Leona, Strategizing

Leona is the spelldrive team’s playmaker, saying, “Strategy’s really important in spelldrive. You gotta read the situation and change your tactics on the fly. That’s what I love about it,” and we get many examples of Leona strategizing in various situations throughout the game:

The Cloudcalling event begins with Leona’s idea to train up a team from NRC to win a festival tournament, as he will have to provide lessons should anyone else win. During their training Leona assesses his group’s strengths and weaknesses and simulates various lineups, surprising Kifaji with his decision to put Kalim in first.

Kifaji says, “I had assumed you would have Kalim go last to avoid him actually having to compete much” but Leona reveals his strategy of putting Kalim early not to win, but to give Vil and Lilia the opportunity to see what a real match is like.

Leona says he taught Kalim all he knows about defense and nothing about offense due to their limited timeframe, telling Kalim that he is to go for a draw in all his bouts, which will make things easier for Vil and Lilia.

Kifaji says, “I’m impressed, Prince Leona. Only you could think of such an underhanded tactic,” but Leona points out that it is a perfectly legitimate tactic to go for a draw in chess. 

Kalim compromises Leona’s strategy by letting himself get goaded into making a strike for his opponent, losing instantly. Vil observes, “If (Kalim) had stuck to Leona’s plan I imagine you could have gotten the draw.”

Leona’s strategy for Vil is for Vil to use his keep his distance until his opponent makes the first move, then use his long reach to his advantage, pleasing Vil: “An elegant and refined fighting style, perfect for me.”

Leona’s strategy works, though Vil is injured in the process when his opponent breaks the rules with a physical attack.

Leona’s strategy for Lilia is having him end the match as soon as possible due to Lilia’s low stamina, but—like Kalim—Lilia decides to diverge from Leona’s instructions.

Leona says, “With most strategies, you’d have only a one percent chance of winning. But follow my instructions, and that should improve to 50 percent,” and deduces that their opponents in the final round are desperate due to having substituted in a retired athlete. 

Leona also strategizes a way to distract Kifaji, saying he has been “sure to rile Cheka up.” (Lilia: “Khee hee hee, using your cute nephew like that. Underhanded even for you.”)

Leona changes their order for the final round but his plan is compromised by Lilia using magic on accident, an automatic disqualification.

He comes up with a new plan of having Vil distract Kalim’s opponent, but Kalim refuses to comply. Kalim wins by default after his opponent bows out of the tournament in gratitude for Kalim having bought him a bus earlier in the event.

Leona himself participates in the decisive match of the final round, a move that is strictly against the rules, forcing Kifaji to support him in order to save face. Kifaji explains,

“Prince Leona isn’t allowed in the tournament. His participation would mean an immediate disqualification. If it was known that the young prince was so flagrantly breaking the rules, it would bring shame to the entire royal family of Sunset Savanna. There are many foreign dignitaries in attendance. We can’t allow them to witness such malfeasance….Prince Leona must have been counting on me making this calculation to save face. And now he’s made me complicit in his scheme.”

Leona reflects, “any fool can see he’d do anything to protect the country’s honor. Still, he did his part. I have to be a little thankful.”

Leona’s strategizing is a theme for his group during Spectral Soiree, where Epel asks outright what his plan is for their group to achieve their goal of collecting mirror fragments. In addition to having the younger students conserve their magic Leona orders them to get at least five mirror fragments each.

Ace says, “How is that a plan? That’s just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best” but, having learned that the group is not “capable of handling anything as organized as a plan,” Leona responds, “What do you want from me? SOMEONE keeps ruining any strategy I come up with” (Floyd: “That guy sounds messed up.”), as their only option is to abide by the terms of their unknown antagonist who has presumably taken hostages to force their hand.

When asked who he would take with him were he to be stranded on a deserted island Leona chooses Kalim for being the best choice for the best outcome: a quick escape. Leona explains, “Nobody at this school would be more useful for getting off a deserted island than him…Best-case scenario, a rescue team would swoop in the day we arrived. Worst-case? Three days, tops.”

