Welcome to TLG’s latest meta snapshot for Legends of Runeterra, a series in which we give you our insight on the finest decks in the higher ranks of the ladder.
Every Monday, we discuss the decks that are part of the week’s meta and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. We also look at the evolution of said decks’ ratings across weeks and draw conclusions regarding the current state of the game, all of this so you can delve into your own ranked journey with a head start.
This week, we see the return of Feel The Rush and Fiora-Shen, as well as Zoe-Lee contending for the top spot in the meta. Go Hard remains the king of the castle, however. The game could use some balance changes, otherwise we predict there isn’t going to be much change on the ladder for the next three weeks.
Burn isn’t in a good spot at the moment, as healing is much cheaper than burning. The meta is also very resource-centric, with multiple decks being able to draw, create or cycle more and more threats. As a result, your games should feel a little longer than usual.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop by our Discord. Best of luck on your climb!
Graphics: WellMax81
Editing: Crixuz, Den, Wusubi, Sebodunum, Ultraman
EU Consultants: CastMin, Kuvira, Pespscola, Zezetel
NA Consultants: RattlingBones, RiceFT, Zenaton
CICACAYGBABACBJRGUBAGBIGCADAEBQEBENB2JR2AEBQCBIBDUQQCAIBAUQA
The best deck in the previous meta still stands at the forefront, perhaps even more so than before. Although Lee Sin has proved to be a fair counter to the deck, Zoe looks to be one of the most played champions at the moment, offering flexibility to a lot of lists due to her card-generating ability. Zoe’s entry into the game makes Go Hard even better, as she’s of course a prime target for Go Hard with her 1/1 statline. Alongside this, Go Hard has kept good matchups with most of the other popular decks.
Other than this change to the environment, the list itself hasn’t changed at all and its powerlevel still looks to be off the charts. It holds Aggro decks to respectable grounds while simply the anticipation of Pack Your Bags sets up awkward situations and forces suboptimal plays from your opponent in their attempt to work around it. In a meta where tempo is the most important factor, Go Hard looks to be one of the best cards out there and the deck surrounding it maximizes its power.
Once the deck is able to seize tempo and get its synergy going, there isn’t much that most other decks can do to stop it, as it applies immense pressure to both the board and its opponent’s health. While greedy decks like Feel the Rush or Targon’s Peak can beat it consistently, the meta isn’t centered around those decks and Go Hard appears to be a lock as the best deck for the weeks to come. (Write-up by Den)
CIBQCAIADIBAGAACBIEQGCI2DQZTMOKVK5MGAAICAMEVIZAA
The party is well and truly on at the Plaza this month. This particular version takes a different approach by using the landmark as a defensive tool. While most decks use it mainly for trades, this one relies on the extra healing provided by Solari Sunforger in order to survive the early game. The great curve leads to some comeback potential, especially with Plaza in play. Single Combat and Sunforger have the capacity to heal up to 12 HP on an offensive Turn 4, for example.
Early Solari followers will help you avoid falling behind too much in the games where you don’t find Plaza or Sunforger, while Starshaping can be used to avoid certain death. It must be said that due to the vast loss in tempo that Starshaping represents, you don’t want to use it until you have taken the board back, so keep it as a way to survive, but don’t rely on the healing until you’re strong enough to absorb your opponent’s next move.
Finally, while Leona and the tempo of your value trades could lead to a win in the end, you’ll still be relying on ASol to close out most control games, as your damage potential remains low and you’re exposing yourself to hard removals and AoEs (cards like Pack Your Bags or The Ruination). Drop the enormous dragon and watch them tremble in fear of your own scary removals and created Celestial Elusives! (Write-up by Ultraman)
Additional notes: The main limit for the deck is the high mana cost of its cards, as the average follower, alongside the created Celestials, are all expensive until the late game. To solve part of that problem, the list now includes some cheap support spells, so that mana can be used to develop the board, which is the deck’s main focus.
The healing options follow the same logic, with Guiding Touch being included to be able to only play 2 copies of Starshaping.
