Leona: Counter-Control Fire Aggro Turn Two Waaaaaaaaaaagh!

[player1402297 0]

Deck Updated: I wanted to increase the cc's a little, in order to accommodate Reverse Flayer/Price of Foolishness (and use these to get round the Genocide symbol difficulties).

 

Character:
1x **Leona** (Fire/Earth/Life)
 
Attacks: 12
4x 5/2 Ira Spinta (Fire)
4x 4/2 Gaishiki Lunar Rebellion (Fire/Earth/Evil)
4x 5/2 Reverse Flayer (Fire/Earth/Evil)

Actions: 16
4x 4/4 The Price of Foolishness (Earth/Fire) 
4x 2/5 Kung Fu Training (Fire/Evil/Life)
4x 3/5 Rejection (Life)
4x 4/5 The Anti ‘K (Life)

Assets: 4
4x 0/6 Owlface (Infinity)

Foundations: 28
4x 0/5 Tae Kwan Do Zephyr (Fire/Earth)
4x 1/4 Manifest Destiny (Fire/Death/Evil)
4x 1/6 Makai High Noble (Fire)
4x 1/6 Blinding Rage (Fire/Earth)
4x 2/5 Bounce Back (Fire/Death/Life)
4x 2/5 Evil Plans (Fire/Evil)
4x 3/4 Bitter Rivals (Fire/Evil)

Sideboard: 8
1x *Zi Mei* (Fire/Evil) or **Morrigan** (Fire/Death) or *Karin* (Fire/Evil)
3x 7/2 Big Cyclone (Earth)
4x 2/4 Amy's Assistance (Fire/Earth)

This is a prototype. It hasn’t been tweaked yet, hence why the card numbers are probably a little clunky and the card choices haven’t been finalised.

The aim of the deck is to muller control decks into the ground. The card choices are focussing on destruction, disruption, anti-cc’hack, anti-Rejection and anti-negation… all while actually hitting your opponent and going for an early-game victory.

The Fire-base for this is very much taken from Ross (Speedsta’s) experiments with Block 2 Fire Aggro as counter-control, trying to modify things for Block 3 (and dropping the cc’s down to 2 from 3 (cough…Chain Throw/Absurd…cough)).

The anti-control has come at probably the expense of mass momentum generation and damage pumps. I played around with Leona last set using the Reverse Flayer-Big Cyclone combo (pushed through with ***-Glare). It was fun, with 40 damage Cyclones flying around, but the high difficulties of cards seemed a litle too high sometimes.

One advantage to i-Spin, GLR and Flayer is they all share mid, so can be damage pumped from Leona's E:

Anti 'K really is an action here. They can Owlface it into play, but the chances of you playing it on your turn are remote. TBH it wouldn't even be an option, were it not for the symbol sharing with Rejection and it's first turn potential.

The foundation base is really intended for meta. While the deck is meant for an early-win, I want to actually be able to take on control in the mid-to-late game. Between GLR, i-Spin, Blinding Rage and Makai High Noble, hopefully Owlface should be fairly well licked.

Manifest Destiny should help late game. Although the deck is mono-Fire, the other symbols are mentioned for Manifest interactions running out of both Leona and Zi Mei.

Sideboard-wise the Big Cyclone’s are definitely keepers. The rest of the sideboard is an attempt to switch to anti-aggro. Sideboard character-wise, I’m not sure yet which one of the three (or any other character you can suggest with Fire and Rejection (Morrigan is a special case) and Manifest chains) may be best. Maybe Zi Mei as damage pump (out-speed aggro), Morrigan as redux/soak or Karin as anti-Spike?

Speaking of Zi Mei, the main reason she's not fronting this deck is that I just don't like her. Tried her out in Death patch in a 40x 5cc+ deck... she hated me and constantly failed cc's on aggro turns. Thinking about it, I might just take her out of the sideboard entirely, put her on a yellow brick road and drop a house on her.

One thing I didn’t realise until looking down the deck list… apart from Owlface, i-Spin and Amy’s, there are very few “chase” cards in the deck. Most of it is common/uncommon which is definitely a good thing.

Suggestions would be very much welcome.
 

[Dokurorider 0]

If you decide to go with Reverse Flayer, The Price of Foolishness might be a better choice than Genocide. I messed around with an Earth/Fire Leona deck before set 11 and Foolishness worked pretty well. Turn 2  use Leona's form, play Flayer, enhance with foolisness hopefully checking a 5 or better, now your next flayer or Lunar rebellion gets +7 speed and +10 damage (plus whatever else you have in your staging area).

[player1402297 0]

Dokurorider said:

 

If you decide to go with Reverse Flayer, The Price of Foolishness might be a better choice than Genocide. I messed around with an Earth/Fire Leona deck before set 11 and Foolishness worked pretty well. Turn 2  use Leona's form, play Flayer, enhance with foolisness hopefully checking a 5 or better, now your next flayer or Lunar rebellion gets +7 speed and +10 damage (plus whatever else you have in your staging area).

 

 

 

Oh I like that a lot!

Not 100% sure on the difficulty curve/pool clogging with that combo for this deck (Flayer at 5, Price at 5, attack at ~6). If the deck can handle a 5-5-6 that sounds like it could get very violent. Worry is that 5-5-6 could easily become a 5-5-4(KFT)-7 and very reliant on the first Flayer. In comparison Genocide is a consistent 6 pump at 4 diff. It's not as great in combo with Flayer, but it's less difficulty, more utility and more spammable.

Thanks, some food for thought and some thinking to do.

[quarzark 0]

actually, it would be dependent on your turn 1. Which you would want to pick a foundation heavy hand, spam out foundations, then hit into them.

My vote goes for Reverse Flayer for that last attack slot. It's just that **** good, and also works well with Leona.

also, Genocide doesn't have fire.

