Tournament players ban Loki as a sign of respect — and the engine says he's unfavored in 36 of 43 matchups. Both are true; the gap between them is the whole hero. Nothing Loki does shows up cleanly in damage math: his defensive roll prevents zero, his heaviest modeled hit is the 10 on his ultimate, and yet with an Illusion banked, every attack into him becomes a blind guessing game where the average answer is 'half.' You don't out-fight people with Loki. You make their turns worth less than yours.
Loki's first decision happens before the dice: what does this opponent make you need? Against fast hitters, your opening job is insurance — Antics lands on 70% of turns with disciplined rerolls and pays a card, an Illusion, and a Bag of Tricks — and that first Illusion matters more than 6 damage, because until it exists your defense prevents nothing. Against slower decks, take tempo instead: Mockery triggers 84% of the time for 6-8 damage, and his four best modeled matchups — Alchemist, Artificer, Necromancer, and Santa — are all heroes still assembling in the early turns. One rules note: the start player skips their very first Income phase — going first starts you a Combat Point and a card behind, so sell a dead card early to claw the CP back.
The middle game is one read repeated: whose next turn is scarier? When theirs is, Confuddle is the play — 78% with rerolls for 7 damage plus 2 Spellbound, covering the abilities about to hurt you for only about 0.3 expected damage versus Mockery. When yours is, keep jabbing with the 84% line and let the tokens compound. Vilify (63%, one die of each symbol) reads the board for you: behind on health it pays an Illusion plus 7 damage; even or ahead, it deals 5 that skips their defense roll and hands out Bag of Tricks tokens. Keep Illusion at its cap of 2 whenever you can; that bank is the whole difference between Loki and a hero with no defense.
Be honest about what Loki is not: a closer. His biggest modeled hit is the 10 on Glorious Purpose!, and five natural mischief is a 1.3% event even on a fully dedicated turn — so the ultimate is a purchase, not a prayer. Natural mischief plus roll-phase dice-setting is how it actually fires — and it brings 3 Spellbound, an Illusion, up to four Bag of Tricks handouts (capped at 2 per player — a duel tops up both boards), and damage nothing can respond to. Otherwise you close the way you played: steady Mockery pressure while Spellbound keeps deleting their best turn and Illusion halves their average swing. Two endgame rules: your Illusion cannot stop their Ultimate — the only counterplay is altering their dice before activation, so a held roll-phase card is your real late-game defense — and the Defensive Roll phase resolves simultaneously, so a trade that puts both players at zero is a draw, not a win.
Loki's die is 2 scepters, 2 illusions, 1 lies, and 1 mischief, and that shape writes the playbook. Three scepters for Mockery is 21% on a single roll but 84% across three attempts — any opening pair of scepters is a keep. Confuddle's two-scepter, two-illusion set rides both doubled faces to 78%, so a natural 2-2 split is a hold, not a reroll. When the opening scatters, Vilify (one of each symbol) is the 63% pivot that wastes nothing, and the small straight for Vex arrives 59% of the time for 7 damage plus a Bag of Tricks. The large straight for Kneel to Me is a 25% line worth about 9 with its bonus scepter roll — take it when four-in-a-row lands early, never chase it. And never fish mischief: one face in six means Double Take connects on 10% of dedicated turns and Glorious Purpose! on 1.3%. Those lines are what dice manipulation is for, not rerolls.
Loki's verified economy is the rules chassis plus one house perk. The chassis: 1 Combat Point and a card every Income phase (cap 15), and every card sells for exactly 1 CP. The house perk is Bag of Tricks: each of his own tokens rolls one die on his upkeep, and only one face in six costs him 1 CP, while one pays 2 CP and the four middle faces let him pick heal 2 or gain 1 CP — so Antics and Vex quietly fund a trickle most heroes don't get. What the CP is FOR is interaction: roll-phase dice manipulation does double duty here — the only counter to an enemy Ultimate, and the only honest route to Loki's own 10% and 1.3% mischief lines. His card list isn't in the verified data yet, so no named-card promises — DiceSlayer will verify the deck on camera.
