Digital player here, just unlocked Santa Guise!
My first thoughts: Santa Guise offers one of the most efficient card draw and play engines in the game, with cards drawn and flipped = (powers spent on Gifts-mas -H) *H, where H = number of heroes. Given that he also has a harder time applying multiple form cards to himself than vanilla Guise, he is a natural combination with Argent Adept, as Inventive Preparation and Alacritious Subdominant allow loads of out of turn plays and Vernal Sonata allows Guise to recur vitally important cards like Best Card Ever! and I Can Do That, Too! (which is amazing with Argent Adept), while AA is perhaps the most grateful of all heroes to have his opening game dramatically advanced in speed.
I've been running him with teams slotted as follows:
1. America's Greatest Legacy
2. Team Leader Tachyon or Scholar (or Dark Visionary in certain MUs)
3. Santa Guise
4. Argent Adept
This way I can build gifts with AGL and Santa for a couple turns and then right before AA's third turn have AA flip 5 cards, which greatly accelerates his buildup, at which point AGL goes from building up Gifts-mas to activating AA. (Inspiring Supertonic can make this go faster, if present.)
Scholar is here for the Vernal Sonata / Don't Dismiss Anything Combo, as well as Proverbs and Axioms (which, with a partnership with AGL, can build and flip gifts in the same turn), and Gifts-mas really helps the Scholar move quickly to the "I have my whole deck in hand and am cycling Proverbs and Axioms and Don't Dismiss Anything as fast as Inventive Preparation and my own play speed will allow" I am extremely grateful for the app when this happens, as I frequently lose track of whose turn it is given how many actions I'm playing. He also, with Argent Adept and Rhapsody of Vigor, opens up Guise & Scholar's Mortal Form to Energy / Um, Yeah, I'm That Guy combo (mentioned earlier with Tempest in place of Argent Adept), which is even stronger with Syncopated Onslaught.
Despite these extremely strong options, though, I'm not sure Scholar is better for Santa Guise than Team Leader Tachyon in a general sense. Guise really likes cards, and having Fleet of Foot and Team Leader (both in their own right and as tools for other characters to dig for their draw cards) really helps. Still sorting through it.
Other tricks:
- you can grab an instrument with Lemme See That, activate Inspiring Supertonic on Argent Adept, and re-activate that same instrument using Argent Adept. Wonderful if you grab the Lyra and double-dip Inspiring Supertonic and Inventive Preparation.
- Heroic Intervention + Uh, Yeah, I'm That Guy makes all characters immune to damage from all sources, including Proverbs and Axioms. (As does Heroic Intervention and Alchemical Redirection)
- Um, Yeah, I'm That Guy on Legacy with Inspiring Presence and Surge of Strength really helps Guise's numerous small damage outputs add up, and also synergizes well with plinky little damage from Mortal Form to Energy. While I know Fixer offers potentially much stronger options for pure damage, Legacy is a really nice combo of damage boost, tanking, card draw, and lockdown. Also, every time you copy Legacy while Inspiring Presence is up, everyone heals for 1.