Why Bandlewood Will Be The Best Region

There are very few situations where regions feel powerful on release.

Shurima used to be an aggro focused mess that was designed to be high synergy but wasn't. Only being addressed recently.

Targon on release was underpowered in the beginning, overpowered with Aphelios, and now is kind of being carried by Zoe which is a little sad.

But man bandlewood is just coming out of the gate swinging. The number of playables vs non playable isn't something we've seen since vanilla, or the release of bilgewater.

Pranks are viable, shromes are viable, landmarks are viable, darkness is viable, and when you start to get creative you realize there are very few limitations.

Bandlewood Yassao sure why not you can hexplosove minefield into safety inspector.

Bandlewood Ezreal oh you bet all those free poison darts hyper level him.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a poppy elite list rolling, which I haven't seen tried yet.

Veigar without shadow, that's easy he levels himself if you can keep him alive, you can try targon or freijord.

This is a great time for deck builders and a really bad time for meta slaves.

You're either optimistic or not having played CCG enough to believe any expansion can be anti meta slaves. Give it 2 weeks and you'll be overrun with the same decks all over again. Also three previous meta deck are very much slaughtering as usual : Rally elusive, pirate MF and discard aggro.

And to go with that, another meta deck is a disguised elusive (nami Zoe) and the other is just the newer gross board domination through over average cheap followers (Poppy,Lulu) cards.

So much for a bad time for meta slaves when all S decks are aggro/almost aggro.

I do agree however than the expansion is filled with cool cards.

I think part of the reason why Bandle City is good is because they designed the set properly this time. It doesn't feel like anyone's missing X to make them good. Similarly none of the new champions feel bad to play. I think all of them are viable in this meta and their playstyle (even if they are slotted in old archetypes) feel unique in their effects. This has by far been the best expansion. Sure a couple things need nerfs but the meta feels fresh that I don't really mind much. I'm more optimistic of the next two expansions of the set now.

The recent nerf to Blade dance and the Sivir package did help a lot, without that, darkness and landmark decks would have disappeared after the first two weeks.

I have played Arena, gwent, hearthstone  and shadowverse starting at gold in the early days,  but reliably hitting diamond as I've gotten older and more patient for correct plays.

When I say a meta is anti meta, it's more that meta decks have correct answers built in to the card pool, and no individual card is grosly overpowered. Belive me thats rare.

Like I might say Zoe Nami feels strong but thats when I play a deck with next to no hard removal. The deck is strong in the sense it demands answers, but so does discard so I wouldn't describe it as toxic.

The problematic metas are when you do everything you're supposed to from a deck building and player standpoint and still loose. Azir Irelia was a great example as a deck that won more games than it should have.

Bandle is good at card advantage. Nothing can be bad when you make it like that.