Scholar of the Infinite -- Ideas/Tips?

So I played the latest weekly one-shot, and ended up ignoring Scholar of the Infinite's base power completely.  Other than one tip I've seen here on the forums (use this power to double up on Know When To Cut Loose), any other tips for using him effectively?  A good number of the cards/effective combos in his deck depend on him using his base power to heal, then increasing the healing with Solid to Liquid, or dealing out damage with Mortal Form to Energy.  His new base power makes those two cards close to useless, unless you have external healers. ( And yes, I know that the Industrial Complex has some healing cards, but I was too busy using scholar to tank for other characters to be able to waste cards on solid to liquid or mortal form to energy )  Unlike many of the variants, which just tweak the characters, Scholar's variant seems to change him completely.  Anybody out there have really good tips for using him?

I've found that Scholar of the Infinite's base power isn't that good in the early game, a bit like Dark Watch Mister Fixer. It is too easy for your health to be critically low without your base healing. Yes, base Scholar can deal more damage, but Infinite can be a smoother ride as you don't have to worry about taking damage to dish it out.

Playing The Scholar it is all about getting as much card draw as possible and then playing as many Form cards as you can. But rather than Solid to Liquid with Mortal Form to Energy as a combo, I start with Flesh to Iron. Have one Flesh to Iron, your self damage bounces and you hit for two. A second, you now hit for three and you now have a minus four to damage dealt. Unless it is irreducable, you are now in the tank zone. If you can get a third Form out there I then go with a Mortal Form to Energy so that when I play my healing cards I'm doing some more damage.

It's the way I try and play Scholar of the Infinite, if it is of any use. This week's one-shot, as a pure and simple damage race isn't the best game for him, but in longer games he can be pretty effective. It is a good thing with the variant heroes, you do have to play them slightly differently.

Often I'd say this feels like playing normal Scholar.  This power gives a better reason to play Flesh to Iron and for times when you are at full health a way to lower it so you can take advantage of Mortal Form to Energy when you do heal.  Just like normal Scholar I'll likely use Bring What You Need or Truth Seeker as my main power to give me fuel for the discards to the forms I have out.  He also has a higher base health so potential for damage from healing has a bigger ceiling.  

I've used him in conjunction with Ra. Imbued Fire with a Flesh of the Sun God, then a know when to let loose for 28 damage to the enemy. Using his base power after that for 29 damage, it was a good feeling. Takes a bit of planning to pull off, but doing that would cause most villains to feel quite a bit of pain. As far as normal play, I just play him as normal, and flesh to iron is definitely the way to go so you don't end up knocking yourself out.

The Scholar's base power only gains 1 HP. I find that the real power of Mortal Form to Energy is with his other card plays, like Get Out of the Way! When you have enough forms up you can't afford to use the base power, you need card draw. So I don't think the Scholar of the Infinite really affects the powerful combos that way at all.

I just like how those two little Hp make you such a tastier target for highest ho as suddenly only Legacy, Haka and Sky-Scraper have more tham you. I still use Bring What You Need and Truth Seeker a lot more than the base power, but base power works well as soon as you got a Flesh to Iron. Though I usually wont double up on those as a bit of hurt is needed to get Mortal to Energy Running.

I've found that the main way Scholar of the Infinite affects the big combos is, because I play Flesh to Iron right away, he takes less or no damage, and therefore can't do much with Get Out Of The Way anyway. I end up using him more for support in that case -- using Proverbs and Axioms and Don't Dismiss Anything to help others get cards, heal up, etc.

In that context, his base power becomes a pretty solid 2 HP attack until he gets Truth Seeker out. If I do healing-based attacks with him, it's usually in a short burst (i.e., I've got a couple Keep Movings in hand and a Get Out Of The Way), not as a regularly sustainable thing.

Scholar of the Infinite is also one of the few heroes to have a positive interaction with forced discards. If you have a lot of Forms in play, you might grimace at the villain/environment deck asking more of you, but it can provide a nice boost to his base power all the same. 

I hand-picked a team of Argent Adept, Grandpa Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, Ra & Scholar of the Infinite to see how much damage the latter could do: 100 points or so in the 5th round (actually Spite had been knocked around a bit beforehand, so I'm not completely sure).

I built up his hand size to over 20, via multiple uses of Tachyon's power (with the assistance of AA & Legacy), and drawing cards like (Bolster Allies, Fleet of Foot, Know When to Hold Fast, Transmutative Recovery). On the killer turn those allies allowed extra uses of his base power after he played Know When to Turn Loose. The Imbued Fire/Flesh of the Sun God combo prevented the collateral damage; you might be able to substitute Omnitron-X for Ra if you know when Expect the Worst is atop your deck, but unless you also have one in your hard you won't be able to use the base power on his own turn without taking damage.

Inventive Preparation is also useful to the variant Scholar because it discards directly from his deck, boosting his base power. That also allowed Tachyon to fill her discard pile with Burst cards, in anticipation of what's usually more than one Lightspeed Barrage. The scary thing is she also had several Hypersonic Assaults, so his hand could have been even larger....