Leo

Overview

Leo is a stance-shifting, Wild Swinging offensive juggernaut who uses his hand to play neutral and his deck to mount his offense. He wins games by maintaining consistent pressure punctuated by big overwhelming attacks, and loses by burning out too many of his resources.

Leo’s frontside character ability doesn’t give him any benefits except access to his Exceed mode, where his real power is. When he Exceeds, his already-good Wild Swings become stronger and more consistent, but if he ever takes a turn off from striking, he loses the ability and goes back to frontside. It goes without saying that you’ll want to spend as much of the game as possible in Exceed mode, but understanding how to do that (and what to do when you ARE Exceeded) starts with understanding Leo’s frontside ability.

Number one, you Exceed without spending a resource. That frees up your gauge to use on your ultras and, more importantly, your cancels. When you’re in Exceed mode, canceling is how you maintain your aggression and stay flipped as long as possible. Number two, your opponent has a say in whether you Exceed - they can absolutely play to not get stunned and deny you your bonuses. Remember that stunning is reactive - you can still stun if you’re outsped.

You have a more consistent way to Exceed in your kit, so your opponent won’t be able to hold you off forever. Once you’ve Exceeded, aggressively use your cancelable boosts in hand to chase down evasive targets or add Power or Speed to your attacks, and Wild Swing when you’re in the perfect position to maximize your odds. Remember that you CAN strike from hand without a bonus, so EX attacks and defensive options are still a consideration for you. That said, consider using Wild Swings on defense as well - one of the biggest benefits of your ability is being able to break the Speed curve for free, so mash that button freely and take advantage of opponents too afraid to strike into an Exceeded Leo. Careful use of your resources can keep your stance up for a long time, but eventually you’re going to have to take a turn off to prepare, change cards, or move. When you do, your top priority should be rebuilding resources as quickly as possible so you have more ammunition the next time you Exceed.

Range: Every one of Leo’s specials hit at R2, making it his safest range to Wild Swing. The presence of range-sensitive options in your deck like Grasp, Dive, and Spike might change where you’d like to stand in the moment, but R2 or R3 is usually a good default.

Gauge and Force: Leo has no Exceed costs, decent ultras, and a powerful suite of cancelable boosts that need as much gauge as he can get. If you Wild Swing an ultra or have a perfect opportunity to play it, go for it - otherwise, your gauge should be spent aggressively playing neutral and striking on Exceed side and aggressively rebuilding on frontside. Leo’s force economy isn’t too difficult either - he has a lot of card draw hiding in his kit, and because he generally isn’t striking from hand when things are going well, going to low hand sizes doesn’t mean he’s out of ammo.

