Already competitive and playable as a standard midrange beater deck also works in eternal

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The only card we arent using the the big game poacher or whatever it's possible the card is amazing in the right deck but it doesn't feel great here

Eternal is nothing but pings and you want to capture a midrange creature with a mystic shot body? No you need synergy and buffs to keep it alive after

Does quicksand not work in quick attack?

Was that a bug?

Doesn't matter still easy deck easy wins 

----edit----

Do I need any spell other than desert strike when every ambush is a spell?

Naaaaah 6 spells only 3 prowl 3 desert strike then just curve ambush stuff overwhelm Champs and the allegience tutor easy easy easy God deck building is simple 

Obviously I can't test this on ladder yet

But this is basically what the deck should look like

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Poro king basically takes care of the one thing this deck suffered from

It's that you wouldnt draw enough tribal buffs

Now the deck has 12 tribal buffs, 15 if you count key words

yep it'll unga bunga just fine and you should be able to push enough dmg with impact, overwhelm and elusive

Easy peasy

Yeah being a marketing manager keeps me busy. 

But if I had time to burn I would

Like just time to set on fire and not see returns on

unpaid time investment

Remember how much it sucked when they closed down ladder for 3 months when the new set released?

Turns out that's normal

So I appolgize to all the viewers who wanted to know which meme decks were competitive on eternal ladder at masters level?

I can't tell you now tell you till August

Troll Riot trolling again 

I'll provide a post after expansion drops with all the best decks

Gotta spend all my free to play dust on something :P

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This is how I think timelines should actually play.

Actually it's a ezreal ping deck where you have this much greater removal flexibility with banana blaster and you have the rizu value.

Where you get the 5 drop and the 7/3 which is huge value

So why do I think this is better than just spam beef aka a worse Jax deck?

Because timelines is a shell with infinite flexibility and boiling that down to slam beef is dumb

How do you beat bot spam with 0 interaction?

Just hope to God you high roll your 3 drop 4 drop and win?

That seems dumb, this is probably a case where a ping spam shell with timelines is actually appropriate as opposed to the answer to every question

Quick update zaunite bests kitty because you can discard equipments or extra timelines etc

----after testing---

A 4 mana body that draws a card, provides a mana reduction on a pokey stick that also draws you a card and then transforms into a 7/7? Yes please much better than the meta list.

I'm pretty good at this meming thing eh?

I think at the end of the day Swim kind of had the right idea when it came to this game:

- you need to build a poro deck do you a just jam an agressive follower curve and call it a day or do you meme with iceborn legacy and elusive poros? The answer at the time was the road less traveled

- you need to build a shadow burn deck do you just run pnz with a bunch of pings or do you run phantom pranksters with ephemerals? The right answer is the road less traveled

Thats me I'm the new Swim offering good decks that are strong not because they are competitive but because they lean into what the deck is intended to be

If we want to talk about why my memes are generally superior to the memes people think are good in eternal

It comes down to flexibility

So look at something like timlines supposedly a top tier deck or something

It does one thing and one thing only play beef, and yes it's big beef with keywords and equipment but thats all it is

My meme plays beef, has a curve, has removal, has burst buffs, has an endgame combo wincon. You see a themed meme will always beat a competitive meme 

Thats just how it is in eternal

In standard it's the opposite

Another way to phrase that is people think way too follower centric when they should be thinking a little more champ centric

So let's preface by saying these are standard  decks so options are more limited, with that out of the way lets start with the comments:

https://masteringruneterra.com/8-decks-for-day-1-ranked-climb-patch-4-6-heart-of-the-huntress-expansion/

1. gnar ambush transform - basically just splashing for witch doctor and gnar, this feels kinda bad as someone with experience with this archetype. There's a lot of cards that don't really belong 

- pie toss why?

- concologist why?

- grandfather fae why?

so this is kind of what happens when good players try to play memes, they have to much trouble divorcing themselves from the "good cards" and embracing the good "deck theme"

So what you end up with is a confused beater deck with random pings and desert duel, again yes it's a standard deck which is why I hate standard, cuz I can guarantee this is not how this builds properly in eternal

2 swain illoi

- whaaaat this isn't even a new deck are you guys even trying at this point?

