March Madness Deckcheck: League of Assassins

by CaptainSpud

I’ve been playing League since a month or so after DOR came out, mostly in the form of my beloved My Beloved deck. No, that’s not a typo. I’ve always liked the League’s brutal form of control, and was a mite disappointed when the revamp of the League turned out to be more oriented toward beats. So when it came time to put together the League deck for the March Madness event, I leaned pretty heavily on the old DOR cards; they’re much controllier than the DCL mini-team, and they’re much commonier than the Ra’s legend stuff.

That’s right: commonier.

Here’s the list I eventually settled on:

1-drops
3x Josef Witschi

1-drops
2x Talia - Beloved Daughter
2x Hassim

1-drops
3x The Mad Dog
3x Ubu

4-drops
2x Ra’s - Eternal Nemesis
2x Ra’s Al Ghul- Immortal Villain

5-drops
3x Bane - Ubu

6-drops
2x Shrike

7-drops
1x Nyssa Raatko

8-drops
1x Ra’s Al Ghul - The Demon’s Head

Plot Twists
2x Entangle
1x New Mutations

Locations
1x Plague Zone
1x Battleworld
1x Coast City
1x Espionage
1x Battleworld
2x Lazarus Pit
3x Mountain Stronghold
3x Flying Fortress

Total: 40 cards

The first thing to notice is that I have no location search (with all of it being rare), and yet I stuck with the tradition of a location toolbox. There are two reasons for this: first, I’m dumb. And second, the smaller deck size for this event causes your 1-ofs to pop up much more often than they would normally, so a 1-of here is almost like a 2-of normally– not guaranteed, but it’ll pop up often enough that you can hope for, if not quite plan for, its appearance.

The character curve is pretty standard “old school” League. Josef at 1 has always been a personal favorite, as he can force some rather uncomfortable discards on your opponent if their hand is low when you use him. Mad Dog is a great addition at 3, finally giving the League a respectable turn 3 play when they miss their early drops. I went with a split of the two Ra’s versions at 4; Immortal Villain is generally the preferred option, but when facing a deck that is heavily location dependant (Checkmate, Unaffiliated, any of the loner strategies, etc), the hard location lockdown can be brutal. Bane is simply one of the best 5s ever printed, Shrike’s a passable 6 (Sensei’s kinda boring if you’re not using the old Merlyn), and Nyssa’s a respectable wall on 7, especially in Golden where you have Lazarus Pits to keep stunned lowbies around to feed to her. Turn 8 is the incomparable Ra’s - The Demon’s Head, who more or less guarantees the win if your support cards haven’t completely abandoned you.

Search cards are a rare bonus in this format (Few teams have a non-rare search stamped to them), so I’d be pretty stupid not to go with a full 3-of. Reusable pump is also welcome, so Flying Fortress was an easy decision to make. Lazarus Pit is cold storage for Nyssa, and also doubles as a recovery card on turn 8 once your resource progression has hit its apex. The rest of the locations are things I figured would rarely be dead cards– I tried to stay away from true toolbox locations and pick green that has at least some function in most games.

The plot twists are of course pretty sparse– Entangle for the ghetto Paralysis, and New Mutations to make up for the League’s sometimes maddening lack of flight and range. Mutations should probably have more copies, but I could only find one spare when I put the deck together. :/

And that’s about it. The League definitely have the chops to get through the quarters or even semis without too many problems, and past that it’ll just be a matter of the matchups. Any deck with a strong early game can be hard for the League to deal with, especially one packing board control effects to put the League player in a nasty Loyalty lock.

Here’s hoping Marvel Knights get knocked out before the League need to worry about that.