Legends of Runeterra

A new Rare Targon Unit, Crescent Guardian, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Lunari Shadestalker, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Lunari Duskbringer, has been revealed!

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I'm curious about what you think about Zephyr Sage finally getting probably the best shot at being competitive. Thanks to Revitalizing Roar, you can easily create infinite Zephyrs without having to sacrifice as many card slots, allowing you to include more options. Just get to 10 Mana and boom, you can start spamming. Just be ready to save Deny in case the enemy plays Ionia, which is rare nowadays.

On its initial announcement, I think it was kind of hard to judge what the sets vs. expansions would look like. Riot said each region would get new cards each expansion, but they made it clear that new champions and cards would be spread out unevenly across the set. What was clear, though, was that:

• The full set is going to be 169 cards
• Each set today has 63 cards (except for Bilgewater, which has 62)
• If Targon gets a total of 76 cards in this set, that leaves ~13 for each of the other seven regions, which works out to ~76 cards per region

At this point they've revealed 50 of the upcoming 89 cards, including five of the seven champions. So far, Targon has 21 of those cards, with two of the champions. It seems reasonable to expect the remaining two champions to be from Targon, with a new Targon champion and two other region's champions in each subsequent expansion. Each new champion typically to get about eight or nine supporting cards.

With all that in mind, it seems logical to expect that Targon will get about 30 more cards in this expansion, and then another ~10 in each subsequent expansion (one champion plus supporting cards) so that when this is all said and done, each region gets to that ~76 card total. If all this is correct, that means the remaining four regions (Bilgewater, Demacia, P&Z, and Noxus) will be left dividing up about 10 new cards in this expansion.

Obviously this is a bit of speculation, but if those numbers are all basically right, then I'm honestly a bit shocked at this approach to releasing cards. In any other CCG, I would have expected a more even distribution across existing regions (at least of the non-champion cards). Specifically in the context of Riot's announced plans, I would have expected something more like Hearthstone's adventure content (most recently, "Galakrond's Awakening") in which each region gets about the same number of cards in each set, but a lower number than in a full set. I assume the reason here is that so many of the new cards tie back to champions, so they have to be released in tandem.

Maybe others don't mind that - Targon will certainly offer a lot of new content to pair with existing regions - but it seems like a bummer for anyone who likes to play any of these (presumably) neglected regions. For example, there might be a new Ezreal deck that uses Targon Gems to trigger the OTK, or there might be a new Lux Control deck that is excited to see cards like Sunburst and Bastion. But ultimately what is most likely to come out of this first expansion for those (presumably) neglected regions is a little bit support for a lot of old play patterns. The set of tools players will have to meaningfully developed new strategies in these regions will be significantly diminished, and I think ultimately that's going to be disappointing for any player who loves one of those regions.

(There's one other possible outcome here. You can imagine seeing more of the mechanics that have already shown up - Behold, Nightfall, Daybreak, and SpellShield - as new expansions are released. It's common to see champion's have natural pairs in other regions - e.g. Braum and Vladimir. If there are missing components to those synergies that will be released in later parts of the set, then there's also a risk that their initial impacts will fall flat and make the initial expansion a bit of a disappointment for the new content. Either way, this strategy seems to have a lot of risk of negatives without a lot of clear upsides.)

A new Champion Targon Unit, Leona, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Spell, Guiding Touch, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Targon Spell, Sunburst, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Spell, Zenith Blade, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Targon Unit, Rahvun, Daylight's Spear, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Targon Unit, Sun Guardian, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Solari Shieldbearer, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Solari Soldier, has been revealed!

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Often times in card games we are drawn to synergies like a moth to the flame. 

We think of the list that a  card wants to belong in and not where the card wants to be played.

This applies double to trundle.

Our instinct in to jam him into a ramp list with big cards, but why are we doing that.

This doesn't help him level.

Trundle levels himself, he isn't a build around.

He starts at a 4/6 regenerate that's a hard stat line to deal with,

Back him up with fury of the north and elixir of iron and he ain't dying

Then just play your free pillar on 8 after you have kept him alive for 3 turns.

Or they kill him and you play another and get another free pillar.

