Long Live the Legion!, Part 2

My Legionnaires deck is crazy fun to play, but it is most definitely not a deck for beginners, nor is it for those who like to set a resource, recruit a character, and be done with it. The deck requires you to make numerous decisions, especially on the later turns, and your head will spin in circles while trying to form your characters on your initiative. There are multiple effects that give ATK boosts to characters when they are adjacent to someone else, so figuring out the optimal formation is incredibly challenging. If you are up to the challenges, though, you should enjoy playing it.

Here's the deck list I am using now, and then I'll go over all the cards.

Characters - 35 

[0 - 1]
1x Shrinking Violet, Legionnaire
[1 - 19]
3x Dream Girl, Legionnaire
3x Star Boy, Legionnaire
3x Triplicate Girl, Legionnaire * Non-Unique
1x Bouncing Boy, Legionnaire
1x Chameleon Boy, Legionnaire
1x Colossal Boy, Legionnaire
1x Element Lad, Legionnaire
1x Ferro Lad, Legionnaire
1x Invisible Kid, Legionnaire
1x Lightning Lass, Legionnaire
1x Phantom Girl, Legionnaire
1x Princess Projectra, Legionnaire
1x Shadow Lass, Legionnaire
0x Karate Kid, Legionnaire
0x Kid Quantum, Legionnaire
0x Matter-Eater Lad, Legionnaire
0x Sun Boy, Legionnaire
0x Timber Wolf, Legionnaire
[2 - 11]
3x Brainiac 5, Legionnaire
3x Cosmic Boy, Legionnaire * Founding Member
2x Lightning Lad, Legionnaire * Founding Member
1x Mon-El, Legionnaire
1x Superboy, Legionnaire
1x Supergirl, Legionnaire
[3 - 4]
3x Saturn Girl, Legionnaire * Founding Member
1x Ultra Boy, Legionnaire

Plot Twists - 17 

[2 - 10]
2x Founding Members
4x Legionnaires Attack!
4x Take Flight
[3 - 3]
3x Long Live the Legion!
0x The Ultimate Sacrifice
[4 - 4]
4x Legion Try-Outs, Legionnaire 

Locations - 7 

[2 - 3]
3x 30th Century Earth
[3 - 4]
2x A Legionnaire's Funeral
2x An Exclusive Club 

Equipment - 1 

[1]
1x Legion Flight Ring, Legionnaire * Unique

Shrinking Violet is the lone 0 drop. She has no ATK, so she needs someone or something to give her a boost, but there are plenty of ways to do that. You can easily get her up to 4 ATK by your kill turn. Normally you'd recruit her then, but you can recruit her earlier and keep her around with her evasion, which costs 1 endurance to use.

The most important 1 drops are Dream Girl and Star Boy. Dream Girl should normally not be recruited. You want to discard her and get back a free card. The deck has numerous effects that require discards, so she has lots of uses. Star Boy is this deck's version of Yellowjacket, Rita DeMara. Normally he would always be played with Boost to fetch another character.

Triplicate Girl is not that powerful, but she's a fun card to have in the deck. If there are three of her on the field, they each become a 4/1. You can also copy her effect with Chameleon Boy, and then they would all become a 5/1.

The two most powerful 1 drops are Colossal Boy and Princess Projectra. They are both good enough that during testing I had to go back and prevent Chameleon Boy from copying them. Colossal Boy is just a big body, especially by turn 5, when he becomes a 5/2 all on his own, before any other boosts. Princess Projectra is one of my favorite cards I've ever designed. In the comics, she can project illusions; here, she projects the illusion that she is team-attacking with another character as big as herself, even when attacking alone. You can easily boost her ATK to 5-9 on later turns, so she can often take down a 5 or 6 drop unassisted. Save both these guys for your kill turn.

Bouncing Boy is another one I couldn't allow Chameleon Boy to copy. On your next to last initiative, team attack him with someone else to bounce the opponent's largest character back to their hand. That will weaken their field and make it easier to survive the next turn and win on your next init. When stunned, Ferro Lad lets you ready another 1 drop character that has already attacked.