CIBQCAICGEBQEAQDAYEQOAYJBENSGKBJGNOAGAICAICQCAYCCQAQGCKVAEAQGCLC
Zoe-Lee is the new take on the Lee Targon deck. Zoe is here for board presence. This might sound counterintuitive, but she does generate cheap units or stuns every time she strikes the enemy Nexus. This gives you a better matchup into decks like Plaza or Demacia in general. The rest of the deck is like older versions of Lee Sin.
Some notable cards are Pale Cascade, Guiding Touch and Deep Meditation for cycle, Zenith Blade to give Lee Overwhelm or to give extra health to Zoe or Tasty Faefolk. A copy of Sunblessed Vigor fulfils a similar effect to Zenith Blade, Mentor of the Stones and Mountain Goat are used for Gem generation and Concussive Palm for more board presence.
Deny and Nopeify! can interact with the opponent’s spells and finally Eye of the Dragon and Tasty Faefolk will offer you even more board presence and sustain. A consideration is changing the latter for Sparklefly. (Write-up by Pespscola)
Rating change: +0.5 stars
The rating has increased this week since many players are going back to older decks (Feel The Rush, Fiora-Shen). Zoe-Lee also manages to round up its weakness against Aggro decks (e.g. Discard Aggro) in a way that the old Zed-Lee deck wasn’t able to. This isn’t attributed to Zoe per se, but rather Sparklefly.
Sparklefly and (if you’re lucky) Mentor of the Stones grant Lee Sin decks some serious survivability. Being able to reduce the polarity against Aggro makes Zoe-Lee strong. The only downside is that Go Hard is still a very difficult matchup for Zoe-Lee.
CICACAQDBEBACAYUFYBAGBAFCEDACBABDMPSIJRHAIAQCBBVAIAQGFRTAEAQCAZD
After a quick digression with Riven, Ezreal & Draven were reunited to terrorize the ladder. With the Ballistic Bot as the only new addition to the deck, this archetype continues to contend for the top spots in our meta snapshot. The addition of Ballistic Bot should not be glossed over here, as it serves as a card generator that can be used to activate all of the decks’ synergies. He also has a very special relationship with Draven, as he gets +1 attack when an axe gets used, even if he isn’t the target for it.
Ezreal-Draven is probably the best board control deck as well as being a tempo machine in the mid game. Moreover, the deck has the option to incorporate one of the high profile tech cards for this meta in Scorched Earth. This card not only has perfect synergy with Tri-beam Improbulator and Statikk Shock, but also has the ability to destroy The Grand Plaza.
Scorched Earth can replace Noxian Guillotine, so the deck can more readily answer Scouts, Lucian-Hecarim and Leona-ASol. The Grand Plaza is central to all of the aforementioned decks, so denying their opportunity to gain favourable trades will be a gigantic boon to your chances of winning with this deck.
Although 35/40 cards are the exact same as in the previous dominant lists, Ezreal-Draven is now more solidly anchored as the second best deck currently, only feeling weak against Go Hard so far. (Write-up by Den)
Rating change: -0.25 stars
Compared to other top decks, Ezreal-Draven doesn’t seem flexible enough. Invoke decks such as Leona-ASol allow the pilot to make multiple meaningful choices every single turn. Do I choose to play removals via Falling Comet, an Elusive unit to push for damage, or Moonsilver to cheat the curve and/or mana? As an Ezreal-Draven player, your only real choices are: Should I remove this unit? And if so, which of my spells should I use?
The inability to make flexible plays means that sometimes it becomes impossible to recover from even a single misplay, as your plays are extremely fixed. If you ever feel like your games as Ezreal-Draven are very deterministic and that “there’s nothing more I can do,” this is the explanation.
A second reason for this week’s rating change is due to lag. Lag can refer to when your hand bricks and you can’t do anything significant for that turn. When you lag two turns without interrupting a Lee Sin player, you lose the game. When you lag two turns behind a Feel The Rush player, you lose the game. However, when you lag two turns behind Ezreal-Draven, it sometimes feels like you aren’t put in any severe disadvantage. In other words, Ezreal-Draven is a little slow.
