Playing Every TMNT Character - Leonardo
Hello and welcome back to Undefeated at Locals! This week I played Leonardo, The Leader on the All symbol in my quest to play every TMNT character in Universus. Like all three of his brothers, Leo is an incredibly fun character design, I always enjoy self-mill for value decks and having the ability to pick up the right card offensively or defensively is really interesting. Where he suffers is not having a good symbol like Fire for this effect. Due to that, I think he is probably the “weakest” of the four brothers but still very entertaining to play.
I built the deck on the All symbol mostly in order to have access to Leaving the Bebop and some of Vash’s kit from the Trigun Stampede Challenger Deck, getting to run Turn It Up was also a plus as I love me some Present Mic cards. The goal of the deck is to mill as many individual times as possible in order to stack big damage, while having as many of the milled cards as possible with an on-mill response. Attack wise we have Setting the Standard to make everything start as a 4/4, Rising Uppercut to hit them on their turn, and then Forward Flip Slash, Merciful Volley, and Turn it Up which all have more mill effects. Foundations like Brotherly Love, Extra Cheese, and Public Support all respond on the mill effect, Ands Leaving The Bebop both mills and draws cards. I took the deck to our weekly standard tournament at Kobolds Keep. Now, did it work? Short answer, no it did not. Read on for the long answer.
In round 1 I paired into a newer player running a Godzilla Challenger deck upgraded with a bunch of stuff from the Cowboy Bebop Challenger and some various bulk from the store. We played 2 rounds, both of which I lost. Godzilla feels like an almost entirely unwinnable match for Leo, even when I was able to deal a TON of damage for this character it was still only enough to take them from 34 to 8 leaving me with no attacks in hand and even through full blocking 3+ moves they were still able to end the games. Round 1 was a 0-2 loss.
Round 2 was against Mt Lady II, so basically Godzilla a second time just with more steps. Game one I was able to hit them with a 14 damage Rising Uppercut on their turn after hitting all of my mill buttons and committing all of my damage buff foundations knowing they couldn’t crack back or block if they wanted to be able to build at all. I still lost game 1 but it didn’t feel as unwinnable as Godzilla. Game 2 I took 3 turns in after going first and getting to build out, poking with Uppercut on their turn if they dared to attack. I strung Setting the Standard into multiple Forward Flip Slashs, and Merciful Volleys, ending the game with a Turn It Up that had them mill 8 foundations in a row. I swiftly lost game 3 to a Godzilla level string of attacks with +3 damage each/ Ending Round 2 in a 1-2 loss.
In Round 3 I paired up into Marvin and his Ryu, World Warrior Void deck. Thes were as always, my most fun games of the night. I was able to defend forever in Games 1 & 2 and we even had a very funny sequence where he blocked my Forward Flip Slash with Rising Uppercut, responding to attack with it, I followed that by blocking his with a Rising Uppercut of my own that Marvin then blocked with Another Rising Uppercut for one of the funniest plays I’ve seen in a while. The rest of the game went similarly and took almost the entire time allotment. Marvin ended up taking both games we played when I just couldn’t break through the Void punches defenses enough. Giving me another 0-2 loss. Ending the night at 0-3.
The deck is fun enough that I would play it again at another locals event with a few changes, namely I would lean into the Vash kit a little more. Similar to April and several others in this set I think Leo is really limited by his symbols but, more on that in a future article! For now, if you want to see my list it will be below as always. Also, if you have a better list post it in the comments and I will give it a shot! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my ramblings and see you next week with one of the 4 remaining characters!
https://uvsultra.online/deck.php?deck=IqbVNnCbsjAPpRCWuPvQEvDKYIvTum
