LoR Meta Snapshot #29

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Difficulty: Hard

Still able to survive against board-centric decks thanks to a flurry of reactive spells, Ezreal-Draven is currently the strongest deck in terms of denying the opponent a chance to develop their strategy. When looking at the current meta, we can see that most decks are working on building a game plan more than answering the one their opponent has. As a result, Ezreal-Draven takes the throne for the time being.

Whether it’s Scouts, Lee Sin or even Fiora-Shen, these decks cannot function if they cannot build tempo, which Ezreal-Draven excels at destroying - both in the early and the mid game. What’s more, with the draw potential the deck features, it can keep up with pretty much anything for a solid 9-10 turns, up to the point where Captain Farron crashes the party. (Write-up by Den)

Additional notes: Thanks to the Go Hard nerf, Ezreal-Draven has lost its worst matchup. No deck on the ladder is capable of countering it. The only deck that could counter EZ-Draven, Feel The Rush, is suppressed by the abundance of Zoe-Lee decks.

Ezreal-Draven doesn’t feature a power card like The Grand Plaza, meaning its raw power level isn’t necessarily the highest in the current meta. Despite this, the archetype can pride itself on having some of the best answers in the game with Scorched Earth for The Grand Plaza, tons of removals for Lee Sin (Noxian Guillotine, Tri-Beam Improbulator, Ravenous Flock), Scouts and other board-centric decks which are very popular on the ladder currently.

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Difficulty: Hard

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 Sparklefly will offer you even more board presence and sustain. (Write-up by Pespscola)

Additional notes: Zoe-Lee has lost one of its most awkward matchups, Go Hard, thus solidifying its position as one of the most powerful decks on the ladder.

Lee Sin is also transitioning to a situation in which two copies of Deny (as opposed to three) is the norm, freeing up space for an additional Bastion or two. When used preemptively, Bastion helps against Burst speed answers such as Hush and Flash Freeze, further improving Lee Sin’s winrate on those fronts (i.e. against Zoe-ASol and Ashe-Sejuani).

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Difficulty: Hard

Replacing Leona-ASol in the meta, Zoe-ASol is one of the most consistent decks around. There are a lot of variations out there, but the key here is that you have lots of different options in each stage of the game. In the early game, you pile on the pressure with Zoe and are able to fend off your opponent pretty consistently.

In the mid game, with the assistance of The Grand Plaza, your units can trade very effectively or, at the very least, transition you healthily into the late game. It goes without saying at this point, but the late game is quite easy to win using Invokes along with a flipped Zoe or ASol. (Write-up by RattlingBones)

Additional notes: So, why has Zoe replaced Leona in the deck? Zoe is versatile and performs multiple functions. First of all, Zoe is removal bait. Your opponent has to respect Zoe for the value she can generate. Thus, she demands to be answered, allowing your other and later threats to be more likely to stick.

Secondly, Zoe by herself can perform the same job as Leona and all her Solari followers. When playing Leona, your deck has an inbuilt curve. T1 Solari Soldier, T2 Solari Shieldbearer, T3 Solari Priestess (and you may not want to play on curve every time).

Zoe, on the other hand, allows you to create your own curve. Need a Turn 2 play? Let’s find something with Supercool Starchart. Need a Turn 3 play? Supercool Starchart. If Zoe connects one or two times, your board presence is much stronger than usual.

The only drawback is sometimes the deck performs a little worse compared to Leona if you don’t draw Zoe in the early game.

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Difficulty: Moderate

After many nerfs, Bilgewater only retains one true identity: drawing cards. With many cheap tricks, you can enjoy the possibility of playing Aggro without ever running out of cards to play! Although drawing costs you tempo, you’ll be able to compensate for it thanks to Wiggly Burblefish and its rapid descent to 0 mana cost thanks to all the spells you’re able to play.

At the same time as you’re reducing the cost of your Burblefish, you’re leveling-up Fizz and thus preparing your win conditions. These involve using multiple Elusives for maximum damage and/or trying to set-up a powerful Mind Meld. Handling this many high strength Elusive units will be quite the challenge for your opponent… As long as they don’t have The Ruination or Deny.

Despite all this, the biggest threat is the man often described as the best champion in the game: Twisted Fate. Drawing is good for cycling your deck and ensuring you maintain board pressure, but a leveled-up TF is what you really want from all this draw, as this is (almost) an instant win scenario. This deck allows the player a positively rapid level-up with cards such as Rummage (draw 2 for 1 mana) and Pick a Card.