When Savanaclaw students decide to go after the group of Ace, Deuce, Grim, Cater and the Prefect in Book 2 Leona forbids it, pointing out that if they get into a fight before the spelldrive tournament they might get disqualified.

The Savanaclaw students are displeased by the thought of letting the group go and Leona reveals a loophole: a “friendly” game of spelldrive: “After all, it doesn’t violate any school rules to cast spells during a game of Spelldrive.”

Leona lectures the entire group of housewardens (minus Malleus) at the beginning of Book 2 on using their heads to strategize a way to defeat Malleus, inspiring all but Idia to agree with him, but Leona ultimately foils his own plan: Ruggie using his unique magic on Grim to fetch a sandwich from the cafeteria on Leona’s orders reveals Ruggie’s unique magic, bringing down Leona’s entire plot.

Leona advises Jack, Grim and the Prefect on how to free the anenome’d students in Book 3, and when Ruggie reacts with surprise Leona reveals he has come up with a plan of his own: “If I play my cards right, I can use those chumps to learn that cephalo-punk’s weakness without lifting so much as my pinky finger.”

Leona’s plan to trap Azul seems to be using Savanaclaw students to flood Mostro Loung and having Ruggie steal the key to Azul’s vault and the contracts inside in the confusion. When Leona destroys Azul’s contracts he claims he has been blackmailed by Grim and the prefect, but Ruggie makes the connection that destroying Azul’s contracts means destroying the ones that Leona himself has made in the past: “This whole thing is a way for you to conveniently get rid of it.”

Leona brings over his own chessboard to help Jack and the lantern-event team when they become trapped in the school’s library and corrects their plan to go through every step of the story they are following to perfection: “As long as you attempt it in one way or another, that’s enough. Doesn’t matter if it’s serious or halfhearted…or if your pottery comes out ash.”

Riddle agrees, saying, “for once, his insights were quite welcome. It never occurred to me that a perfunctory approach was actually acceptable.”

During Playfulland Leona is the first person to come up with a successful strategy against the puppets: he sends the student group on ahead while staying behind to deal with a hoard of puppets on his own, locking them inside a building and thus thwarting them without suffering the consequences of doing damage to the park or breaking any rules.

Being conscious of when to conserve his energy and magic is a theme with Leona and a tactic he uses in Book 6 as he and Jamil fight their way through Tartarus, while Jamil worries about how to keep going without burning through his magic reserves.

Leona orders the same of his group during Spectral Soiree and mentions the importance of resting to Malleus, to Cater, and devises the most efficient way to help Jack’s group during the lantern event that requires the least amount of time and energy for the group to accomplish their goal.

Leona explains to Floyd that when his sleep quality drops it affects his thinking, which might also play a part in his prioritizing of conserving his energy.

During the NBC event Leona explains, “If you wanna make your preparations efficiently, you should focus on resting your mind and body for now.”

It is possibly due to this same line of thinking that Leona chooses to rest after outsmarting the Playfulland puppets, which leads to his downfall when he chooses to sit on the ground rather than in designated seating, thus breaking a rule of the park.

Vil laughs at the concept of Leona teaching rules to anyone, but it is not unusual for Leona to act according to the rules: just not in the way that others want him to.

When Jack transforms into a wolf in front of Leona for the first time Leona’s reaction is to call him out for rule-breaking, saying, “Transformation potions are forbidden.”

Leona uses such a loophole in Book 2 when he allows students of his dorm to physically and magically fight against the group of Cater, Ace, Deuce and Grim via a spelldrive match (“it doesn’t violate any school rules to cast spells during a game of Spelldrive”), but this tactic comes back to bite him him in the end when Trey, Jamil and the rest of the injured students ask that Savanaclaw not be disqualified from the spelldrive tournament specifically so that they can have their revenge, with Cater saying, “You’ve said it yourself, Leona-fighting doesn’t break school rules if it’s part of a Spelldrive match!” 

Afterwards Ruggie says, “we took a beating from every other dorm on the way to the finals,” but it seems that they did reach the finals for the first time since Leona became housewarden (due to Savanaclaw being matched against Diasomnia in the first round of the tournament for two years in a row).