Specials

	Eisensturm: A janky midspeed/slow that trades well but doesn’t really beat anything. When used as a Wild Swing with some bonuses it can put in work, but it’s not an incredible attack. One of two cards in your deck that will forcibly revert you to your frontside ability, so it might be useful if you’ve run out of gas anyway and need to reload. Stolz, meanwhile, is an amazing, cancelable way to up your Wild Swing consistency. Dropping a high-damage card like Spike, Dive, Sweep, or Blitzschlag onto the top of your deck as part of a cancel chain is a great way to win combat, especially when combined with an ultra boost and good positioning to up your consistency and payout. You draw first, so you’ll have more options to place on top of your deck and more ammunition for cancels. Stolz can also filter options - if you didn’t draw your target card, you might still Wild Swing it.
	Kahn Schild: A great defensive R1 option, especially in Exceed mode. Doesn’t hit hard, but gives you great positioning control going into your next turn, which you desperately need to maintain your Wild Swing consistency. One of the few cards you’re likely to prefer playing from hand - it doesn’t benefit much from your ability, but if it comes up during a Wild Swing you’re hardly sad. Hail to the King is cancelable Stun Immunity with a draw effect on top, which is a pretty great way to guarantee you’re at least going to trade. Works a bit like bonus Speed in its effects on your consistency, but requires more positioning - Stun Immunity doesn’t do anything to keep your opponent from Crossing out, for example. Goes well with bonus Power if you already have a good board state. As good as Stun Immunity is, you’ll probably play Kahn Schild more than Hail to the King.
	Blitzschlag: When used as a Wild Swing in Exceed mode, this is an above-curve 6 damage. Add in Badass, Hellfire, or Roar of the Lion, and you have an absolutely brutal attack. On top of everything else, it gains Advantage so you can continue your offense. One of your most threatening cards overall, the best target for any stat boost investment, and your default Stolz target. Pride is an extremely useful boost, which sucks, because you won’t be able to play Blitzschlag every time you see it. Positioning is priority number one when chaining cancels together, and this is your only cancelable source of flexible movement. We’ll go into more on positioning and Wild Swing theory later in the guide, but the short version is you really care about your preferred ranges, and this is how you get there without giving up your Exceed bonuses.
	Gravierte Wurde: A slow, Guard-y fireball with an uncommonly good range band that lets you play at range without hosing your ability to Wild Swing at R2, where it can even catch Cross. Forces you to revert (even if you just Exceeded!), so you’re not always happy to see it. A great way to cap off your pressure when you’re finally out of options and you’d have to revert anyway. Solid, but not outstanding. Brynhildr Stance is an unbelievable pressure starter, and is why you don’t have to worry TOO much about stunning your opponent on frontside. Puts you in Exceed mode and gives you ammunition to play a cancelable boost and strike right away. Great any time you need to start your engines - whether that’s turn 1 or after a revert. Just be sure you have resources to maintain pressure when you play it.
	Zweites Kaltes Gestober: A fast Dive that gains Advantage is never bad, but this one also puts you into Exceed mode when used at R1 or R2, where it’s a riskier play. The Exceed rider is a Before effect, meaning if you cross up your opponent and flip, a Wild Swing Gestober immediately benefits from the bonus Power. You’re more likely to use this for Advantage at R3 or R4 than you are to use it to Exceed, but if it comes up as a Wild Swing on frontside, it’s a bonus. Hellfire, when combined with your Exceed ability, is a cancelable Way of the Warrior boost on your Wild Swings, which is … just really good. Feel free to stack both copies if you need even more stats - revealing your hand a second time doesn’t give your opponent any MORE information. If you’re using Stolz, do that first - no sense in giving your opponent a heads up on what you could be playing. And it goes without saying, but watch out for Reading.
	Stahlwirbel: A big scary projectile with comically high Speed values on a Wild Swing that refunds itself if it’s invalid. A single point of Speed from your ability or something like Badass is probably enough - I can’t think of too many times I’ve needed a Speed 20 attack, let alone a Speed 60. If you happen to have four gauge it’s a great card, but you’d prefer to be using your cancels most of the time. Bared Fangs is one of your best ways to make your Wild Swings more consistent, and can single-handedly make your opponent afraid to Cross out of your spooky R2 mixup. Like all Speed boosts, it’s best on midspeeds, but you probably won’t know what you’ll be stapling this to when you play it unless you stacked the deck with Stolz. Luckily, basically your whole kit loves +2 Speed.
	Leidenschaft des Germanword: Ranged dodges are always nice to have, especially at the range you’d prefer to be standing at anyway. There are plenty of scary R2 options that this beats, but some of the scariest move in and hit at R1, so don’t think you’re totally safe. However, because you’re Wild Swinging so often, you can simply choose to validate this card after you’ve seen what your opponent is striking with, or Wild Swing a different card if Leidenschaft doesn’t work. Roar of the Lion synergizes well with your Exceed ability - +3 Power, +1 Speed are Zangief stats. It’s fine to play on its own, but it’s best used in the late game to cap off a chain of other boosts. Do some work to make your attacks more consistent, and then slam down Roar of the Lion to increase your payout.

Normals

All of your normals (except Block) get a decent boost in utility when you’re Exceeded and setting Wild Swings - your fast options break the speed curve, your slow options hit harder, and your midspeeds are a tiny bit safer. The big winners are Sweep, which is fast enough to beat Spike and strong enough to stun your opponent’s Sweeps, and R3 Dive, which is now on-curve. Slash also gets a big bonus - if you’ve ever used an EX Slash (or Assault), you know how good a defensive option that is, and there are a number of R2-R3 defensive options that have 4 Guard, which your Slash now cleanly beats.

Your normal boosts are mostly your neutral tools, and surprise surprise - you’re using them aggressively. Badass combined with your character ability is incredibly strong, Area Shift and Dash are crucial movement boosts on a character extremely dependent on positioning, Ukemi and Scramble allow you to deny your opponent’s setup and strike when their defenses are down - Scramble is also great if you can get your opponent to one of their bad ranges to MAKE them roll the dice there. Meanwhile, Faultless Defense is great at R1 to make Slash, Gestober, and your midspeeds safer.

