How to Play Loki
Burdened with glorious purpose, here he is in all his scheming glory. To say that the Trickster God has been a controversial card is definitely an understatement. Ever since his debut, he’s been one of the most beloved and hated cards. He had quite an impact on the meta every season since his launch. Even after his big nerf, he is still powerful enough to build a deck around and trick your way to victory. By himself, Loki is quite strong and unpredictable. However, his combination with The Collector elevates both cards into an overpowered duo, for every card that Loki replaces in your hand, The Collector gets +1 more power which really adds up.
So, It’s About Trickery To You?
Firstly, we need to learn how the cards works exactly.
Whenever Loki is revealed, he takes away the cards in your hand (they don’t count as destroyed or discarded, he simply prunes them to the End of Times or something) then, for every card he took away, he gives you new cards that are copies of ones that started in your opponents deck (he doesn’t mess with your opponents deck he just prints new copies using magic). Those copies get the additional benefit of costing -1 energy which is a lot, he is one of the few cards that can lower card’s cost to 0. Another great synergy is Quinjet, that little aircraft can make all your new Loki-cards cost -2 for an even stronger discount and crazy last few turns.
With that in mind, we want to have as many cards in hand as possible when we call Loki.
To do that we use cards that give us more cards in hand like Snowguard, Mirage and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents. Remember, the more the merrier, with a full hand of 6 cards we will have more options to beat the game with opponent’s cards and we will buff The Collector even Further.
Another way to buff Collector and keep cards in hand is to go the bounce route. By using Falcon and Beast, we can recycle our 1-drops and play them a few more times.
If you are good at noticing patterns, you’ll see that many of our cards on this list are cheap On Reveal. Who likes those cards more than anything? Our boy Werewolf By night. If we go the bounce route he gets to go big and strong together with The Collector. In fact this combo is so strong and competitive that it is considered one of the best decks in the recent meta.
A different direction that we can go with our loki decks is trying to rely less on him and his crazy, wacky effect. There is another powerful card that enjoys when we have big hands: The good ol’ Devil Dinosaur. He is a card that works great with both The Collector and the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, he can win games that your Loki wouldn’t.
I Am A God You Dull Creature
Alright, by now we all realize how strong and unpredictable loki decks are, right? We are playing with godly power but it is not unbeatable. Some cards really stop us from doing our gameplan.
The first major counter is the only person that can keep the leash on the mischief, the middle manager of the TVA, Mobius M. Mobius. Remember what I said about all the crazy discounts and Wacky last turns? Mobius makes sure that we won’t be doing that. I hate bureaucracy.
Another counter is the dreadful villain and Rocket’s creator, High Evolutionary. At the start of every game, he gives powerful abilities to cards with none. And you’ll be facing cyclops blasting your cards while a gigantic Hulk with accumulated power will be calling you puny at the end of the game. And if you dare to use loki, You’ll get regular copies of those cards, without any of High Evolutionary’s buffs, so you’ll be using the same cards as your opponents but they will be weaker and flavorless.
Let’s Mischief Our Way to Victory
Now that we learned all that, we are practically experts on Loki so let’s see some decks.
Obviously we can’t just throw any card in a deck and call it a day because you’re gonna replace them with Loki cards. Let me give you some decks for you to try out, they are certified competitive and fun to play.
Loki By Night
Now this is a mean deck, I’ve been using it two seasons now. I’ve changed cards here and there according to the top meta decks. Right now, even against the Blob meta the deck is great. The game plan here is to dominate your opponents by scaling The Collector and Werewolf By Night. If you get lucky enough to get them both and play loki, there won’t be much that the opponent can do to beat you. The hardest part about this game is juggling your werewolf with the bounce components since most of the time you’ll have a full hand. This version runs Rogue and Shang to counter your opponents if you decide not to go Loki.
Pool 3 Loki
As I learned from Ant-Man: sometimes you have to look out for the little guy. So this is here for people that don't have that huge collection that veterans do. If Loki is your only pool 5 card and you want to use him, this is for you, It’s very similar to Loki By Night but it replaces Werewolf with Bishop, making the deck more accessible both in collection and difficulty level.
Loki Locks'
If your opponents are angry about facing loki, they will be exploding when they get beaten by a lockdown Loki deck. The plan here is simple: we make a lot of power early game with The Collector and Miss Marvel so that we can lock a location with Professor X. Turn 6 we guarantee our victory with Alioth. If that plan doesn’t work for any reason we can go full Loki and embrace the chaos.
DD and Loki
I have to be honest with you: this deck is a regular Dino deck with the inclusion of loki. That doesn’t mean that the deck doesn’t rule. Devil Dino still is a powerful card that can be used in the recent meta. Cosmo is a must since we are way less aggressive and we have one or two big dinos depending on the game. Again we can win by Loki with The Collector or with random cards from Coulson and Nick Fury.
El' Loki
This one is exclusively for Elsa Believers such as I. With this deck we are trying to abuse Elsa’s trigger as much as possible. The best draw here is Kitty, she can get Elsa's buff every turn while still raising our Collector. With that combination we can make a ton of power. We also have the Loki direction, we always have a ton of cards in our hand when we play him.
Now the student has become the master. I’ve teached you everything I know about Loki. So go out there and conquer the ladder with his help. If you have a secret Loki deck that I haven’t seen yet. Please let me know.
To be honest, the most difficult part about playing Loki is deciding which variant to use. They are all beautiful. Go have a look and try to pick just one as your favorite:
Variants