CIBQEAIFDUUAEAYBAYLAKAIBAMGBIJZQAMAQGAICAIAQCAI2AMAQKAIPDEAQCAIFEE
Feel The Rush is a Freljord/SI control ramp deck. Its main win condition is to play Feel The Rush on T7 with the help of ramping tools like Wyrding Stones and Catalyst of Aeons. With the exception of Ionia lists, which have access to Deny, many decks find it very difficult to answer FTR’s huge tempo swing. Thus, if FTR resolves, the game is usually over. Atrocity is another crucial card, as it can help you to end the game one turn after FTR is played.
One important skill when playing Feel The Rush is banking mana so that you can play it as early as possible, or to keep yourself open in order to have enough mana for board wipes. For example, it might not be a good idea to play anything on T1 and T2 so you can play an Avalanche with no downsides on T3-4. Of course, a lot of this is matchup-dependent, but (as usual) being able to plan ahead will be helpful to pilot this deck well.
If possible, try to level-up Trundle before you play FTR, so that you have two Overwhelm units with 10/10 statlines to attack with. Trundle with the Overwhelm keyword can often be the difference between losing and winning. Against Aggro, it might not be a good idea to focus on ramping. Instead, you want to mulligan in search of an Avalanche. (Write-up by Crixuz)
Additional notes: By now, most players are tired of Go Hard and are playing hard counters out of either frustration or necessity. Feel The Rush is one of the counters that has a great winrate against Go Hard, justifying the 4 star rating. FTR is extremely fast relative to Go Hard, and its win condition cannot be negated by the healing that Go Hard represents. You simply cannot outheal an Atrocity from an 11/15 Tryndamere.
However, with Zoe-Lee being popular, playing FTR might not be the best idea. Evaluate your local meta and adapt accordingly.
CIBQEAYAAYHAIAIABENC2MYEAEBBGIBLGEBQCAQAAEAQGAQUAMAQAFJFGQAA
Fiora-Shen is a Midrange deck with multiple win conditions, namely through board pressure or trading four times with Fiora. Most of the game plan is trying to be the one in the driver’s seat; from there, you can decide on which specific win condition you’re aiming at. If you lose control of the game, you lose the opportunity to do this.
In order to gain this momentum, the deck is stacked with combat tricks (e.g. Sharpsight, Riposte) and ways to force combats (Single Combat, Concerted Strike) that protect your board and interact with the opponent’s even outside of the combat phase. Drawing is of course very important, and Rivershaper is the star of the show in that regard. Combined with Barriers and all the support cards in your deck, you can abuse it and cycle your deck pretty efficiently.
Relentless Pursuit is the new addition to the list, a strong card usually seen in MF Scouts. Here, it allows the player to pressure their opponent by trading with barriers and then attacking again, or to take the value trade from your Challengers when the opponent thinks it’s safe to develop their board.
Overall, this is a “do it all” archetype, which can go in different directions and allows the player to focus on various game plans. It’s important to note that the list has a tendency to lose to itself when it’s unable to get on board in the early game, as having the tempo advantage is still a key component to the deck’s success. (Write-up by Den)
Additional notes: Fiora-Shen used to be one of the best decks prior to the Cosmic Creation’s release. The main reason why it’s no longer one of the top contenders is due to the prevalence of Hush from both Plaza and Lee Sin decks. The deck also has to fight in a brand new environnement while having no new cards to include in the archetype.
Cards such as Tasty Faefolk could help against damage-focused decks for example, but the flexibility of the list seems to have reached its peak, for now. Even though the deck can be powerful in the right environnement, it looks like Fiora-Shen might be on the downward slope in the current meta.
CIBAMAIDA4ERIIZHG4DACBABBQOCOKBNAIAQGAYPAEBQIEQA
Discard Aggro is a swarm deck that wants to play a lot of units in order to slam a huge Crowd Favorite. A big aspect of playing this is knowing when and how to discard cards. Especially when you’re in a pinch, Draven’s Spinning Axes are a reliable way to be able to Discard something for free. To be a good Discard Aggro player, it’s important to focus on your win condition rather than focusing on cards that don’t advance your game plan. A good example would be discarding Jinx with Spinning Axes so that you can play Vision for free.
