The Ruination LoR Card Impressions: Akshan

The Ruination LoR Spoilers Day 4

For every great and devouring darkness, there must be a light. Sometimes a rascally scoundrelly light, but a light nonetheless.

I’m Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and today we’re showcasing the Han Solo to Viego’s Darth Vader, Akshan himself.

He’s bringing a metric hoard load of matryoshka-style created cards with him to do battle, so buckle up and let’s dive on in.

Here are the new Shurima LoR Cards from The Ruination:

• Akshan
• Warlord’s Palace/Relic of Power
• Warlord’s Hoard/Sentinel’s Hoard
• The Absolver’s Resurrection/Fount of Power/Shield of the Sentinels
• Grappling Hook/Akshan’s Grappling Hook
• The Absolver/The Absolver’s Return

We’re revealing new Ruination cards every day on our spoiler page.

To build decks with the new cards, head to our Deck Builder.

Akshan

• Akshan
  • 2 mana 2|2 Champion, Quick attack
  • Text: When I’m summoned or Strike: Summon a Warlord’s Palace or advance it 1 round.
  • Level Up: Warlord’s Palace has finished its Countdown.

• Akshan Level 2
  • 2 mana 3|3 Champion, Quick attack
  • Text: When I’m summoned, Level Up, or Strike: Summon a Warlord’s hoard or advance it 1 round.

Because of the style of today’s cards, we’re going to have to go through all of them and then do our best at a sort of mass evaluation at the bottom, so bear with me if this gets a tad dense.

The very beginning of the cascade of wonderful nonsense is a slightly understated Lucian.

He makes up for that by summoning a Landmark for us that can potentially create some interesting value. What sort of value and what is that Landmark you might ask? Well, let’s check out below.

Warlord’s Palace/Relic of Power

• Warlord’s Palace
  • 1 mana Landmark
  • Text: Countdown 8: create a Relic of Power in hand. When you target Allies advance me 1.

• Relic of Power
  • 0 mana Focus Fleeting Spell
  • Text: Pick 1 – Predict then draw 1, summon a Sandstone Charger, or grant all allies +1/+0

Our level one version of Akshan can give us a free Time Trick, a not-quite-Burst-speed large attacker for a turn, or a small group buff. That doesn’t sound like all that much after eight turns of waiting. Lissandra would be disappointed.

However, let’s remember that both for this one and for all the rest to follow you’re basically never going to have to wait that long.

With every strike from Akshan, Ally targeting spell, or simple Advance card you play, that clock will accelerate.

So our level one Akshan looks to be a pretty simple beater with some small amount of payoff in a couple of turns.

Reasonable, but by no means amazing, and might have problems finding a home, let alone creating a deck. What does the level two Landmark give us though?

Warlord’s Hoard/Sentinel’s Hoard

• Warloard’s Hoard
  • 1 mana Landmark
  • Text: Countdown 8: create a Sentinel’s Hoard in hand. When you target Allies advance me 1.

• Sentinel’s Hoard
  • 0 mana Focus Fleeting Spell
  • Text: Cast a The Absolver’s Resurrection, a Fount of Power, or a Shield of the Sentinels.

Wait, you’re telling me that when I trigger the thing I only get from leveling up my Champion, who only levels by counting down the first thing I only get from said Champion coming into play, what I then get is a thing that still has three more things inside it?

This is getting ridiculous. Ah, ruinate it, bring ‘em on!

The Absolver’s Resurrection/Fount of Power/Shield of the Sentinels

• The Absolver’s Resurrection
  • 0 mana Focus Spell
  • Text: Grant all enemies Vulnerable and create in hand a 0 cost copy of the strongest ally that died this game.

• Fount of Power
  • 0 mana Focus Spell
  • Text: Draw 2. Your cards cost 1 less this round.

• Shield of the Sentinels
  • 0 mana Focus Spell
  • Text: Grant your champions everywhere Spell shield and +2|+2

Ok, so after 16 countdowns’ worth of strikes, ally targeting, advancing, and generally faffing about, this is what’s all the way at the bottom alongside our shiny 3|3 Quick Attacker. On one hand, all of these are absolutely bonkers, let alone the power of getting to choose which one you want.

If you’ve got the board, make it gigantic and un-targetable. If you once had the board, go get it back and kill all of your opponent’s backline nonsense. If you never did this game, fine, draw some stuff and have a crazy combo turn.

On the other hand, if we’ve learned anything from the Emperor’s Deck it’s that getting here is really, really, hard unless we have a powerful way to cheat. Maybe Riven, Taric, some Gems, or Paydays, just as some starting points.

Here’s the cool thing. The actual mana investment here is only two, which is a huge deal.

It means that you can quite reasonably drop it down while maintaining the board and play a midrange, control, or even tempo style that doesn’t plan for it to go off until much later.

This little matryoshka is sufficiently complex that it really doesn’t feel like a cop-out to say it will need to be played with before we can really rate it.

The potential payoffs involved though make me think that if there is a deck that can effectively achieve them it will be a force to be reckoned with.

Grappling Hook/Akshan’s Grappling Hook

• Grappling Hook
  • 3 mana Slow Spell
  • Text: An ally you’ve targeted this round strikes an enemy.

Wait. There are real cards in this that we don’t need to dig for and we can actually put in our deck? That’s allowed? Amazing! Anyway, Slow speed strike spells are generally pretty sub-par, but that said this one is very under-costed.

If you are already planning to be targeting your units as part of your deck’s gem, I mean game plan, then a three-mana card even kill spell sounds pretty nice. This will 100% be a powerful champion spell and may even manage to find its way into some main decks.

The Absolver/The Absolver’s Return

• The Absolver
  • 2 mana Burst Spell
  • Text: Give an ally +2|+1 this round. If you have leveled a champion this game, create a The Absolver’s Return in hand.

• The Absolver’s Return
  2 mana Burst Fleeting Spell
  Text: Give an ally +2/+1 and overwhelm this round.

This one is really interesting. At the base level, it’s a slightly sub-par but still dangerous combat trick that will need to be respected. If you’ve got your leveled champion though then at four total mana cost it becomes a hugely committal but absolutely brutal play.

I’m looking at Sivir, Zed, Taric, and Lee Sin as folks who would love to use this to just beat down on their opponents. This one feels like it has serious potential for play both on ladder and potentially in tournament lists if we can find the right home for it.

Bonus Deck: Akshan’s Mountain

Deck Code: CEBAOAYJEMUCSMB2KFOAGBAHGY3YEAICAMBQSE2HMIBAIB4DAGFACAA

[See Akshan’s Mountain deck details]

The idea here is pretty simple but different iterations on it have proven themselves to be deceptively powerful before. Get some solid, efficient beaters, buff them up and protect them, and go to town.

Your main targets in this deck will mostly be Sparklefly, Ruin Runner, Taric, and Akshan. The cool thing is that both of your champions will either pass on their buffs or not care who ends up getting them.

Akshan gives you some late-game payoff that anyone who has tried this archetype knows can be sorely needed. Around turn 6-8 we are generally gassed out and gasping for air. If we are on-point with our gem generation that’s about when a huge tempo swing/refuel will come online from our friendly neighborhood rogue.

We’re giving up Golden Aegis and Jarvan from Demacia, but Ruin Runner and Akshan both give back an awful lot, while Grappling Hook will do its best Single Combat impersonation. I don’t know if this will end up being the right home for Akshan, but setting him up to climb the mountain sounds like a pretty fun place to start off his journey.

We’re revealing new The Ruination cards every day at our spoiler page. To build decks with the new cards, head to our Deck Builder.