Once upon a time, I recommended the following number of characters at each of the cost points in a 30-card Limited deck:

This is for a deck with only eighteen characters. This set of numbers were to give an approximately 80 percent of making a character drop at each cost from 3 to 7. This didn’t take into account any mulliganing strategies to compensate for early drops.

The importance of making your character drops at middle cost points is such that many people typically play more than eighteen characters. For example, I think it is perfectly acceptable to run a curve that with 21 characters, and if so, I’d recommend something that looks like the following:

Why am I revisiting these numbers? Well, they are worth thinking about when delving into a discussion on playing characters with loyalty.

Let’s say you have drafted three copies of Ubu, Ra's al Ghul's Bodyguard, and two copies of Kyle Abbot. You can’t play Ubu unless you’ve played a League of Assassins character in the first few turns. How many League characters would you have to play with a cost of 2 or less to get one into play in the first two turns more than 80 percent of the time without mulliganing? (Remember that the above charts weren’t intended to worry about your 1 and 2-drops.) The answer is six! What about if you mulliganed every hand without a 1 or 2 cost character? Then you’d need to play four 1 or 2 cost characters. But do you really want to have to mulligan every such hand? Probably not; it’s a risky proposition. There are plenty of other weak hands you could mulligan into. If you don’t figure in a mulligan, the good news is that one of those two copies of Kyle will bail you out about 55 percent of the time on turn 3. If you only had one copy of Kyle, you’d be down to about 33 percent. And let’s just say you missed your 1 through 3 drops. Now you’re looking at having to forgo Ra's al Ghul, Immortal Villain, for the likes of Dr. Tzin-Tzin. Well, I know who I’d rather be playing. The bottom line is not to get too carried away with loyalty. If you have too many characters with loyalty, you will find yourself with a handful of unplayable characters. Since you will likely need to splash some characters from outside your main team, things will get even trickier.

Now let’s take a look at Cassandra Cain. You have a little bit more breathing room to find your early plays, as she is a 4-drop. In this case, you can look at the above tables under the 3 cost, since it is intended to give you an idea of how many copies of a card at that cost you need in your deck to see at least one, 80 percent of the time. With four characters at a cost of 3, you’re pushing your luck. Try five to avoid any grief. That is quite a lot of small Gotham Knights to be asking for.