Hand discipline runs on the rules: draw one a turn, sell down to six at Discard, every sale worth exactly 1 CP — a card you will never play is a coin. With Loki's deck contents not yet verified, hold by card class. Orange roll-phase cards first: dice manipulation converts near-miss mischief into Double Take — 7 damage that skips the defense roll, though cards and token prevention still answer it — and, pointed the other way, breaks an opponent's Ultimate before it activates. Red instant cards next, because Loki's defense is played in the last window: spending a status token counts as an instant action, so Illusion spends stack into the Defensive Roll phase right before damage resolves. Blue main-phase value and upgrades come last. On upgrades, honesty over guesswork: Loki's upgrade cards aren't in the verified data, so no upgrade-path claims until DiceSlayer verifies them on camera — the rules anchors are that upgrades pay only the difference and can never be sold back: every upgrade is a permanent bet.
Deny the Illusion bank, because it IS the defense. The token caps at 2 and each spend guards one attack for about half on average — so drain the stack with cheap hits and save your real swing for a turn he's empty: zero Illusions banked means his roll defense prevents zero. Deny Spellbound its target: it covers one ability at a time and falls off at the end of your Offensive Roll phase, so arrive with two live attack lines and his lock buys half as much. Price Bag of Tricks like a debt, not a gift — on any token he hands you, he chooses the outcome on four faces in six, so expect the 2 damage; only the 6 ever pays you. And if your kit deals undefendable damage, lean on it: those hits skip his defense phase entirely, so Tip the Scale never rolls — an undefendable-heavy attacker, like his worst matchup Iceman at 37.3, pays no token toll.
Loki is weakest on a clock you can read from his tokens. Before Antics has banked anything, he is one of a handful of heroes with literal zero modeled prevention — early aggression is fully paid. The turn after his second Illusion is spent, the account is empty, and refilling it costs him something either way: Antics restocks but deals no damage, and Vilify only pairs its 7 with an Illusion while he's behind on health. And your Ultimate is live all game: Ultimate damage cannot be prevented by anything once the dice activate, so the guessing game he runs on every other attack simply never happens.
His reputation and his math point in different directions; knowing which applies to YOUR roster is the skill. The community counts Loki among the heavily banned — banned as a sign of respect — yet the engine has him favored in only 7 of 43 pairings, and his best marks are a specific list, not a class: Alchemist 54.1, Artificer 52.2, Necromancer 51.4, and Santa 50.9 — all engine heroes, though the rule doesn't generalize: engine-assigned Barbarian is his third-worst at 41.2. If your roster leans on that prey list, the ban is earned respect. If your lineup already carries one of his nightmares — Iceman 37.3, Ninja 40.0, Barbarian 41.2, Pyromancer 42.4 — keep the ban for a hero your roster actually fears. One honest caveat: the scores are blind to the guessing game — the model gives Illusion, Spellbound, and the rigged gamble tokens no credit — which is why experienced players fear him more than the numbers do; Loki also has no matchup commentary yet, so every score here is the engine's raw number.
Loki is a specialist, not glue: community A tier with one clean prey list — Alchemist, Artificer, Necromancer, and Santa, the heroes he's actually favored into — and one clean predator list, the four the engine scores hardest against him. In bring-3-ban-1 that gives him two jobs. As a pick, pair him with a hero who covers Iceman, Ninja, Barbarian, and Pyromancer while Loki grinds down the prey list your other picks hate sitting through. As a psychological piece, his ban-magnet reputation is roster leverage: a ban spent on Loki out of respect leaves your actual ace on the table, and no ban means they agreed to play the guessing game. Budget his learning curve honestly — the community calls him rewarding for veterans and hard for newcomers, and that cost is real in a one-day event.
Denial wins take turns, and 3/1/0 Swiss taxes turns. At 5.8 expected damage per turn with a burst ceiling of 10, Loki has no fast close — his wins come from deleting enemy turns until the difference tells, and that plan flirts with round clocks. When time runs short, tighten the script: take the 84% Mockery or 78% Confuddle line every single turn, stop banking tokens you won't live to spend, and treat Spellbound as tempo rather than fortress — cover their best line while you close. A beautiful control game that times out scores 1 point on a day the podium needs 3.