Jinx isn’t going to be relevant in every game, especially if you can kill the opponent with your swarm board in 2 turns, so this is something to take into consideration. Too often I see people not closing games because they want to play Jinx when really Jinx is pulling you into a different (and worse) game plan.
A new addition to the archetype is Survival Skills. When played, your allies cannot drop below 1 HP. More importantly for this list’s purposes, though, is that when it’s discarded, your strongest unit cannot drop below 1 HP this round. (Write-up by Crixuz)
CEAQYAYJBEOCGOBZJFGFIVKWMBSAEAIBAUMQCAYJAIAA
Targon Allegiance has been an archetype since the release of Call of the Mountain. It has seen a lot of variants, but the one with the most recent success was Leona-Diana with an Atrocity splash. This deck is very similar to Leona-Diana, the major difference being Zoe replacing Leona. Why has that happened? Well, Leona became an easy cut because of Solari Sunforger.
Why is Zoe good? Zoe is a value engine that forces answers which, in most cases, trade down in mana. One Nexus Strike from Zoe is already very valuable, because your deck synergizes with your cards in such forms as the discount from Mountain Scryer, the discount on The Skies Descend and Zoe’s creation of Behold the Infinite (in her levelled form) to gain access to expensive Invoke spells and thereby make the apex Invoke units stronger when they’re summoned.
To give a short overview of the key cards: Mountain Scryer is the best value engine in the deck, The Skies Descend can give you the edge vs Midrange and Atrocity provides a bit more reach. (Write-up by Pespscola)
Rating change: -0.25 stars
Expensive spells like The Skies Descend and Atrocity are good in a meta without Ionia. As Fiora-Shen and Zoe-Lee make their appearance in the meta, Zoe-Diana naturally performs worse.
CICQCAQABEAQGAAKAIAQAFQ2AIBQKBAPA4AQKAYEA4KROKRRAAAQCAIFCQ
The Ephemeral keyword didn’t really have a home for a while. Although the whole mechanic has fairly efficient support cards (Fading Memories & Soul Shepherd) and also has several champions benefiting from it (Lucian, Kalista, Hecarim), it has never really clicked. Now, though, it looks like the time has come for the undead to be back as a dominant archetype thanks to the new landmark: The Grand Plaza.
The problem with Ephemeral followers has always been their volatility, the keyword not allowing the player to establish a board presence from one turn to another and therefore falling behind in the mid game. Now that The Grand Plaza landmark allows the followers to get the Challenger tag, the Ephemeral tag isn’t so much of a problem and the deck can control the board until its Ephemeral synergy builds up and takes over the game.
With the looks of an aggressive deck trying to go all-in, the deck actually builds toward a huge Hecarim when the early game pressure doesn’t work; its strongest turns in this case are usually in the 5-8 range. If the opponent cannot keep up, then Lucian has all the support he needs to evolve (Senna, Single Combat), which allows you to attack multiple times. (Write-up by Den)
Additional notes: Similarly to Fiora-Shen, Lucian-Hecarim feels like it’s on a downward trajectory. Being a board-focused deck, it can only be flexible in how to pressure their opponent, and not so much in how to answer threats or include burst damage, for example.
This means that it’s unlikely the deck finds new surprising possibilities, unless new cards are added to the game, making the archetype a fair Tier 2 deck but one with no realistic aspirations of reaching Tier 1. The list now includes The Harrowing as its finishing blow and as another way to smash your opponent’s Nexus with Hecarims and Lucians.
CICQCAQEBIBACBJRGUBAGBAFCQBAGBIGCACQCBAIE4VS2NACAEAQIMIBAECS2AA
Go Hard relies on drawing, and what’s a better way to draw than Hexcore Foundry? Sure, it also draws cards for your opponent, but most decks will eventually run out of mana to play every single one of these cards drawn thanks to Veteran Investigator and the landmark itself. With the low average card cost in this list, you should be able to cycle your Go Hards into a Pack Your Bags relatively easily, all the while applying more and more pressure on your opponent.