Let’s Rock is an awkward boost because it isn’t cancelable, so you’re only going to consider it after you’ve reverted, need a reload, and want to remain threatening to confirm a stun to get you back into Exceed mode. Parry also isn’t cancelable, but it can be very useful when you’ve reverted and have an off turn to get rid of a card you just can’t deal with otherwise.

How to Neutral Aggressively

NOTE: Don’t treat the sections above as “attack vs. boost” evaluations. Most of your offense comes from Wild Swings, so if you find most of your cards in your hand and don’t have a pressing reason to save them or strike with them, feel free to play them as boosts. We’ll discuss “selecting” your cards for a strike a bit later in the guide.

If your hand can support it and you have the gauge - which you should, because you’re not likely to be spending it on much else - try to chain a couple cancelable boosts together as often as you can. Don’t go crazy and dump your whole hand and five gauge on cancels unless you’re 100% sure you’re going to win the strike, but aggressively cashing out your resources with two cancels (or a cancel and an ultra boost) per turn can make you extremely difficult to get away from.

You might be uncomfortable with the amount of resources you’re spending from hand to set up your plays, especially when you’re gambling with Wild Swings. Remember that Leo’s boosts generally aren’t competing with his attacks - if the cards are in your hand, they’re usually there to boost and cancel with. That doesn’t mean you should be throwing cards around freely, but at the very least you aren’t depriving yourself of offense by boosting - this is just how you play neutral.

When canceling, focus on making your attack more consistent (Stolz, Speed boosts, Stun Immunity, but especially positioning), THEN increase your payout with Power boosts after you’ve already done what you can to guarantee your card’s going to hit. If you’ve cornered your opponent at R2, you might be able to skip straight to Roar of the Lion and feel pretty safe, but remember that you’ll lose games by running out of gas, and a well-timed Cross from your opponent can destroy your momentum. When looking for cancel chains, imagine a good two-to-three gauge ultra on another character - that’s around how many resources you’re spending, and that’s around how strong you should be looking to make the resulting attack.

Your Exceed bonuses don’t really change interactions much, but additional sources of stats (Badass, Hellfire, your ultra boosts) COMBINED with your Exceed bonuses sure do. Leo has a lot of 5 Power cards in his kit that benefit a lot from +2 Power to hit a crucial breakpoint, which is another reason why chaining multiple cancelable boosts together is your best use of gauge.

Playing the Odds

As a Wild Swing character, you’re very reliant on your preferred ranges, which will change throughout the game as options on both sides drop. Your character ability, card shapes, and strong stat boosts mean that you can afford to whiff a couple times into a Block or an R2 Grasp and make up the difference by trading up later, but be careful investing all your resources into a strike when you know your deck still has a high number of cards that don’t work in your current position.

All these considerations mean that when chaining cancelable boosts, it’s often more important to get to a range where your attacks are likely to hit than it is to staple bonus stats onto them. Your opponent will run out of good responses to you at R2 long before you run out of R2 attacks, so don’t worry too much about what you’re hitting WITH, so long as you’re hitting. Remember that in a pinch (or if you have a great reason to) you can absolutely still attack from your hand to maintain your Exceed bonuses, or defend with Kahn Schild, Block, Focus, Sweep, or a fast EX.

The draw effects on things like Focus, Stolz, or Hail to the King do more than keep your resources flowing to maintain a healthy library of cancelable boost options. They also increase your confidence in your remaining Wild Swing options - the more cards you see, the more accurate your knowledge of what’s left is. In other words, if all your Grasps, Blocks, and Dives are in your hand, they’re not in your deck to gum up your R2 offense.

R2 being your best range is a rule of thumb. It’s more important to remain flexible and track what’s in your deck than it is to stick to the same position and Wild Swing over and over again. You’ll frequently wind up at R1 and R3 from combinations of you and your opponent’s in-strike movement effects, and depending on what’s left in your deck that might be an acceptable risk, an upside, something that requires a cancelable movement boost to fix, or even a reason to end your pressure.

Reverting

It’s incredibly rare to close out an entire game without ever needing to revert - even against a cooperative opponent willing to brawl with you at R2, it’s very easy to either run out of resources or Wild Swing Wurde or Eisensturm and find yourself back on frontside. Sometimes it’s a good idea to revert early to maintain hand resources for later - if you completely bottom yourself out and fail to win convincingly, you’re much more exploitable than if you slowed down, maintained resources, and restarted your pressure later.

