‘So it’s a spin the wheel deck?’

That is what my friend said to me when I tried to explain what my hero does.

"Well you've got to look at it this way: with Kayo you always discard a 6, but with Levia half my deck will be non-6’s so I won’t always, but in return I will die at random.”

I was stretching the truth for a laugh, my Levia deck (running 2 red Bare Fangs) actually had twenty-six 6’s.

‘But how good is your deck if it never bricks?’

‘Broken beyond belief, but I must include that if I do miss or brick my deck will kill me. Anyway, I should already be guaranteed a qualification from World Tour points so I’m playing Levia for a bit of fun.’

But as I said in my winners interview at Calling San Diego, it is the year of winning. And even on Levia, I achieved just that.

On the Friday the week before, at Calling San Diego, I was chatting with Man Sant who asked me why I wasn't playing Levia, and I replied surely she is soft to both the fast and slow decks of the format. Her Blood Debt gives fatigue decks inevitability while her initial struggle to fuel her graveyard meant she would fall behind in the aggro race. He told me that while she does struggle filling the yard–lacking some of the yard positive plays she has in cc– Howl from Beyond made the slow decks I spoke of her best matchups. I asked if Bare Fangs could provide a yard positive, above rate play (now curious with only one problem to solve if Levia could be good). She has arguably the best equipment suite in the format, so if I could address her lows then she has the highs to be a great deck.

Friday went on and I registered Kano in the Calling. My teammates all selected other decks citing the inconsistency of Kano; silly them, I thought, Kano is great; I won last weekend with him and I’ll do it again to show them. But then I sat down for round 1 and was promptly blasted by a Briar, unable to do lethal as I Kanoed into not one, not two, but three blues off the top over the course of the first turn cycle. The Briar was out of range and they promptly killed me. Tilted, and with 25 minutes still on the clock to ruminate, I started to think ‘well that’s fine, I can always play the showdown. After all, that's how London went: bad Saturday into good Sunday.

But then I snapped out of it. I was only 0-1, no reason to doom yet. I even jokingly said to a friend now that others were starting to finish their round that I’d decided to play Levia in my next event ‘as a motivational tool’.

I didn’t lose another round on day 1, and ultimately won the Calling, but what of my promise to play Levia? I’m nothing if not a man of my word, so I started playing games with Levia on Talishar in the airport waiting for my flight home. I was excited to try out this (old) new hero.

The deckbuilding process

So how did the development of the deck go? My first draft was made by scrolling through Fabrary and I completely forgot about the new d-react she gets access to and generally was struggling bricking due to Blood Debt, the high number of cards which didn’t have Go Again, and those that didn’t banish cards. I thought I was innovating by granting access to good plays at the start of the game that didn’t require cards in graveyard, but I had gone too far and was struggling to be functional as the game got going.

I also learned some important matchup specifics. I played a game against a Kano where I had a commanding life lead due to the large amounts of Spellvoid and burst damage from my deck, but because I couldn’t block cards into my graveyard, I fell behind. I lost to a Kayo as I kept losing clashes and was giving them agilities all game, while my deck floundered. 

Then I received a message from Man Sant with a link to a Levia list he had been working on, this gave me a point of comparison and I immediately used the compare tool on Fabrary to see what the differences in our lists were. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our blue counts (which I had completely guessed at) were the same, but his list had several card choices that had gone over my head completely. He told me Pound of Flesh was too cute, and I would be better served playing Convulsions as a finisher and as I looked through many of our other differences, I could see the rationale to his list.

I didn’t copy everything, perhaps this was hubris, but I was sure some of my ideas had to be good. I couldn’t quite see the vision of blue Barraging and liked my idea of running Bare Fangs a bit too much. In particular, I liked the ability to stock the graveyard with an early bare fangs before I had to worry about blood debt, as my game into Kano had shown me the dangers of running out of graveyard without easy access to blocking.

I spent some time on a cycle of playing games and tweaking the list until I felt happy with the deck’s ability to be functional, the main challenge I was facing was balancing between having enough ways to banish that I wouldn’t die due to being unable to turn off blood debt while still having enough non-banish dependent plays that on my first turn I would have something to attack my opponent with even if they didn’t let me block to fill my graveyard. I also came to really appreciate the buzzard helm, helping me fill the graveyard and giving me a way to ‘fix’ my hand when it was non-functional (albeit with some randomness).

Ultimately, I settled on a list that would be using red Buckwild to try and offer early non-banish dependent plays which would hopefully not be too punishing once I had to banish a 6 each turn as I could play it with Go Again into a banisher possibly by overpitching a yellow 6 power with a blue or by using one of my 5 blue 6’s. I still had my Bare Fangs but was quite concerned about how they would perform into aggro decks, as Buckwild could still block once I was forced onto a smaller hand while I would simply have to hope not to draw Bare Fangs later in the game.