Boom now he's a 5/7 with regenerate and overwhelm, and that's all he has to be.

If you want synergy add tyndamere as a 3 of and that's it.

Then run just run good cards, starlit seer, omen hawk, and curve out normally.

Easy wins.

A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Unspeakable Horror, has been revealed!

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A new Champion Shadow Isles Unit, Nocturne, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Shadow Isles Spell, Stalking Shadows, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Risen Mists, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Shroud of Darkness, has been revealed!

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Full disclosure - I stopped playing LoR right around the time they started introducing Gauntlet and Labs. Between a certain amount of burnout on CCGs in general and a fair amount of disappointment with Riot, I just decided it was time for a break.

With all that in mind, I've been following the latest expansion in the hopes that the new cards might renew my interest in the game. And some of what I've seen has been really encouraging:

• A much more significant emphasis put on the Support mechanic (which I always felt was one of the more interesting - yet least utilized - mechanics in the game)
• A major uptick in Regeneration in the Freljord. A while back on this forum I had noted that Regeneration is a form of healing, and that while it didn't show up on many units anywhere, that it made sense as the Freljord expression of the healing identity. At the time Riot said healing was a big part of the identity of the Freljord, but it plainly wasn't in the actual cards, so this is encouraging.
• The Gem token card. This one is a little obscure, but I like that Riot is willing to make a Burst speed spell that can't be cast in combat or in response to a spell. That is exactly what I think Glimpse Beyond ought to be, and I've said as much at least a couple of times on this forum.
• More sources of Obliterate. So far this is just Passage Unearned, but I'm glad there are tech cards that can respond to some of the crazier revive effects that have often created some very frustrating top tier decks. It might be a little too good against those decks, but hopefully it's weak enough against many other decks that it sees only limited play (which would be perfect for a tech card).

So, even without reveals from many of the regions, there's a lot here that makes me think this could be good for the game.

At the same time, I'm pretty worried about yet another massive influx of mechanics. With only a few regions having revealed cards so far, they've already introduced SpellShield, Nightfall, and Behold. Maybe there won't be too many new things with this set, but given how much was introduced with Rising Tides (Powder Kegs, Toss, Plunder, Nab, Deep, Vulnerable, Scout, Attune) it seems unlikely that this set will end up with a short list of new mechanics.

It may seem counter-intuitive to complain about new mechanics in a new set, but I think the Riot approach feels a bit like its not well thought out. By introducing so many new mechanics, and placing them in only small subsets of the regions, you end up in a state where content is much harder to balance. When new mechanics are paired with the new region and some supporting region (e.g. Toss in SI/Bilgewater) you can't think about how to balance new mechanics in isolation from the pre-existing balance issues between the regions more broadly. Moreover, any new mechanic is inherently harder to balance because the devs have no experience balancing it and have no audience feedback about the mechanic in action. So, it's way better to limit the surface area of new content to ensure balancing can be done well from the get-go.

By contrast, in games like MTG and Hearthstone, expansions typically highlight only one or two new mechanics, and they put those mechanics in each color/class/region, which allows developers to think about how fit that new content to the identity of each color/class/region. These mechanics also often deviate only slightly from existing content (e.g. Proliferate in MTG, which adds counters to cards that already have counters, or Spellburst in Hearthstone, which acts as a one-time "after you cast a spell" trigger). Following these patterns makes it easier to think about whether the mechanic is too powerful or too weak in isolation, or if it is too easily abused by a subset of the colors/classes/regions. 

Ultimately, I fear this reflects a continued reality with Riot's dev process, where they feel like they can constantly dump a lot of new content because they're constantly rebalancing the game. It's a philosophy that seems to emphasize "exciting new content" over "fun, balanced gameplay." In that way, it feels like there's a certainly lack of ownership in the quality of the initial work, and that bothers me.

(One related note - I have no idea how to judge the decision to break the expansion up over multiple months. Given how often LoR is rebalanced, the high frequency influx of new content may be fine and have no outsized impact on the way the metagame is formed. But it may also reinforce this apparent design philosophy that it's better to constantly throw out shiny new content in place of balanced content.)