Cerebro is a card that defines its decks. Never has a signature card been so restrictive and liberating at the same time with its decks. It demands that every card in your deck runs in unison to reach the same amount of power, if you achieve that, Cerebro will give them all +2 power, that is quite powerful, especially if you can follow it with his best partner, Mystique, She is pretty much mandatory for the serious Cerebro deck. So it’s up to you to figure out the last 10 cards.
The fun part about these decks is that the power could be as small as 0 or as big as you want. It’s quite fun making a Cerebro deck because the amount of possibilities are almost limitless. In addition, they keep changing around due to nerfs and buffs here and there in the season; some cards can go from one Cerebro deck to the other with a swing of the righteous Nerfbat or the slam of the merciful Buffhammer.
Competitive Cerebro
Before we go into the mad concoctions that we can create with our big brains and Cerebro, let’s talk a little bit about the drawbacks that every Cerebro deck has. First, if we don’t draw our Cerebro, the deck becomes extremely weaker due to every card essentially losing 2 power or 4 if you had mystique in hand. Also, there are many locations that can really ruin your plans so you might need to improvise or retreat. If Monster Island shows up, he will bully your cards out of their Cerebro buffs. And finally, some locations add or remove power, keep them in mind when playing. Here are some examples of bad locations for us:
Now that we established that, we’ll talk about the best Cerebro decks that we got so far. Like I said previously, we need to keep in mind the power that we are going to use when playing Cerebro, and so far the most competitive decks are: Cerebro 2, 3 and 5. It doesn't mean that all the other Cerebros are lost causes, I’m saying that these three different versions of Cerebro had more success competitively. Let’s take a look at each of them first
Cerebro 2
Cerebro 2 is a timeless classic, but he keeps getting new cards to play with and experiment. This is my go-to C2 because I have all the tools needed to ruin my opponent’s plans. It has disruption with Storm, Echo, Goose and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. You might be looking at the blue marvel in the deck and saying that I was lying about all the cards having the same amount of power but worry not, with him on the field, all your cards will be 3 power since he doesn’t buff himself, that doesn’t brick your Cerebro in any way. The newest addition as a power 2 is Shadow King, he can remove some pesky buffs that locations usually throw your way when playing Cerebro 2 (no more losing to Wakandan Embassy).
Cerebro 3
C3 also got a card with this recent patch, the Judge of TVA, Ravonna Renslayer, and what an addition she is! She can lower the cost of Cerebro, Mystique and Iron-Man.This deck has trickier lines due to using invisible woman, you can hide anything behind her powers, like Shang-Chi, Valkyrie or Mystique (just remember to play last an ongoing card so that she can copy it).
Cerebro 5
C5 has no tricks like c2 or c3 have but he makes it up with power. It’s quite difficult to outpower a c5 deck because every single card that they play is 9 power with Cerebro and mystique on board. Imagine trying to beat 9 power Doombots all over the field while they yank your cards into bad locations with Spider-Man and Polaris.
How Big Can Our Brains go?
Okay, now it's time for the fun stuff. Remember when I said that you could go from 0 to how big you wanted when making a Cerebro deck? Some mad people have been trying to come up with different power versions for every number available. Some even madder people have been running ‘Cerebro Challenge’ speedrun. If you feel like you’re up to the task, here are the rules:
- Win 10 matches, each with a different power version of Cerebro, from 0 to 10.
- Cerebro must be face up in play in order for the win to count
- No editing decks mid challenge
Why am I telling you this? To encourage you to be one of those mad people to try it out. Also to have an excuse to post Cerebro Decks Running from 0 to 10. I already did 3 of those so here’s the last 7 (just be careful some of these can be quite… I’m going to use the word “challenging”). Without further ado, here they are:
Cerebro 0
Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find decent 0 power cards? With good luck you might win, carried by Iron-Man.
Cerebro 1
Iron-Man is back again to try carrying these puny cards. Kang is here due to lack of good cards for the archetype in addition to trying to cheese the challenge by snapping on the last turn, that’s something that we will try with a few of the other decks on the list.
Cerebro 4
Now we have some power, I’m really curious to see two Martyrs trying to lose you the game. Just don’t count on her as a card for Ant-man and you should be solid.
Cerebro 6
Destroy is our friend, if you can destroy The Hood and Bucky, they will really save your skin in finding 6 power cards for Cerebro to buff.
Cerebro 7
Things are getting costly, Gladiator and Maximus are our cheapest 7 power cards so they really help us. Everything else is quite expensive So we might want to pray for Jubilee to help us out.
Cerebro 8
A great amount of 8 power cards cost 4, so Zabu is our best card here, by allowing us to play more cards. We can also win by using White Tiger with Odin.
Cerebro 9
Again, we try to use Zabu to help us drop our 4-cost cards. In addition, we have Wave to cheat out a big card by turn 4.
Cerebro 10
Now we are running with a bad crowd. Again, tons of 4 drops but they all have steep drawbacks so pick your poison carefully. She Hulk Doc Ock could win you the game on the last turn. Snapping with Kang is always an option.
Wow that was quite a list, huh? If you ever try the challenge, I wish you the best of luck. If you come up with some more consistent decks for the challenge, do let me know, please!
Thank you for getting this far! As a reward, you get to gaze upon Cerebro’s variants.
Variants
