WhatAmI
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7 Min read Worlds was an absolute blast but the wheel of time continues its inexorable turning and in several days, Seasonals will be upon us once more.
I’m Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and whether you are trying to start from the ground up or in “What’s my third deck?” mode, I’ve got the breakdown of some of the top contenders to help you get a grip on the meta.
Here are eight decks lists you should consider for your lineup and expect to be fielded by other players.
For more info about how the Seasonal Tournament works, check out the official rules.
[See Sion/Draven deck details]
There are many different ways to build this boogeyman but they all have the same basic game plan behind them.
Play some solid early attackers to gain advantage or trade off the board, generate infinite value with Lost Soul, and kill with an unreasonable two-lived Overwhelm unit.
The straight-up power level of this deck cannot be denied and that’s why I think it’s important to keep in mind going into Seasonals prep time.
That said if you’re thinking of bringing this deck as part of your lineup, have care. You will most assuredly be painting a target on your own back.
Whether this deck is strong enough to withstand that target like TF/Fizz, or crumble under the pressure will be an interesting conversation to have as the live rounds of Seasonals begin.
It’s funny to see this deck as still near the top of the heap after how many times it’s been smacked with the nerf bat, but the numbers still bear it out.
This one comes in many forms but the underlying concepts remain remarkably similar. Set up some powerful bodies, pump them up, and find some way to slam them through your opponent’s defenses for lethal.
There are just so many pump spells that it can be hard to kill the key units with damage alone.
This deck is also a lot less all-in than it used to be giving it some key controlling potential.
In the hands of a masterful pilot, the tempo will slip further and further away from the opponent until a rally turn or a powerful Absolver finishes the game in one huge blow.
You also have a surprising amount of value with Preservarium and the multiple ways to get a Warlord’s Hoard into play.
Just when your opponent thinks you are finally down and out you can pull just a few more cards and push through their final defenses. This is not one to sleep on.
While this deck has fallen a bit from popularity, it has shown itself to still have the chops to fight with many of the other top competitors.
While power has certainly crept a bit it hasn’t overtaken the patrons of plunder so completely that I’d expect them not to show up at all.
We’ve got an impressive amount of interaction while applying pressure and fighting for the board the whole way. (Yes, I am still a fan of Hired Gun in this deck, hot take though she may be.)
Then at the end, our leveled champions and even The Dreadway show up to provide huge finishers all on their lonesome.
If that wasn’t enough there are six cards to turn our opponent’s deck against them.
Nothing is more fun than playing against a control deck and blowing them out with their own Harrowing or Deny at a key moment.
[See Bandle Burn deck details]
Speaking of hyper aggro sometimes it’s just time to kill a fool.
This is a pretty traditional Noxus style aggressive deck with its champions filling in some of the key weaknesses those decks tend to have.
Most decks that are ready for swarms of small attackers are going to have trouble with the top end of Poppy, Ziggs, and Lecturing Yordle.
We also get to play a slightly unreasonable amount of card draw for an aggro deck simply because of how Bandle City as a region functions.
All these things put together have made this deck the scourge of the ladder over the last few days and I would be surprised not to see it make a strong showing come Seasonals time.
My current version is slightly more value-oriented to try to get edges in the mirror.
If you want to go as low to the ground as possible you can fit even more burn into this deck with Tenor of Terror, or even a tenth or eleventh one drop subbing in for some of the drawing power.
There are also plenty of other aggressive Poppy-Piles but I’m only including one here for the sake of brevity.
Zoe/Nami by whatever name has been the scourge of the seas, or at least of ladder for most of the season now.
If you show up unprepared or simply can’t answer their first couple of threats you will simply get bowled over by giant Elusive units in the first five or six turns of the game.
On straight-up unreasonableness, this deck might take number one. It does however lose a point or two in terms of consistency that I feel compelled to point out.
If you don’t have Nami or Shelly then cobbling together wins can be extremely difficult. Not to say you can’t do it, but it’s a rough time.
Especially in a format with as many random Lost Souls wandering around as we have to try to keep a Zoe alive can be pretty rough.
Taken with all of that salt though this deck’s power level still consistently tops the charts.
I brought it to worlds and I don’t regret it, I might bring it to seasonal, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least a couple of them across the field from me over the nine-round day.
This deck might have my favorite reactions from my opponents while they play against me of any deck in the format.
You just do small, mostly reasonable things for five or six turns, and then they look up to go “Wait, I’m dead, when did that happen?” and you get to laugh.
This deck is the very definition of a good stuff pile. You have draw, removal, tempo, and a sick endgame courtesy of Gangplank and Dreadway.
This is another one I teched slightly towards the mirror with a bit of additional value.
Feel free to ditch Dreadway and Harpoon for some more early units and burn if aggro is more your style, this deck loves it both ways.
Across the board, most of its matchups are near or at fifty percent and they tend to be on the happier side of that line.
That means there is huge room for skill to show through, just like old-school Fiora/Shen that shared the matchup tables if not the game plan. I expect to see quite a bit of this one come Seasonals time.
I know it sounds heretical but I promise you are allowed to play this deck even if your name isn’t Yamato.
This deck requires some pretty exact plays, sequencing, and understanding of the game though, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve put in some serious reps.
That said it pays off what you put into it in spades and is one of the few truly pure control decks left.
Most of the game plan is to simply destroy each of your opponent’s important threats and slowly run them out of cards.
However, being able to burn out the unwary from twenty with Veigar and friends is pretty nasty.
Especially in control mirrors opponents will be hard-pressed to deal with the clock you set while establishing their own.
My biggest pieces of advice for playing against this deck are to either come packing Rally effects, with they often have trouble with, or play.
Bandle Tree is an oft-forgotten archetype that I think needs to not be slept on. It gets to have multiple powerful game plans as simple swarm mechanics backed by Poppy will do in many an unprepared opponent.
Following that, you have an awful lot of control tools and value to simply out grind any frustrating midrange or control players looking to stop you.
And then at the very top end, your signature card can simply win the game, generally between turns eight and ten, in a difficult to interact with fashion.
Any deck with that many different difficult-to-disrupt plans while maintaining its power and interactive abilities seems like it has a serious fighting chance.
Especially in a tournament format where you can ban out its worst matchups.
This one might feel like a bit of a sleeper but I would be very surprised not to see at least a couple of copies fight their way through the press into the power of the top thirty-two.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask WhatAmI during his streams (around 10AM PST basically every day).
WhatAmI streams at twitch.tv/xxwhatamixx around 10AM PST every day
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