Hail, Champions! Did you watch yesterday's Empires of the Ascended seasonal tournaments? While we went into the day fearful the matches might be little more than 30-minute Nasus, TLC, & Lee Sin mirrors, we were left disappointed in the best possible way. While, like in the open rounds, the 3 notorious "power decks" were generally over-represented in the total pool of decks brought, between the ban format and some very spicy decks making their way to final rounds, the actual matches were some of the most diverse and intense matchups we've seen. We've got some short summaries along with the decks for the final 2 competitors for each shard below.
Asia
The tournament series kicked off in the Asia shard, where D K won using a overwhelm deck, a Scargrounds deck, and a -- wait for it -- Targon's Peak deck. No, seriously: a major contributor to D K's success were multiple 0 mana FTRs. His final opponent, WCS Masters, brought some spice as well with a Teemo Ezreal frostbite deck and a dragon deck along with a more conventional Ashe Noxus.
Southeast Asia
Things looked a little more conventional over in SEA, the finals featured Flying Fish beating out SoggySlopster using a combination of meta decks (Thresh + Nasus, TLC, Ashe Noxus), off-meta decks (overwhelm, dragons), and another Teemo Ezreal frostbite deck.
*SoggySlopster's 3rd deck was a conventional Ashe LeBlanc; we were unable to find an exact deck list.*
Europe
Next up was the EU shard, where Hipster Waldo a.k.a. @PrObeSC2 won using 3 very unexpected decks specifically targeting TLC. (He gives the disclaimer "Don't use these lists on ladder. You'll get smacked.") His final opponent was qUaBaTcHiE, who conversely brought the 3 most popular tournament decks.
Americas
Finally, we have the Americas, where Erigby beat out Random7HS. Although we were denied the magnificence of a Deep v Deep mirror for the grand finale, we still saw some extremely off-meta decks including the aforementioned deep, dragons, and a Zoe + Vi "pile".
You can rewatch the VoDs for SEA, EU, and Americas on LoR's official YouTube channel or in the embedded videos below.
Did you watch any of the finals? What did you think? Share your thoughts with us below!
Comments
I'm afraid that some people will walk away from this result and claim that Nasus/Thresh and TLC are fine and don't need nerfs - after all, none of the winners had either of those decks.
The actual reality is that it was very predictable that players would bring those decks (due to their very high power level), so the winners were the ones who successfully built their lists to target those decks.
The winning decklists are generally not top tier decks, but they are very good against TLC and Nasus/Thresh specifically.
Side note - I'm kinda terrified of what a Targon's Peak deck can do with the new card, Buried in Ice.
Seeing Lissandra/trundle getting run over by Scout deck with Stony Suppressor was very satisfying.