- like just replace yourself with another LOR expert at this point yeeeesh

3 Nora Neeko

- so once again the pro players are struggling to divorce themselves from good cards

- umm how do we play the new pheasant lady?

- shit I don't know just jam the zoo cards in a nora shell

- wait doesn't Nora already generate infinite board value and isn't that anti-synergistic with a tribal deck?

- don't ask me maybe she'll roll a random sub type or something

- what's the chances of that happening?

- idk 10% wait what were we doing again?

4. Fizz samara

- also not a new deck skiiiiiiiiiiip

5. poro deck

- okay you guys might be new to poros so I will excuse you

- but generally the most efficient way to run poros is to only run the goooooooooood one aka lonely

- and then just generate the rest

6. Kaisa 

- not a new deck

7. Temple frostbite midrange

- this one is actually good because all they had to do was take an established shell and jam one new card in it

okaaay so the lack of meming experience here is really evident here, we have 3 new champs and I would argue that all 3 were built grossly wrong like waaaaaay off likes miles off the mark

but that's good because when the set releases I can share the good versions of these decks for eternal :)

Like dont get me wrong it's not hard for me to go 3/0 with my memes now

Temo sejuani transform is a deck.

But what really makes me excited is the new memes.

The zoo deck

The new proro deck

The ambush transform deck

It'll be fun going 3/0 with those too

Also poro kings champ spell is draw two poros grant them 1+1 so strong it can't be main deck able.

Like are you guys agreeing with me.here that braum poro king will be the best/most fun eternal deck ever

And as for standard?

Meh like I dont care they had to rotate braum precisely because you can't play broken stuff in that format.

But in eternal aka the fun format everything is broken.

Can't wait for bot spam to lose to poros that **** is gonna be soooo funny

Wooooow so Riot did it, I take back everything I ever said bad about them ever.

Feel free to delay eternal ladder another 3 months after the new set I dont even care anymore

The best runeterra region is here!

The poro king

So why is pro king good?

Well typically in competitive poros you would have to splash bandle city just so you could run poro sled their good 5 mana card, or you would run pnz to guarantee elusive aka their good one mana card

Either way running a whole region for 1 card feels bad so now you just run Freijord Poro King problem solved.

Like I said genus, not only that it guarantees snacks generation and yes you could wiff on it before

Ngl as far as tribal decks go, where they typically aren't amazing in LOR, this one is pretty good now. Braum poro king will see heavy play just because of what it is more so than what it needs to be and thats awesome.

Also Riot I was kidding about delaying eternal again I want to be able to play braum poro king on ladder 🙏 

I'm already masters in eternal just like last season with nothing else to prove or do

So let's kill some time by theory crafting a new transform deck that doesn't suck.

So every ambush card can be played as a 2 mana 2/2

Which guarantees that you can play witchdoctor on 3 to buff your flipped transform unit

The big one is obviously butterfly when I transform for 4 mana I summon an additional 4/2 and then if you duplicate with Chamillion you should summon an additional 4/2.

So on mana 4 you should have 1 drop and then 4 4/2s how good is that exactly it certainly is an agressive and fast board state with the attack token

But what can other decks do to stop it literally just 2/1 spam a bunch that would suck

I'm not sold yet I really really want transform to be a thing and not a giant meme but here we are

Thats not even mentioning that if someone  goes for a big transform play can't you just mystic shot the 2/2? Like yes prey boosts your 2/2 to a 4/4 to counter mystic but you won't always draw it, so yeah I don't know if Nadalie goes in transform at all.

I dont know what she goes in, some cards seem like they are just good another deny on a cheap body is gross and it's a burst deny that cant be denied. That's money there obviously no duh

But beyond the burst deny why are you playing ambush, and Natalie herself seems strong but the rest of her kit looks meh?

Basically either way you slice it there's the new ambush transform support and the new shape-shifting transform support

So remember all those bandle cards nobody plays?