The Deck:

Levia’s equipment suite is the core of our deck and the thing that drew me to it in the first place. To illustrate my point, let me offer up some other examples from the SAGE format: 

• Kano plays a number of 1 or 2 value pieces with just his arms being worth 3 and a weapon which lets him convert at rate (just 1 resource to 1 damage) for around 7 total value in equips (though Kano, in general, can be hard to quantify). 
• Briar does a bit better, with all four pieces converting for 4 (chest in connection with Star Fall) for 8 total value. 
• Kayo does the best of the big three with around 11 total value* (*ap on boots valued at 2) plus his weapon going 1 above rate each time its swung to get him to around 13 in most matchups. 

By contrast all five pieces of Levia’s suite are worth 3 (the boots are a little convoluted but I think it’s a defensible valuation). With around 15 points in her equipment alone, Levia starts each game with a value lead, often a crushing one. Viewed this way, the key to building Levia then appears to be how to build a deck that will be good enough at converting on offence that our opponents can’t come back from our initial lead and start to trade up on us as we stumble due to the decks hoops and inconsistencies.

So the equipment was rock solid. The problem, though, was threefold. First, Levia lost too much value at the start of the game due to being literally unable to play a card until three cards got into her graveyard. In the mid-game, she would struggle to gain efficient access to action points to deploy her best play lines. And finally, at the end, she’d be constrained due to her need to manage Blood Debt.

Problem 1: Zugzwang

Picture this: you won the dice roll, you chose to go 2nd, and your opponent just passed turn. You sigh as you look at your hand and not a single card is legal to play. This devastating game state is what I saw all too often when I started working on the deck, and is what primed me to fall in love with a card that looks laughably bad: Tribute to the Legions of Doom. This card, alongside Buckwild, Clash of Agility, Deadwood rumbler, and Wrecker Wromp (yes we must accept that sometimes we cast Wrecker Wromp in this deck), gives us ten cards that can function as a turn 0 play. This at least gives us a fighting chance of having one in our opening hand (70%) and if we add in the 4 Graveling Growls (as without an alternative using our boots to swing Hell Hammer into a Graveling turn 0 is acceptable) we go up to an 83% chance to have a functional opening hand. While far from ideal, this made me feel I had a sufficient chance to convert on turn 1 if I went 2nd and my opponent didn’t attack.

Problem 2: ONE. LINK. WIDER.

Most flesh and blood players have probably noticed at some point that most of Levia’s cards’ stats are just insane: 2 for 7, 1 for 7, 1 for 6, 3 for 9. She has some of the best vanilla damage cards in the game. However, as you may have also noticed, not many curve out cleanly with a single blue (Dread Screamer and Endless Maw are shining examples of what levia cards ought to aspire to be). Thus, to extract maximum efficiency, we must get access to some extra action points to play our turns. Some lists lean on Smashback Alehorn, and I do see the appeal as it also fills the graveyard– however, I had reservations about adding 2 blocks to my blue base after already running two non-blocks. Instead, I wanted to go down the Clash route. I damn near maxed out on cards which prompted a Clash for agility, as they seemed to fit the exact curve of what the deck wanted to do: keep three card hands with two above-rate attacks and one pitch card. I did also have Buckwild reporting for duty here as well, as I could often overpitch a yellow 6-power alongside a blue to facilitate Go Again on Buckwild and finish on a 2 cost (or we have 5 blue 6’s to enable Buckwild).

Problem 3: Only Closers can be Kings

Believe it or not, I often struggled with gamestates where I would take my opponents full hand. They would dejectedly pass back to me holding a full grip, expecting their impending demise, only for me to send a paltry 6 damage. This problem proved somewhat impossible to fully eliminate, though it did prompt me to run one Writhing Beast Hulk (and indeed a second copy of this card may be in order). But between our copies of Buckwild and Dread Screamer allowing us to take their whole hand, and three Dominate sources, I found this problem too was manageable. It also provided an additional gameplay challenge. For other decks, a line that wins in the turn cycle and one that ‘merely’ strips the opponent’s entire hand are functionally the same. With Levia, I had to really search for lethal, and plan my arsenal and graveyard to make sure I could finish the game if I did not find it.

It turned out the one thing I was most concerned about was a non-issue. Man Sant said to me that the beauty of Howl from Beyond is in the matchups where you need a weapon you still have one, it’s just in your deck instead of on the board. He could not have been more correct. Into the fatigue decks, which give us ample time and space to overcome the initial awkwardness of drawing a Howl in our hand, we can sail to an easy victory on the resource sinking, power spiking, and graveyard-filling features of this card.

To speak to the rest of the sideboard, I divided it into two categories: for matchups where we are blocking, and matchups where they are blocking. For example, against Briar I would bring in the two Clash of agility, the one Test of Agility, the two Engulfing Shadows, the one Pummel, and one Arcane Polarity. Versus other aggro decks, the Arcane Polarity can be one copy of whatever looks like it would be best in the matchup– an Agile Windup can be nice for some turn 0 equity and as a resource card, or a Bare Fangs can come in if you are feeling lucky that it won’t appear at the wrong moment and cost you the game.