Phantom Girl can attack your opponent directly. She doesn't hit very hard, but she can do a little damage on off-inits, especially if you copy her effect with Chameleon Boy and team attack. Shadow Lass is used to give other characters a tiny ATK boost, and more importantly a way to hit the hidden area.

Invisible Kid is a fun character based on an obscure Young Avengers character called Speed in MUN. If you are in a team attack, and your opponent is about to brickwall, you can bring him into play to help push through the attack, then bounce him back to your hand. Lightning Lass's main function is to fetch her brother, Lightning Lad.

Element Lad is the last of the 1 drops that I normally use. He's basically the same as Jaime Reyes, Blue Beetle. He's here to give you an easy way to get the one equipment card. Kid Quantum is akin to Bouncing Boy, in that she's only really good on your next to last initiative.

Karate Kid is just a big hitter for use on later turns. Timber Wolf would be really good in a team attack with Ferro Lad, or with a Chameleon Boy who is copying his effect, since you could ready the one attacker who doesn't get stunned.

Matter-Eater Lad would be an MVP against certain decks, such as one that relied on the Fate Artifacts or Radioactive Man, but utterly worthless against most. Sun Boy does a little extra burn damage every time he gets stunned, which is nice, but not game-changing.

One of the decisions I made early on was to place special emphasis on the three founding members of the Legion--Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl. Their effects are some of the most important ones in the deck, and they each have a Leader ability that gives +1 ATK to any team attacker adjacent to them. This is one of the reasons that the formation step is so complicated with this deck. Cosmic Boy's other job is to play the role of Beetle, Armorsmith. He's one of the deck's main tutors. Note that in addition to getting characters with cost 2 or less, he can also get the 1 cost equipment, since it has the Legionnaire version. Lightning Lad takes the place of Poison Ivy, giving you a way to search your deck for locations. Keep in mind that if he's not actually recruited, you can't use his Boost to replace a resource.

Brainiac 5 is another key character card in the deck, and plays the role of Kyle Rayner. He can be used to fetch either of the two 3 drops, or more often Legion Try-Outs. (Those are the three cards with a cost of 3 or more that have the version Legionnaire.) Mon-El is one of the most important offensive weapons in the deck. You normally want to arrange to give him maximum ATK boost (i.e., the most you could give to any one character that turn), since he can attack twice per turn from turn 4 on. He's a good candidate to wear the Flight Ring, too, since he can't be stunned while attacking.

Like Mon-El, the Kryptonians can't be stunned while attacking. They can't attack twice as he can, but Supergirl can fetch her cousin, Superboy, and vice versa, just as Lightning Lass can fetch her brother.

Like the other two founding members, Saturn Girl is a key to the deck. She gives adjacent team attackers a boost, and more importantly she has Dr. Light's effect of bringing someone back from the pile for free. Ultra Boy is based on Marcus Daniels, Blackout. His job is to help you survive your last off-init. Most decks will only be able to do minimal damage against you, and if desired you can swing with anyone who is left in a team attack.

The most important plot twists in the deck are Legionnaires Attack!, which fills the role of Faces of Evil, and Legion Try-Outs, which mirrors Hard Sound Construct. It's pretty easy to get three copies of Legionnaires Attack in your row by your turn 5/6 initiative. Legion Try-Outs should normally be saved until your kill turn, unless you are on evens and really need the help.

The main tutor for the deck is Long Live the Legion! It can get any Legionnaires character card, at the cost of a discard (ideally Dream Girl). Founding Members can also get any character, but you have to exhaust a character for the effect. If you are getting a character with the Founding Member version, though, you can re-ready that character.

Take Flight is the only true attack pump in the deck. It can be used to give up to four characters +2 ATK for the turn. It's based on Wrecking Crew. A Legionnaire Has Fallen is based on Teen Titans Go, obviously. To be honest, I've never tested it in the deck, because I don't think it needs it. But you could try taking out the Triplicate Girls to make room for it if you wanted. It seemed like a good idea when I created it, but now I think it's a Win More card (i.e., it lets you do more damage, but probably doesn't win you any matches you would otherwise lose).