They might be good now

Oh it's also worth mentioning that shape shifting counts as transforming.

I dont think you go zoo transform but you could if you really wanted to.

But zoo probably it's own thing?

Or maybe zoo shurima transform is it and bandle is the cut now

But that seems wrong ping bird op

So I'm one of the only players in the world who has played a decent number of games with old transform (bandle - freijord)

Basically you aim to combo ping bird with sejuani for infinite free lockdown. But the problem was there are no good transform cards in freijord.

So now instead of aiming for a strong champ effect  namely infinite frostbite you just build a beater deck with gnar Natalie?

Very hard to evaluate that on its own merits right now it will all depend in how strong the ambush followers are. Like do you want to buff them by 1/1 and give them impact, do you want to duplicate them with chameleon.

What's their transform effect or are they just beat sticks?

It will all depend but it's cool to see transform get support after gnar a first release champ for bandlewood

Last time we talked about Ionia being broken boo but yeah for those players.

Let's talk about some good stuff

1. Dragon Prince Grinzo - holly molly my little mermaid is gonna turbo so god damn fast. She already uses those bilgewater summon 1 mana creature spells now she attunes each time? Meeeeep

2. Snowy razor claw, I don't care I like this card. Gangplank Sejuani is such a boring deck now you can try to slip in a little late game value if you want. 

3. Neeko - good origin I don't care how strong she is, she let's you build new deck types thats what origins should do

4. Portal scholar - I hate Nora decks but this is exactly what she needed. The deck had a weakness on the 2 mana to 5 mana gap and this fits that perfectly

5. Age of dragons - targon freijord ramp was already my favorite version of ramp and this card is awesome...but Ionia will make it unplayable till nerfs

6. Sump monument - if you give your nexus tough does sump monument make you immortal? Kinda fun to play around with as a meme for highlights

7. Epic scrap traction - you guys know this card is great not much more to say

8. Siren song - 4 mana and now your husks can't be pinged not bad a bit expensive

9. Shiers - please stop giving hallowed support they don't need it it's like the most ubiquitous and powerful archetype in the game as far as keywords go

Overall I'm glad the set isn't just hey let's print the best Ionia cards ever on top of giving them their own tavern keeper last expansion.

At first thats exactly what it will be but when the dust settles we will be able to play a new Zoo archetype.

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68% winrate in eternal.

Keep in mind that this version unlike mine doesn't even run any new cards at all 

There is zero reason this deck should be performing this well except 1

Bot spam and Jax are average decks...like I said rofl.

We are soooo meme focused in eternal that a bog standard pirate aggro list from 10 years ago win 68% of games in eternal right now.

Plz just run good decks its easy 

It doesnt take a mathematician to see declining viewerships for LOR on YouTube 

Graphlr going from 100k last year to 10k per video this year 

Mogwai going from 300 k to 30k

And I wanted to explore a little why that is.

Part of it is that I think rotation was to blame, and not rotation itself but the general botched handling of eternal ladder.

Having legacy players have to wait 3 months just to play their favorite format online competitively was a dumb move.

Furthermore Having 3/4 of the community tell them eternal isn't a real format and was just a dumb mass hallucination we all were having split the community down the middle in a really bad way.

So yes a 90% decline in long term viewership as a direct result of LOR's poor handling of rotation was likely the cause.

On the plus side if you were patient...like insanely patient you got to play eternal ladder again and it was just as good or better than it was last season

But players aren't patient they'll hop to the next thing in a heartbeat and thats what happened. Sorry guys it doesn't matter if you love standard or eternal the botched transition sundered the community and it will take a long time to recover.

In case you don't think rejuvenating breeze is amazing. Look at catyst it's the best ramp card in the game and it's 5 mana do nothing heal 3.

Rejuvenating breeze is 5 mana do nothing heal 3, have more cards next turn.

Or five mana dig in your deck for answers and heal and then put a bunch of spells on the stack.

Thats a loooooot of utility for 1 Ionia card.

Flashbacks to the old tellstones