Q Emerald Legion
Highlights
This is an allies toolbox deck using Emerald Legionnaire. This version uses Erlik as a star: his ability lets the player get another Harbinger Q out fast and cheap.
The idea is to defend and get an Emerald Legionnaire out, then bring the others back from the ash heap if they are there. Once The Unmasking and FBI Special Affairs Division hit the table, they're a solid defence.
Liquidation is used to bloat and can put some Emerald Legionnaire, but also the cards to power their ability, in the ash heap.
As the game progresses, Emerald Legionnaire are used to bleed: they bleed only for one each, which negates the defensive power of Bounces, but they quickly swarm up, especially since they're not that easy to kill and they can be dreadful in combat with . On top of it, Vengeful Spirit and Trochomancy help boost the Harbinger bleeds, too.
The deck uses combat defense for the Harbingers Q, with prevention cards like rolling_with_the_punches alongside simple combat ends like , Delaying Tactics for vote defense and bounces like Telepathic Misdirection against bleeds.
Tips & Tricks
To be able to use their ability, an Emerald Legionnaire must be put into play by recruiting it: the ones in the ash heap can not have their effect used — their card text is ignored as long as they are in the ash heap. In order to manage to get at least one into play, the deck packs a bit of stealth with Spectral Divination, Call of the Hungry Dead and Breath of Thanatos.
A key feature of this deck is the versatility of its cards: Spectral Divination can be used for stealth or intercept, Breath of Thanatos for stealth or a deadly strike, and so on.
Many cards in the deck allow for additional discards to feed the Emerald Legionnaire's ability. Liquidation, of course, but also The Barrens, Dreams of the Sphinx, Aura Reading and Babalawo Alafin.
Trochomancy is a very meta dependant inclusion, as Inevitability of the Void can be a stronger alternative to lunge. But Trochomancy has the distinct advantage to be a very strong counter against other Emerald Legionnaire decks as well as recursion heavy builds relying on Ashur Tablets.
The archetype has been so successful the last few years that a lot of decks now include strong counters against ally swarms, specifically ally-stealing actions like Entrancement and Far Majesty as well as anti-swarm votes like Anarchist Uprising and Ancilla Empowerment. The hight number of Direct Intervention and Delaying Tactics in the deck is designed to counterbalance this trend.
Variants
With Erlik as a star, Forced March is often included. A few equipments like Sniper Rifle, Erebus Mask and Heart Of Nizchetus are also common.
A variant uses The Capuchin as star, Richard Stefan Utner's deck from 2019 is a good example of it.
Another successful variant is Antti's Kurshidwall, using Khurshid as a star and introducing a small Anarch module with Anarch Convert, to allow for the inclusion of Piper for safe recruitments, and Gear Up for a welcome bit of recursion that plays very well with Liquidation. It's also possible to use Khurshid without going for the Anarch angle, like Łukasz Ho Thanh proved through multiple wins.
Emerald Legionnaire's ability is so self-sufficient that one does not even need to play a full Harbingers Q crypt to make them work. Bill Troxel has been industrious in using them in very convoulted builds, like his World championship win using Tupdog and Agent of Power to play Summon History to fetch them, or his Daughters of Cacophony and Imbued variants. Other big names have explored alternatives, most notably Oriol Pubill's Giotto and Daniel Gargulák's Weenie Obfuscate.