Ms. Leonhart, Or: How I Learned to Stop Whining and Embrace the Meta (Part 6)
by Dani Diaz
Ms. Leonhart, Part 6: Flight School
In this article series, we’ve talked a lot about my personal journey, deck construction, gameplay analysis, and even a tournament report.
“Dani,” I hear you saying through the screen, “That’s cool and all, but how do I actually play this deck you’ve been gushing about for weeks?”
Well, dear reader, you’re in luck. Grab a seat and get your pencil and paper out. Today class is in session on how to pilot my Annie Leonhart, Awakened deck.
The Die Roll
Just win it.
Jokes aside, if you do win the die roll, you want to go first. It’s much easier to set up for offensive turns when you’re on the play and you don’t have to worry about surviving a possible turn 2 attack turn with few resources.
In the event that your rival goes first, you need to mulligan for good blocks and good defensive pieces in the deck. There are a few solid foundations, and a couple of tricks that may allow you to survive. Let’s talk mulligan strategies.
The First Hand and Mulligans
Going first, you are fishing for an ideal string of difficulties that will allow you to build aggressively. Since there is no threat of a turn 1 attack from the rival’s side, you can attempt reckless builds on the higher end of progressive difficulty as well.
A perfect first hand has some combination of Finally Free, Theo Magath, Dark Ward, Pass Through Walls, Undercover Infiltration, and A Master’s Pride. You want a 3-2-1-0 difficulty curve somewhere in the hand. If the 1 diff is a backup instead of Undercover Infiltration or Inspiring Song, that’s okay! We can commit those for checks on turn 2 so that’s perfectly fine.
If there’s an attack in the first hand, we really want it to be Support from the Female Titan or Rapid Speed Slash. Any other attacks, or a bad curve, means we send that entire hand back and go fishing for better resources.
This first turn build is of the utmost importance. Do not keep a subpar hand if you can help it.
Going second, you have a bit more flexibility. You want to attempt to sculpt the 3-2-1-0 curve in your hand, but you can also be a little cheeky with what you keep. If you have a The Jaw Titan’s Bite in your hand, you can keep that through the mulligan so you can review it on your first turn and put it in your discard to pick it up later with its own effect! On the whole, the same rules apply regarding which attacks are acceptable to keep in the hand (Support and Rapid Speed Slash).
Your First Attack Turn
Once you finish your first turn build (ideally with 2-3 foundations and 1-2 backups), it’s time to evaluate your rival’s build turn for things that might disrupt your offense. Look for things like Cape of No Return, Nonagon, or other cancels on board that will prevent you from playing your important momentum-generating attacks. You should also verify how many cards they have in hand – typically an excess number after a turn 1 build means they could be holding a response-speed answer like Filled with Doubt.
Once you have a solid idea of your rival’s board state, it’s time to lead off with either Support or Rapid Speed Slash. If your rival has no responses, use your first enhance to flip Finally Free if you have it on board. Otherwise, you have two options: sacrifice a backup or a foundation to generate a momentum using Annie’s enhance ability. If you had to commit a foundation or backup to pass your attack check, sac that one. If not, try to target your least useful option. You can even try to get value out of a backup or foundation before you destroy it by committing for an effect, like Rank of Titans giving plus two speed.
From there, see what your rival does. If they block it completely, it’s probably safe to play one more attack like Rapid Speed Slash or Seafood Slugger and try to transform. Annie struggles on her front face with defensive abilities, so getting to the Female Titan side helps turn 2 survivability a ton.
Early Defense
I generally try to hold one of all three block zones if I can, especially against a deck I’m unfamiliar with. It’s just good practice until you can figure out what sort of attack package they’re running. If you start seeing all highs (whether played in their cardpool or in their discard as checks), you know to start holding more high blocks on average.
On defense, leverage Annie’s damage reduction and check manipulation ability, but be judicious in how you apply it. If you spend all your momentum, you will have no gas for the upcoming turn 3 win turn. If your rival is poking with something light, don’t burn the momentum, just take it or block it if you comfortably can. Since Annie has 21 health, I will generally take hits of 5 or less on the chin unless it unreasonably aids the rival. Violent Animus Shot has an on-hit response to make you discard a card, and typically we’re holding attacks for our next turn and don’t want to lose them. Prevent that kind of effect from occurring by reducing its damage or canceling with a Dark Ward if possible.
Winning the Game
If you survive the rival’s turn two, it’s time to go in.
Review aggressively. Anything that doesn’t help us win now is on the chopping block. If you have a Theo on board and one in hand, say “see ya later!” If it’s another higher-cost foundation or backup, that can go too. I will say I prefer reviewing our backups because they feed the Harness Undeath win condition, so do that if possible.
Once you draw back up to seven, let’s review our options. Review your rival’s board again. Do they have anything that can slow us down, and do we have an answer for it? On evil, fire and void, Barrier Shield is always a threat. Making our attack easily blockable and adding Breaker: 2 to the block is a nightmare scenario, so hopefully we have Pass Through Walls or Dark Ward available. If not, plan to get hit with Breaker. The Shobijin’s Message serves much the same purpose on Air, Earth, and Good.
If your rival is on Air or Life, Eri Smiles or Kaya’s Compassion will stop an attack lineup in its tracks. Thankfully we have a way around Eri, by playing mostly lows like Rapid Speed Slash, Seafood Slugger, and Harness Undeath or by using Dark Ward. Kaya’s is played from the hand so we cannot interact with it quite so easily.
If you don’t anticipate either of these scenarios playing out, then start your attack run!
If you have a Seafood Slugger in momentum, do not forget your first form! The importance of sealing your rival’s best defensive piece before our attacks even begin cannot be overstated!
After that’s handled, start off with a Kraken to commit and freeze a key defensive foundation (we especially hate card draw for our rival) and commit down a key asset like Cape, Military Airship, or Tattered Costume. You can also lead off with a Support if you didn’t find a Kraken.
From there, use Annie’s enhance to buff your attacks and add to your checks. It becomes very hard to fail a check, but it will take some practice to ensure you don’t run out of gas before the rival is defeated. Use Rapid Speed Slash and Seafood Slugger to replenish your momentum, and hopefully you’ve found enough The Jaw Titan’s Bites in discard to pick those up ad nauseam.
Don’t be scared if a The Jaw Titan’s Bite ends up in your momentum by accident! It’s just a matter of spending that particular card in momentum so it ends up in your discard pile before you play your next Jaw Titan’s Bite! Keep an eye on what cards end up in there so you can spend the right ones!
Closing Notes
By turn 3, you hopefully have enough gas to get the job done. If they fully block two attacks and you can’t mathematically kill them at this point, slam on the brakes! Build what you can out of your hand and take as much momentum as you can to survive the backswing. Remember to use Annie’s check bonus on your last attack to capitalize on building more!
Further defensive turns will largely be the same as the first one. Selectively reduce the damage on things and stack your checks. Keep in mind that stacking the check doesn’t mean you have to block THIS attack – if it’s really small already, let it go through and you can get ANOTHER plus two to the check on the next one just in case they pump the speed up at all.
Provided you get another attack turn, you should be able to get there. Play as many attacks as makes sense, and remember above all to stay smart. It’s very easy to see red and just try to play out your entire hand but that doesn’t help you in the long term. In fact, it will lead to more game losses as you get backswung for being greedy. Keep your cool and stay methodical about how you play Annie.
I hope that this is enough of a primer to get your started on enjoying my Annie Leonhart, Awakened deck build. If you have any questions at all, hit me up in the comments! We’ll see you later this week for another installment of Ms. Leonhart – until then, keep coping my friends.