30th Century Earth is equivalent to Slaughter Swamp. Initially I gave this card an Avalon Space Station-like effect, but that was simply too good in combination with Dream Girl. An Exclusive Club is based on Birthing Chamber.

A Legionnaire's Funeral takes the place of X-Corp Amsterdam, which is used in X-Faces to fetch Faces of Evil. Here it searches for Legionnaires Attack!, usually. A strong case could be made for playing four copies of this card. Legion Flight Ring is similar to Blackbird Blue, but I had to tone it down. Initially it gave everyone +2 ATK, and that was way too good in this deck. Now it only gives up to four characters the boost. On the flip side, it is transferable, so you can use it with one character on turn 4 (Phantom Girl?) and another on turn 5 (Mon-El?). You'll notice that all the characters already have flight, but it seemed silly to create a flight ring that didn't give flight.

That's a lot of cards, but then that was the whole idea. I wanted the deck to be able to play almost all of the Silver Age Legionnaires. Mission accomplished. There are only five out of twenty-seven that don't normally get played.

If you build and play this deck, you'll have games where you think it is crazy overpowered, especially if you are on evens and survive to turn 6. I had a test match the other day against my Axis of Evil/IG Handfill deck, and on my turn 6 init my playmat was overflowing with characters. The final team attack to the face with eight characters did about 50 in damage, and I had trouble computing it all because each character had a different amount of ATK boost. Then again, the next test match was against my Hulk deck, which completely destroyed it on turn 5, hitting for 39 in damage from a single attack thanks to three Hulk Smash's and a Savage Beatdown. (Miek took away any possibility of reinforcement.) Compared to some of the truly broken decks that win consistently on turn 4, this deck's got nuthin. But when it does win, it sometimes does so in spectacular fashion.

I hope you like the deck. It was a blast to build, and it's equally fun to play. If you want to download the cards, you can find them here. MPC-ready versions are here. All the cards with colored borders are also available with plain ones, in case you don't like the colored ones, or want to mix and match.

Long Live the Legion!, Part 1

I started playing Vs while Crisis was the current set, so DLS was the first new DC set I got to see when it was released. I remember being very excited when it was announced, crestfallen when it actually appeared. The set was simply terrible. Darkseid's Elite was playable in Modern, but that was about it. Worst of all, the Legionnaires were just worthless.

A crushing blow. When I was a kid growing up, during the Silver Age of comic books, my favorite comics were generally the team-ups: Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, Justice Society, Teen Titans, and especially the Legion of Super-Heroes. I loved the variety of heroes, with their sometimes odd-ball super powers (Bouncing Boy!). And for some reason I cared that they were closer in age to me than older heroes like Batman, Superman and Captain America.

If you had asked me, prior to DLS, what team I most wanted UDE to showcase in a set, and have that team really done right, it would have been Legionnaires. They could only manage half of what I wanted.

The killer blow was in making all the characters cosmic. Understandable, from a flavor point of view, but ugh. What a terrible mechanic. The one good deck that used it was Skrulls-Inhumans, and then only because the deck gave you a good way to keep the cosmic counters on all the characters. With the Legion characters, UDE gave them underwhelming powers even when their counters were on. Seriously? Remove someone else's cosmic counter for the privilege of recruiting a 7/7 4 drop with a ho-hum ability?

A few weeks ago--before I got sidetracked by Bombshells--I was trying to think if there were any more custom Vs decks I wanted to create, and it occurred to me that I had a chance to right the cosmic wrong that UDE had done to my beloved Legion. The question was, how to do them right? My first thought was that there are a LOT of Legionnaires, and that the deck should allow you to play as many as possible. When the Legion fought a powerful enemy, like Validus, it won the battle by attacking with waves of superheroes fighting as a team. So, my next thought was that the deck should flood the field with lots of characters who generally took down much bigger opponents by means of team attacking.