When it comes to fatigue, you should bring almost exactly the opposite set of cards: two Bare Fangs, two Windups, two Howls and then dealer's choice for last slot. I personally like one Clash of Agility, as I shy away from resolving Pummel in these matchups so I don’t walk headlong into a defense reaction, and the Howls can make it difficult for us to banish 6-power attacks when I need to (though Ebon Fold can mitigate this risk). One caveat to this strategy is the semi-fatigue decks, like DGA, which do a combination of pressuring and fatiguing. Into them, the Clashes of Agility are still welcome, but you also need Howl so you end up siding a bit differently from what's described above (+three agility clashers, +two Howl, then a toss-up between Engulfing if you think they are going to be primarily pressuring and Bare Fangs if you think you will have enough space to navigate the lack of block value).

The weird matchups are Kano (of course) and Kayo (as he keeps beating me in clashes!):

Into Kano, filling the graveyard can be challenging so I like to bring one Howl even though the game doesn't always last super long (it also helps convert our hand without our trusty Clashes of Agility). Beyond that, I also bring the Polarity (duh), the Windups, Pummel, and the Bare Fangs’.

Into Kayo I bring the Pummel, the Bare Fangs’, the Agile Windups, and the Engulfing Shadows. I had been warned early on that Bare Fangs and Pummel (especially red Pummel) could not co-exist in your deck. The pummel reduces the consistency of Bare Fang’s +2 buff and the Bare Fangs is an unreliable Pummel target due to its proclivity for discarding the very Pummel you were about to cast. To round it out, neither card could turn off Blood Debt. However, against Kayo, I simply felt we had to take the risk as anything less would lead to us getting out-valued without access to consistent agility creation.

I Took Levia to a ProQuest:

I showed up to the event with 0 expectations, I was already guaranteed my invite from World Tour points, so I had just gone to see some friendly faces and have a blast on Levia. I had no paper games with the deck (my friend Dyson had incredibly kindly put the deck together as I wasn’t playing during Monarch and so lacked the Levia bulk). I had an absolute blast playing the deck! 

In round 1, I paired into a fatigue Enigma. Straight out of the gate and I got to use my fun non-shadow cards (including both copies of Bare Fangs) to fill up my graveyard without incurring too heavy of a Blood Debt, I took only two pings of 1 Blood Debt (first blood!) and had Blood Debt turned off one turn by my opponent’s Pass Over! Ultimately, I found my Howls and ended up counter-fatiguing the Enigma once every card I spent from deck was doing 12 damage.

Round 2 I paired into a Kayo, one of my hardest matchups made harder by the drawing of a hand with two red 2-cost attacks, 1 Buckwild and 1 blue which was not a 6! No worries, I thought, one must believe in their deck when they play Levia and I blocked with the Buzzard helm, trusting I would draw a 6-power resource card and discard one of the reds. One thing you must know about me at this point is that when resolving draw + discard at random effects, I do not look at the card I draw. I simply take the top card of my deck face down and add it to my hand, shuffle my hand, and present it to my opponent to pick my discard. So imagine the rollercoaster of emotion as I flip up a yellow 6! I had been lucky enough to draw precisely the card I had hoped to draw, but not lucky enough to hold onto it. My opponent said ‘good luck you discarded a six power’ to which I squeaked out a sigh of agreement with a pained grimace.

Round 3: I faced a Briar and we had a competitive back and forth that ultimately came down to me drawing a hand that was unable to turn off Blood Debt, but which had a Bare Fangs, a blue and a Pummel. I blocked with the 4th card and dropped down to 3 life– meaning Blood Debt would kill me were the game to progress to the end of my turn– and sent the bare fangs, shuffling the Pummel with the top card of my deck. My opponent picked wrong, sending a 6-power to my graveyard and keeping the Pummel in my hand which I then used my chest piece to play, winning the game right before I succumbed to the debt of blood I owed.

The rest of my games were not nearly as exciting as these first three, but still plenty enjoyable. Many times I would use Buzzard helm to take a gamble on improving my hand. Many times I got to convert three cards into 13 value by sending a 2-cost into a-1 cost. And while a not-insignificant amount of luck was required, the deck did impress me with its power. Over the course of the event, I triumphed against a wide range of the format, beating two Briars, one Lexi, one Kano, one Fai, one Kayo, and one Enigma. 

Bans

Last Monday LSS released a sweeping set of changes for the Silver Age format, these bans hit virtually every deck that has been performing well (and left Levia completely unaffected). I anticipate the new top dog to be Kayo which leads me to want to lean away from the Clash package and more towards a list that runs 4 copies of pummel to disrupt the opponent as Kayo’s hands become a lot less premium when we stop him from sending 2 cost - claw - 2 cost. Running Pummels is especially effective as our chest piece enables us to pummel a 2 cost while only pitching a single card and Humble is a sideboard option that can devastate Kayo on its own or when paired with a pummel. As I turn towards a more Pummel-centric version of the deck I fear it may be time to put Bare Fangs on the back burner, but only time will tell.

While the deck is not for the faint of heart, requiring you to take calculated risks with a stone poker face, and I am not sure I could stomach playing it at the Pro Tour, I greatly enjoyed the challenge of navigating the unique gameplay patterns of Levia. 

I hope you’ll give her a try as well!