addition to this, Bodyslide is a fascinating card that’s worth highlighting in a multiplayer/two-handed context because it’s one of the only cards in the game that can change the form of another hero. This means that you can Bodyslide to alter-ego, taking other players with you, allowing them to use alter-ego abilities on their turn before flipping themselves back into their hero form. That flexibility should not be underestimated!

• Can overwhelm the table with side schemes
• Won’t scale if you can’t take down his side schemes
• Absolutely brutal nemesis
• Will not always be Psionic

Cable’s biggest strength, his side schemes, is also a big problem. It adds more to thwart, more to deal with, and in some scenarios you’ll find yourself just unable to play his side schemes, because there’s just too much going on. This also impacts his ability to become Psionic, as he must defeat Technovirus Purge in order to gain the trait.

Cable’s nemesis Stryfe is also cripplingly powerful, and potentially one of the worst in the game, short of Phoenix’s Dark Phoenix. This can potentially lock you away for multiple turns, unable to deal with anything other than your nemesis and his side scheme, which is incredibly painful.

Justice is my personal favourite way to play Cable, simply to deal with all the side schemes he can introduce, and it’s extremely effective.

Leadership is a pretty natural fit for Cable, allowing him to use allies to defeat side schemes, and run the extremely potent combo of Mission Leader and Uncanny X-Force.

Thanks to Psylocke and Phoenix, Aggression gets a lot more teeth from Psionic-aspected cards like Psi-Bow Attack and Psychic Assault. It’s still not my favourite way to play him, but it’s definitely effective.

Protection could work, but I honestly don’t see much about his kit that lends itself to protection. Cable will work as pretty much anything, but there are definitely better protection heroes.

I’ve called this deck the Man of Many Schemes, because it runs every player side scheme that doesn’t just… suck… at the time of writing! This Justice deck leans into Cable’s playstyle of dealing with player side schemes that he himself introduces for massive profit. The downside is that obviously, this means that nobody else gets to play side schemes, which could require a little more communication between your decks.

For a very different angle, however, check out this Leadership deck from Journeyman2 over on MarvelCDB! I really like this deck’s approach, and it shows how Cable can be more than just Mr. Side Schemes, even if I do love that approach.