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.
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.
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.
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.
2 comments:
Question: When exporting from MSE, how do you adjust the resolution of the final product?
I assume you are asking because my images are larger (750x1050) than the usual MSE output (500x700)? If so, that's because I created a custom template with 750x1050 as the working size. The only thing you can really do to help image quality with the standard templates is to output as PNG files rather than JPG.
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