It’s possible to level TF in one turn, which should terrify your opponent. Try to surprise the opponent, or tire their answers out until you get that sweet turn of freedom to plan a powerful Elusive attack! (Write-up by Ultraman1996)

Additional notes: The main reason that this deck has emerged so forcefully into the meta this week is that it heavily counters Targon, a region that’s all over the ladder. You draw cards so quickly that TF will level-up instantly in some cases, giving Targon little to no time to find an answer. The fact that Targon can’t effectively deal with TF is another boon to this archetype.

Another lesser reason is that it has the ability to resist other common archetypes, such as Scouts or Ezreal-Draven. It punishes misplays, while forcing the opponent to play around tons of damage for no mana (Burblefish). If the opponent commits their mana to something like The Ruination to clear the board, they’ll lose half their health without any ability to answer the threat. You’ll have some mana banked thanks to your 0-cost units, but they won’t have any mana left after using the board clear.

In this way, Fizz-TF is an Aggro deck that doesn’t run out of steam - it can push up to 13 damage for 2 mana. The deck is strong enough that it’ll still be able to outplay some matchups even against decks full of AoE removals, built specifically with the idea of countering it. Traditional AoE decks are currently rather weak in the meta (e.g. FTR, Anivia, Deep) and, as we outlined above, they aren’t good counters to Fizz-TF anyway.

As such, there’s considerable room for the deck to dominate the ladder in the near future. There probably is a counter out there in the longer term, but in the shorter term, the deck will force the meta to adapt, which could put an end to Targon’s dominion.

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Difficulty: Hard

The myriad methods of healing in this list pair nicely with your overall game plan: stalling. You want to stall and stall until either your opponent wears themselves out, or your Creates start generating threats to their Nexus. With a decent ability to prevent trades and sufficient early game pressure to survive aggression, you still have to rely on your early minions to suppress part of the opponent’s board pressure. If you lived through that, the healing abilities coupled with big minions from Starshaping will save you most of the time.

Karma is included because in her levelled form, she has always been a big threat in the late game. Here, though, she gives you the ability to get 10 healing for 5 mana (not counting the double Create), which can give you a lifeline in very desperate games. The frequent Creation of new cards makes up for the lack of card draw in this deck. (Write-up by Ultraman1996)

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Difficulty: Easy

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. With the introduction of The Grand Plaza, the time has come for the undead to come back as a solid archetype.

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, which allows you to attack multiple times. (Write-up by Den)

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Difficulty: Easy

Even with a Make It Rain nerf some patches ago, Gangplank isn’t willing to leave the meta without a fight. So he mustered his pirate brothers and sisters, co-opted his arch enemy (Miss Fortune) and is now trying to come back from the dead. How’s that for a newspaper headline?

It’s a very simple list, where you’re trying to curve out from the beginning of the game and consistently push damage on your opponent’s Nexus, so you bring it to a low amount of HP, which is ideal for a finishing touch with Decimate and Noxian Fervor. Being able to push damage turn by turn often proves useful, since you can apply the final blow with a leveled-up Gangplank; just watch out for Hush.

If you need to shift to value damage mid to late game, instead of being able to push it through a solid board, Jack, the Winner and Captain Farron are glad to lend you a hand. Sleep with the Fishes is an infinite value engine, as long as you can stack a few units on the board, and the 3x Decimate from Farron is a nightmare for any opponent without healing. (Write-up by CastMin)

The above prescription may include the following side-effects:

• Not attacking without Crackshot Corsair, unless your opponents have other threats they need to deal with
• Treating MF as an over-the-top damage dealer and not caring about her dying or not leveling
• Using Legion Grenadier to get additional procs for Gangplank on the defensive turns
• Baiting your opponent into using mana before killing them with a Noxian Fervor they can’t answer
• Taking full hits like a maniac and not blocking, so you have a board to apply more pressure and win the game
• Compulsive crying when queuing into any Targon list

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Difficulty: Moderate

At its core, Teemo-Ezreal is a Teemo or Poison Puffcap-focused deck. You want to mulligan for Teemo and Puffcap Peddler to get your engine going. The deck deliberately plays cheap spells, allowing you to maximize your Puffcap generation.