[player1402297 0]

quarzark said:

 

actually, it would be dependent on your turn 1. Which you would want to pick a foundation heavy hand, spam out foundations, then hit into them.

My vote goes for Reverse Flayer for that last attack slot. It's just that **** good, and also works well with Leona.

also, Genocide doesn't have fire.

 

 

 

Aye, turn two's often depend on opening turns and good turn two hands. Three foundations turn one (2-1-0 likely) and you've got a decent shot at a turn two... this is dependant though on opponents Rejections, Amy's, cc'hack, disruption, reversals and the other 1000000000001 things that can slow you down. Even so, turn two's are fun and do happen.

Thanks for the catch on the Genocide slot. I've run it out of Earth all the times before. Checked it worked off Fire/Earth attacks, forgot about the strangeness of the symbol spread.

With both you and Doku going with Reverse Flayer and given the Genocide chain, think I might take a look at the Flayer-Price of Foolishness combo, see how that pans out. It's even more tempting given Flayer shares attack zones with i-Spin and GLR...

 

 

Thanks.

[guitalex2008 0]

If the foundations are Fire-based, I'd consider A Year's Difference.  To me, that card MUST always go in Leona.  Make sure you don't take OUT Bitter Rivals, you need them both.

Example, Spinta, E with A Year's Difference.  This means both players draw 8 cards, then you return to your handsizes, putting whatever you don't want back on top of the deck.

The idea is to grab perhaps another Spinta, or some other attack (if you have enough speed up), then set your control check then any attack for Leona's ability.  Then proceed to pump damage to high hell, Leona E, speed up and kill.

Problem?  Needs moar Distractible to deal with Rejection.

[B-Rad1234 0]

I'd just like to point out... That's a LOT of 2's in the deck. With the last three sets that have come out Fire's gotten a few good and potentially fairly cheap 3 check attacks such as:

 

Mirror Fan Strikes (Rare)

Moon Slash (Common)

 

From older sets:

 

Akuma's Hadoken (Rare)

Senkutai (Rare)

 

Also yeah A Year's Difference is a MUST in a Leona deck. It has mediocre stats at best, but the ability to edit what you reveal with Leona's ability is just amazing.

 

I remember I made a Leona deck with Reverse Flayer and Diving Wind Kick Throw. It was kinda funny through 34 damage Wind Kicks at folks. And it was all cause of A Year's Difference.

 

 

 

[player1402297 0]

guitalex2008 said:

If the foundations are Fire-based, I'd consider A Year's Difference.  To me, that card MUST always go in Leona.  Make sure you don't take OUT Bitter Rivals, you need them both.

Example, Spinta, E with A Year's Difference.  This means both players draw 8 cards, then you return to your handsizes, putting whatever you don't want back on top of the deck.

The idea is to grab perhaps another Spinta, or some other attack (if you have enough speed up), then set your control check then any attack for Leona's ability.  Then proceed to pump damage to high hell, Leona E, speed up and kill.

Problem?  Needs moar Distractible to deal with Rejection.

 

I'm not 100% sold on A Year's Difference. It does allow you draw and stacking, but it's also allowing the opponent draw and stacking. Currently TKD Zephy and KFT deal with Rejection, but Distractible is very, very cool (and rolls a 5!). Gonna give it a go in place of Anti'K (which isn't achieving full potential here) and see how it works out.

[player1402297 0]

B-Rad said:

 

I'd just like to point out... That's a LOT of 2's in the deck. With the last three sets that have come out Fire's gotten a few good and potentially fairly cheap 3 check attacks such as:

 

Mirror Fan Strikes (Rare)

Moon Slash (Common)

 

From older sets:

 

Akuma's Hadoken (Rare)

Senkutai (Rare)

 

Also yeah A Year's Difference is a MUST in a Leona deck. It has mediocre stats at best, but the ability to edit what you reveal with Leona's ability is just amazing.

 

I remember I made a Leona deck with Reverse Flayer and Diving Wind Kick Throw. It was kinda funny through 34 damage Wind Kicks at folks. And it was all cause of A Year's Difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meh, yes it is 12x 2cc's but that isn't a problem at all. I've been running 2cc's en masse since death Ruru back in SNK base set (Roundhouse Kick, Spin Drive Smasher, Enlil's Punishment). Provided you know you are playing 2cc's and you have a difficulty/control curve that can handle them, it really isn't a big deal. At GenCon UK last year I ran 14x 2cc's in the Ladies Night tournament (picking up only one loss to Ibuki).

GLR, i-Spin and Flayer are all amazing and all combine good damage output with destruction/game ending abilities. They're all definitely worth playing.

[quarzark 0]

I'm really curious how this deck has worked out in playtesting.

[player1402297 0]

quarzark said:

I'm really curious how this deck has worked out in playtesting.

hehe, I'll let you know next week. We've err... kind of been snowed in this week, making rail transport impossible (hence no Sheffield cards). After next Sat, should have had the chance for a couple of hardcore test sessions proper.

[Ultimo2 0]

Wow, this is a really cool deck.

First of all I admire your courage to run so many 2 checks haha, something I would never dream of doing.

I always thought Leona was a joke with 14 health, but I now understand how she can be viable with 8hs and your setup.  I was really looking forward to hearing how your deck played through, any updates?  I would like to try a build similar to this and i'll let you know how it goes, however it would be more budget meaning no playset of olcadan's or i-spinta's.

[tannerface 0]

I've noticed that you have absolutly no use for momentum. Mabye try running transference since you already have evil plans.

[Ultimo2 0]

Which order do Price of Foolishness and Reverse Flayer trigger on the next attack? The order you play the E's? Meaning play Price of Foolishness first and then Reverse Flayer E?