Teemo is the only part of the Mushroom package to feature here. Although Puffcaps can burn down your opponent’s Nexus, the amount of mana invested in them is rarely worthwhile. Moreover, focusing heavily on stuffing your opponent’s deck with Puffcaps made the deck even more reliant on finding Hexcore Foundry.
This version of the list prioritizes damage (especially Burn) and healing, helping you survive long enough for the Foundry to get you to Pack Your Bags. Mystic Shot, Doombeast and Get Excited! will turn the opponent's Nexus to dust. (Write-up by Ultraman)
Garen version
CICACAQABEBAGAAKBYBQEBQWDA7AMAIABEGA6GQ5GMBACAIAAIAQEAABAA
Quinn version
CICAEAYABIHAGAIABEOTGAYCAYLDUPQDAIAAEBQJAMAQCAAVAEBAMCABAIAAOAIBAEACK
Although it might appear that The Grand Plaza is best utilized as a defensive card in decks like Leona-ASol, it can also act as a key card in more aggressive decks. For Scouts, the landmark helps with early to mid game board presence and with setting up your snowball effects in the late game. The synergy with the Scout keyword is unsurprisingly a great one here, as once Plaza is on the board, almost all minions will have the combination of Scout, Challenger and +1/+1, allowing them to attack twice while buffed and with the ability to choose their target.
All these small bonuses combined make for a well-rounded trading machine that’s very hard to stop for decks without a solid early game or comeback spells to deal with the board. The archetype is still looking for the best list, as both Garen and Quinn seem to be valid options alongside Miss Fortune. Garen puts more emphasis on trading power and building resilient minions, while Quinn maximizes the Scout synergy and shares a common level-up condition with MF.
An important limiting factor to this list is that it has a unilateral nature. This means that it only operates one way - in this case, through board presence. As such, its ranking is also limited in our meta snapshot this week. Another reason why Scouts are in the bonus section of our snapshot is the unreliability the deck shows when The Grand Plaza isn’t drawn early. Similarly to the Ephemeral Lucian-Hecarim deck, failing to find Plaza is a death knell to your chances of winning.
In the current meta, there are better and more reliable decks that don’t rely on finding a single key card every game, or that have a better draw package to help support such a focused game plan. (Write-up by Den)
CICQCAQEAMAQGBQRAMBAMJRLFYBQGBAFBUJAIAIEBAISOMQBAEBQICYCAEAQINABAIDCU
Fizz-Teemo is an Elusive Aggro deck that features some rarely played cards such as Rising Spell Force, Suit Up! and Mind Meld. If you’re looking for an interesting and fresh deck, then Fizz-Teemo is the deck for you. The plan is to play your Elusive units in the early game via Teemo, Poro Cannon or Fizz. Although their damage output at base level seems paltry at first, it multiplies when you draw a Suit Up! or two.
Another way to deal constant damage to your opponent is through Ballistic Bot. One of this deck’s weaknesses is that its units aren’t very sticky if you don’t draw Suit Up! To address this weakness, the deck includes a ton of card draw. There’s Pick a Card, Zap Sprayfin and Wiggly Burblefish at your disposal to refill your hand and board.
Wiggly Burblefish in particular is very strong because you’re playing so many spells in each game that you get to play it for free. Never underestimate the work that an Elusive 3/1 can put in. If left unanswered, it represents 6 damage over two attack turns (all for a potential zero mana cost).
Lastly, the deck plays one copy of Mind Meld. Although not necessary for closing games, Mind Meld can truly cheat some wins for you. When you have the opportunity to play Mind Meld, all your units will become an Elusive 5/5 or 6/6 (depending on the number of cheap spells you’ve played), potentially making it an OTK card.
Therefore, Fizz-Teemo is a Burn deck that has multiple win conditions. To know which to use, you need to look at the matchup. You can slow-Burn your opponent with 2x Ballistic Bot, Iterative Improvement and Get Excited! You can win with a 4/4 Teemo, win by surviving + playing spells and finishing with Mind Meld or win by swarming your opponent with Poros. Against Ionia or decks that run Withering Wail, you should use Mind Meld as discard fodder. (Write-up by Crixuz, deck by faintHD)