Every Freljord-PnZ deck ultimately needs to solve the problem of limited card draw. Previously, this mainly came in the form of Statikk Shock or Progress Day! The introduction of Hexcore Foundry, however, has meant that the region pair has a new way to avoid running out of steam. Yet, given Foundry’s bilateral effect, timing its use is important.

Many players play Foundry in early turns, as a way to improve their bricked hands. This is usually a bad play, as you’ll allow the opponent to advance further. Rather, aim to play Foundry when the opponent has a hefty amount of Puffcaps in their deck or when you get to a certain turning point.

The turning point can be recognized by asking “If I play Hexcore Foundry now, and both players each draw one additional card per turn, who’s more punished by it? Is the advantage that my opponent gains from drawing one additional card much greater than the advantage I gain?”

This analysis will depend on the natural strength of the cards they can draw, the mana that they’ll have going into the next few turns (if their cards are all 10 mana and the game is at T5, you may safely play Foundry), the potential number of turns that they will destroy their Nexus from the extra card they draw (due to the Puffcaps), your health or ability to chump block, etc.

Basically, knowing when to play your Foundry is the toughest element of this deck. Whatever it is, the answer is nearly always not going to be Turn 3 and the landmark will mostly likely be played on Turn 5-8.

Teemo-Ezreal also has the ability to go faster or slower. It’s easy to understand how to go fast. Play Teemo on T1, Puffcap Peddler on T3, go face against an empty board and so forth. To go slow, you should understand that outside of Deep decks, no deck has the ability to remove Puffcaps. Knowing this, simply play a Puffcap Peddler (or two) and plan for the long game.

That means protecting Peddler, managing your opponent’s board so that it doesn’t go crazy, and not overextending (i.e. don’t empty your hand followed by playing Foundry early). Many decks don’t have a way to effectively deal with the Peddler.

If Challengers are a problem due to The Grand Plaza, you have Aftershock. Single Combat can be replied with Troll Chant, and this will be relevant as long as you don’t overextend with your attacks.

Attacking means that you might be forced to exhaust your Troll Chants, but you don’t want to do that sometimes. Keep your Peddler alive and “turtle” your way to 80 Puffcaps in your opponent’s deck.

Lastly, the final component of the deck would be Ezreal. First, determine if Ezreal is ever coming out early. This will depend on, but isn’t limited to, whether the opponent can answer an early Ezreal, or if you need to answer Zoe. Next, Ezreal is often a great finisher for many decks.

For matchups that are going to be a little tighter, Ezreal will be your saving grace. The deck levels Ezreal easy; all of your spells target units and Avarosan Sentry is a 3 for 1 (it levels Ezreal, gives you an attacker or chump blocker and prevents your opponent from attacking for one turn). A leveled Ezreal in the late game can look at dealing 4-8 damage, which is obviously very useful for closing the games. (Write-up by Crixuz)

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Difficulty: Moderate

Twisted Fate and Zoe are two of the best hand support heroes in the game, helping their deck function and always providing options as to what to play and being flexible with your mana. Paired with a very tempo-oriented build of Elusive minions and ways to cycle the deck, Zoe-TF will never let the opponent feel safe, and you can apply the pressure through multiplying your Elusive minions, or going big and investing into a single minion.

The stars of the deck are its Elusive minions, which will act as your only pressure plan, but still provide flexibility as they grant you cards, health and Nexus damage. The rest of the deck is built around cycling effectively so you never run out of resources, and supporting your minions so they can do their job: win you the game.

While you might be tempted to opt for a beefy Elusive minion and go all-in early, this deck’s gameplay actually rewards steady pressure and forces your opponent to invest resources for things that they fear will happen. Getting our opponent to overreact will force them into ineffective use of their resources, which is where Zoe-TF can shine.

As it’s very hard to get to an empty hand with the many card generation tools at your disposal, feel free to use all resources to stay in the lead. Once you see the opposing hand narrowing down its possibilities, this is where you should strike and go for a pressure turn with cheap Elusive minions and support spells to buff them.

Overall, this deck is trying to avoid being in a defensive position; the minions in the deck don’t have great statlines until buffed, and the Elusive tag is abused in order to not have to worry too much about your opponent’s stats on the board while attacking.

As long as you ensure that you dictate the tempo of the game and are responsible for your own decisions, you should be in a great position to succeed with Zoe-TF. (Write-up by Den)