How to Play Decks that Will Take Down Loki
Let’s highlight some angles to attack the Loki strategy. We’ll summarize some of the key points and then give the full breakdown in a video at the end of this article.
Change your Starting Deck
High Evolutionary and Thanos give you a better starting deck than what you’ll pass on to Loki, making this the perfect place to start. This in particular really feels like you’re tricking the Trickster God!
Play America Chavez or Nebula
America is mostly included in decks as a thinning tool, not because you want a 6/9. So, Loki makes her an “Abomination” but that’s still generally not great. You get the benefit of thinning your deck to draw good cards early. Meanwhile, your opponent gets a “meh” card.
Additionally, focus on playing Nebula or any card that you want to draw/play early. High Evo cards tend to fit this bill as well. Loki players are usually only playing Nebula as early as turn 4, meaning she has much less opportunity to grow than yours.
Synergy > Power
This is a huge point to tackling Loki that I think also defines his dominance. Silk, Darkhawk, Maximus, and other just solid cards? Throw them out the window. Your opponent will get all that power to themselves but at a cheaper rate. Try things like Discard and Destroy instead so your opponent’s strategy is less coherent.
Combo Decks
The difference between synergy and combo is a grey area. I look at Ghost Rider + Black Cat (hilarious against Loki) as synergy, and Hela as a combo deck. You can slot Destroyer and Armor into a deck for synergy, or you can play Nimrod (a personal favorite of mine). You’re going to draw more cards from your own deck than Loki will, so you’ve got a better chance of putting together something really really strong.
Let‘s highlight 3 deck options here in particular:
Mr. Negative
Your opponent will be left with a bunch of expensive cards that they can’t flip.
Lockjaw Thanos
Without the Stones, you’ll give your opponent a bunch of expensive cards, whereas you get to Lockjaw them out.
Cerebro-3
If they played Loki, they already can’t use Cerebro to its full potential, and they just get a bunch of 3 power things, that hopefully add 5 or 7 on your side of the board.
Cards with the word “deck”
M’Baku is silly, but it will only work for you. Jubilee is really the best card in this category because you’ll play other big stuff that your opponent can’t use well. Results with Iron Lad may vary.
Let’s talk about tech…
We need a brief intermission to talk about tech against Loki.
Killmonger
Assuming you’re not running 1s yourself, getting Quinjet off the board is super important. After that, an important rule is to play tech cards that don’t affect your own strategy. Pretty simple, right? You’ll want Shadow King or Valkyrie or Shang-Chi or Enchantress. Just make sure it doesn’t stop what you’re trying to do because you’re going to give it to your opponent. Super Skrull can be okay depending on the strategy.
Limit their plays with SandWave
SandWave is forgotten about way too often for how disruptive it can be. While we wait for Mobius to release in 3 weeks, Sandman and Wave (and Odin and Arnim Zola) are great ways to limit players to 1 card per turn so your opponent can’t dumb their hand.
Agatha?…
This one’s admittedly bananas…but giving your opponent Agatha with Loki is a funny way to troll your opponent. It also means you’re playing Agatha which probably makes it the spiciest option on the list. I’ll add though that if you’re playing Loki yourself, Loki is another effect to banish Agatha for you while potentially giving it to your opponent.
Here‘s a video breakdown with even more nuggets of Loki Takedown insight!