When I thought about what such a deck would look like, I immediately realized that I was describing a mono-team version of X-Faces. If you aren't familiar with that deck, the basic idea was to team up X-Men with Masters of Evil, using Faces of Evil as the main team-up. Poison Ivy was used to fetch locations (X-Corp Amsterdam to get Faces, Birthing Chamber to get cards, Slaughter Swamp to manipulate the pile). Dr. Light (in the good old days, pre-ban) was used to bring characters onto the field from the pile. Hard Sound Construct was used to bring out additional characters for free, and Kyle Rayner was used to get it. Characters got ATK boost from Faces, Blackbird Blue, The Wrecking Crew, and maybe Cyclops, Slim.Tutoring came from Enemy, Yellowjacket, Rita DeMara, and Beetle, Armorsmith. The deck wanted odds. On turn 4 you would play Marcus Daniels to give all your characters reinforcement, to limit the damage you could take, then on 5 you would flood the field with attackers and swing for game.

It was always one of my favorite deck archetypes. There were lots of ways to build it, and variations on it worked in several different formats. In any case, it seemed like a perfect concept for my Legionnaires deck. I could give some of the key Legion members (Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5) the powers of Dr. Light, Poison Ivy, Yellowjacket, Beetle, and Kyle Rayner, and then most of the other team members could become 1-of attackers.

Another decision that I made early on was that I wanted to do a special futuristic looking card template for the deck, along the lines of what I did for my Asgardians deck. Mainly this was a matter of taking my Asgardians template and changing the fonts to something with more of a sci-fi look. For a little extra fun, I gave some of the cards colored borders, like this orange-bordered Triplicate Girl.

The other thing I did was to create a custom back for the cards, as I do with all my custom decks. This one looks particularly nice, I think.

That's enough background. In Part 2 I'll show you the cards and describe how the deck works.

Bombshells! Part 3

My original plan was to make only the Bombshells deck, but after looking at all the cool art I had found but never needed, I decided to turn the deck into a (very) mini set, with a good guys deck and a bad guys deck and a bunch of generic plot twists. Unfortunately, the bad guys are not really part of a coherent group in the comics, so I struggled to come up with a suitable name for their "team." My first attempt, Enemies of Justice, was just OK. Then I realized that in World War II, the "bad guys" (Germany, Italy, Japan) were known as the Axis Powers, so I decided to call them the Axis of Evil.

Once again, I decided to use an existing, old favorite deck as the archetype for this one, Injustice Gang Handfill. If you aren't familiar with the deck, the basic idea is this. Turn 3 is Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist, who prevents the opponent from playing more than one plot twist per turn starting on turn 4. Most important character in the deck. Turn 4 is The Joker, Headline Stealer, who prevents them from playing plot twists from their hand with less than cost X, where X is the number of cards in their hand. Turn 5 is Circe, Evil Enchantress, who burns them for that same X. Turn 6 is Scarecrow, Psycho Psychologist, who you play with boost, making them draw 3 cards, then you burn them for X again. You can read more about the deck here.

When it wins, it normally does so thanks to all the burn, combined with the opponent's inability to play all their plot twists. But it also relies heavily on two key plot twists. Power Siphon gives a defender -X/+X where X is again the number of cards in the opponent's hands. In later turns, it is easily a +10 DEF or more, and the opponent has to play as if you have one or two of these, even if you don't. On the flip side, All Too Easy gives an attacker +X/-X. My son likes to remind me of the time that he was playing IG Handfill against me, and he unleashed three of these babies and a Savage Beatdown while I had about a dozen cards in hand. Yeah, he won that one.

My Axis of Evil deck is pretty much a straightforward rendition of our IG Handfill deck. Here's the list:

Characters - 28 

[2 - 8]
4x Penguin, Iceberg Lounge Proprietor
4x Edward Nygma, Smartest Man in The Room
[3 - 6]
4x Crystal Frost, Nobody's Moll
2x Alexander Luthor, Charming Manipulator
[4 - 4]
4x Mistah J, The Master
[5 - 8]
4x Tenebrae, The Long Dead
4x Baroness Paula Von Gunther, Tenebrae Commander
[7 - 2]
1x Joker's Daughter, Witch in a Gingerbread House
1x Tenebrus, The Binder 

Plot Twists - 28 

[1 - 8]
4x A Dance in the Moonlight
4x Iceberg Lounge
[2 - 4]
4x The Nazi Menace
[3 - 12]
4x DC Bombshells
4x Krrkaathoom!
4x Tenebrae Bomb
[4 - 4]
4x Unite and Fight 

Equipment - 4 

[0 - 4]
4x Mask of the Joker

The preferred 2 drop is Edward Nygma. He's comparable to Stargirl/Captain Boomerang, but his effect can't be used until turn 3. His job is to limit the damage you can take and to put another card in their hand. Penguin is just a big body, assuming your opponent has more cards than you, which should always be the case when the deck is working correctly.