You also might be forced to revert when your opponent has successfully zoned you and you don’t have a cancelable movement boost in hand. Your deck composition might allow you to maintain pressure a bit longer with Dive, Wurde, or Gestober, but unless you have them in your hand, it’s often better to take the Move action than to leave it up to chance by Wild Swinging at thin air. Don’t allow remaining in Exceed mode to become such a high priority that it forces you to make bad decisions.

When you revert, whether by choice or forcibly, have a plan to Exceed again as soon as you’ve finished rebuilding. If you’ve already got a Brynhildr Stance and a Pride in your hand, you can feel fairly safe ending your combo at a bad range for your opponent and just prepping. The same is true if you’ve got a strong EX or Leidenschaft in hand that is likely to stun the opponent if they initiate into you. If you find yourself without your best combo starters after a revert, move through your deck aggressively to find them. Remember, you don’t just want to Exceed - you want to Exceed with good resources in hand to cancel with to maintain your neutral game and offensive pressure.

Mulligans and Early Game

You, like other Wild Swing characters, mulligan kind of backwards. You want to get the cards you don’t want to Wild Swing out of your deck and into your hand, so keep any Blocks (and maybe Grasps or Dives) you find. Consider mulliganing for Wurde (for Brynhildr Stance) and Blitzschlag (for Pride). Dash or Area Shift can fill in for Pride in a pinch, but one gets you to R1 and one leaves you without much board to work with. Ideally, you want something to get your Exceed mode online and something to strike with, whether that’s a cancelable movement boost or a long-range attack - preferably one that doesn’t revert you.

If you don’t have the perfect opening, move in to set up what you DO have in hand, or play for the stun and try to force your Exceed mode with Dive or Gestober. From there, your gameplan is flexible, but your goal is to maintain your aggression intelligently - don’t burn yourself out if you can’t recover from it, and play your hand to maximize your chances of hitting. Build gauge, draw cards where you can, and set up strong payouts. When you revert, try to do it with a plan.

Counterplay

Leo needs gauge to do his big scary cancel chain attacks, and he’s not always going to have it - or he might have enough to do ONE, and needs to hit with that one to fund the next one. Leo’s opponents can set up on their turn with stat bonuses or positioning control, or maintain EX attacks or above-curve options to stun Leo out or make him whiff, which can short-circuit his whole gameplan. As Leo, do your best not to overextend - investing a bit into each strike is much safer than putting everything you have on a bet, even if it’s a pretty good bet. You might be very slightly safer by canceling with four boosts instead of two, but you’re unlikely to make something COMPLETELY guaranteed, and the economic loss from a longer failed cancel chain is harder to recover from.

On frontside, Leo essentially doesn’t have a character ability - all he’s got are pretty decent attacks that likely don’t work in the face of whatever nonsense his opponent is throwing on their turn. They might be worried about a reactive stun, but a good opponent isn’t going to give up on their offense when you’re at your weakest just because you might Exceed from it - you’re probably going to Exceed anyway, and if they hit you first they’re forcing the issue and getting something out of it. Your job as a Leo player is to spend your time reverted efficiently - it’s going to happen, and you’ll be vulnerable during it, so get back to your Exceed side as quickly as you can with the resources you need.

As Leo, you draw a lot of cards, which is an information advantage for both players - you know the contents of your deck more accurately the more cards you’ve drawn, and your opponent knows that too. They don’t know your hand unless you’ve shown them with Hellfire, but Wild Swing characters can’t control what resources they bleed when striking as well as other characters. It’s very possible to inadvertently open yourself up by losing both copies of a crucial card. Be ready for that possibility and reshuffle or play around those defensive holes as best you can.

Your opponents will try to zone you by Crossing out at R2, where they can dodge Kahn Schild. You have tools to deal with zoning, but one of them is Wurde, which reverts you and has Brynhildr Stance on it, and the other is an expensive ultra. You have movement boosts to keep the pressure on, but an opponent that forces you to use them before you have them (or use more than you can sustain without reverting) can give you trouble. If you can’t overwhelm them and keep the pressure on, striking with Dives or Assaults just to get in is an acceptable alternative in a pinch.

Credits and Resources

I wrote this guide after an extensive conversation with ReggiesWarOnEverything on how to run Leo. You can find that conversation here. Petersonian also wrote a Leo guide on BGG that you can find here. It’s like this one but with GOOD JOKES.

Other Leo players who Probably Have Opinions include D and Polter. There’s plenty more on the Breakfast Club Discord - if they’re not listed here it’s because I don’t regularly talk to them, not because they’re not skilled players.