Crystal Frost, the main 3 drop, is the equivalent of Lex Luthor, Nefarious Philanthropist. whom I discussed above. If she and your 4 drop both get stunned on 4, you should seriously consider keeping her instead, because she's the one that "freezes" your opponent most by limiting their options. Alexander Luthor is a decent second choice, and does cause some of the same problems, but you have to activate him to get the effect. Useless on your init.

Mistah J is analogous to Joker, Headline Stealer. He and Crystal Frost together cause huge problems, because now the opponent can play only one plot twist per turn, and it has to be in their row. Even after Frost is gone, your opponent has to give careful thought as to what cards to set as resources.

There are two 5 drops, but whenever possible you want to play Baroness Paula Von Gunther (Circe) on 5 and Tenebrae (Scarecrow) on 6 with boost, so that he becomes a 12/12 and can inflict more damage. But I have certainly won games with  IG Handfill where I had to recruit those two out of order. There are no 6 drops because Tenebrae is ideally your 6.

Joker's Daughter (The Joker, Permanent Vacation) is the stronger of the two 7 drops, because you can double the number of cards in their hand, fueling your burn effects and doubling the power of certain key plot twists. If you make it to 7, you normally win for this reason. Tenebrus (Lex Luthor, Sinister Scientist) is a good play if you want to finish off your opponent with burn damage when he stuns your 7. By turn 7 they should have at least 20 cards in their hand unless you are playing a deck that has a really good way to empty their hand without playing plot twists, and you probably lose to those decks anyway.

Two of the plot twists used by this deck are ones shared with the Bombshells, DC Bombshells (Mobilize) and Unite and Fight (Savage Beatdown). The others are all specific to this one. The two most important ones boost your attack or defense based on the number of cards in the opponent's hand. Iceberg Lounge (Power Siphon) is the defensive pump. It's really annoying to throw 4 +5 ATK pumps at someone, only to have them pump out of it by playing two of these while you have a dozen cards in your hand. The mere threat of this card forces opponents to make sub-optimal attacks, just to insure that their attack step isn't completely wasted. Krrkaaathoom! (All Too Easy) is the offensive version. When the opponent's hand is full, anyone on your board can take down almost anyone on theirs.

The remaining plot twists are two cards to make the opponent draw and a tutor. A Dance in the Moonlight (Criminal Mastermind) is used to make your opponent draw an extra card at the start of each turn. Tenebrae Bomb is the rough equivalent of Evil Genius, which can be used only by exhausting a character named Lex Luthor. Since he isn't the main 3 drop in this deck, I decided to make this card work with any Axis character. This is probably the most significant difference between this deck and IG Handfill. The Nazi Menace (Secret Files) lets both players search their decks for an affiliated character. The fact that this card benefits your opponent, potentially, is irrelevant, because opponents rarely miss any drops against this deck. More likely to hurt them than to help, since the search is mandatory.

If you build both this deck and the Bombshells one, be prepared for this one to win most of the time. It's a tough match-up for an X-Mental style deck, although the last time I tested it, Bombshells barely won because I had gotten Crystal Frost off the board on turn 4, and on another turn I was able to use Sucoh Sucop (Only Human) against the Baroness. Even so, the Axis Powers still nearly prevailed. In general, this deck normally loses to rush decks, which can beat it before all the burn effects kick in, as well as to decks like Migga City that have good ways to get cards out of their hands.

You can download all the original cards here, while ready-to print (by MakePlayingCards.com) versions of them are here, along with those for the Bombshells deck.