Legends of Runeterra

if I understood well from tuesday expeditions will not grant Champions anymore  ! remember to use the expedition today or tomorrow - no champion otherwise !

Re: in the future, expeditions will be cheaper but only guarantee epics instead of champions - https://outof.cards/legends-of-runeterra/1032-the-full-details-on-expedition-reward-updates-in-runeterras-093-patch-arriving-march-31

Do you guys think this mean we should expend all our expedition tokens before Tuesday?  Because unless they do some type of compensation, you'll effectively "loose" your free champion.  Given how generous they are in general, I wouldn't be surprised if they DID do something even more generous (e.g., everyone gets 1 free champion wildcard per unused token when the patch goes live), but that seems like a pretty big gamble.  And I don't know if we'll get an official answer (if any) before the patch notes Monday 11am PT, which only leaves 24 hours before the patch goes live.  It's been weighing on me, so I was wondering what y'all thought.

anyone else having trouble with karma/ezreal? im playing a midrange deck and i cannot finish them off before they wombo combo me , even once killed me with 17 hp

nvm frostbite isn't as strong as I thought, still annoying tho

Not sure if this has been discussed anywhere else, but I came across a fun end game combo in an Expedition yesterday.

It got me to 6 wins (sadly wasn't able to win the 7th).

Ashe + Karma (Enlightened) On Board

+ Winter's Breath

=

GG.  A board that gets destroyed with a single spell cast, and if by some magical reason they don't.  They can't block with Ashe (leveled up). 

Anyhow, what are other fun combos or stuff , that despite it being hard to pull off may be fun win conditions for you guys?

I didn't see a thread on this, apologize if there is one but the audio for the new cards have been leaked. While we don't know what the cards do, we do know the champions that will be coming out! Anyone excited for a certain champion despite not knowing what they do?

https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/League_of_Legends_Wiki:Manual_of_Style/LoR_Audio/Sandbox?useskin=oasis

New Region Mount Targon
Aurelion Sol
Soraka
Zoe
Leona
Diana
Taric

New Region Blidgewater
Nautilus
Miss Fortune
Tahm Kench
Fizz
Gankplank
Twisted Fate

New Frejord Champions
Sejuani
Trundle

New Demician Champions
Shyvanna
Quinn

New Noxus Champion
Swain
Riven?

Piltover & Zuan
Viktor (Go me!)
Vi

Ionia Champions
Lee Sin
Lulu?

Shadow Isles Champions
Maokai
Noctrune

In light of the recent Demon Hunter and Priest revamp news in Hearthstone, and the fact that MTG has never introduced a sixth color to its wheel, I've been thinking about whether or not LoR's regions have clear enough identities. Ultimately, I think the answer is no, they don't have enough identity.

The stated Riot philosophy is that every card should be playable in at least one deck, and I think you see a lot of that reflected in the ways that certain region pairs combine to form themes. Some examples:

• The Shadow Isles and Noxus pair has access to a Spiders deck
• The Freljord and P&Z pair has access to a Poro and/or Elnuk Cloning deck
• The Demacia and P&Z pair has access to a Big Spells deck
• The Freljord and Noxus pair has access to a Crimson Self-harm deck

The result is that a lot of the theming seems to have been done primarily at the "region pair" level, and it makes less obvious combinations of those same regions clumsier. Yes, regions have their some of their own dedicated mechanics (e.g. Demacia has Tough Elites, Freljord has Frostbite, Ionia has hand buffs etc.), but those mechanics don't generally pair in interesting ways across regions. Because so much of the work of theming has been done at the "region pair" level, many of the decisions on how to pair a region feel forced and ultimately deck-building is less interesting and more paint-by-numbers.

By contrast, when you look at a game like MTG (which is probably the best comparison, because you can mix/match colors there like you can regions), you see primary and secondary themes for colors, and players are left to mix and match those colors to get to useful synergies. I can very easily build a Black/White deck that emphasizes token creatures for a more go-wide aggressive strategy, and I can create a Black/White deck that uses hard removal and AoE to control the game. Yes, there are multi-color cards that tend to emphasize shared themes, but even in those you see variety. Taking Blue/White as an example, you see cards that emphasize the shared enchantments and artifact subtheme of those colors, but you also see cards that emphasize the smaller fliers theme that they share. This leaves players with a lot of freedom to decide which colors to run, and how much of any primary or shared themes they want to emphasize in their deck.

Ultimately, I think this problem will only get more muddled in LoR as they introduce more regions. The reason other major CCGs have been so reticent to add new classes, colors, etc., is because you have to divide up the game mechanics pie into smaller pieces, which ultimately makes the archetypes more prescriptive and hinders creative deck-building. LoR seems to have started at a place of fairly prescriptive deck-building already, so cutting that pie up could do a lot of damage.

So I just went 6-1 on my Expedition.  Not just 6 wins--literally undefeated until game 7.  ;-)  That's never happened to me before.  I've had some good campaigns, some bad campaigns, but even when I'm doing "good" that's more like 60% win rate.  I've never had one that was so good that it didn't drop any games--so you can imagine my surprise when I got shut out on the final game.

My deck was basically straight aggro: Draven + Lucian with lots of early game aggro, tons of Noxius 1-2 drops, battlecasters, and 3x brothers bond.  It was surprising effective (side note #1: don't neglect your early game when drafting, guys!)  Final Boss was a wonky P&Z/Frejlord deck with Anivia + Ashe + 1 other champ (don't exactly remember; he never played any); I was even doing OK until he dropped a Chempunk Shredder on curve (side note #2: when's the last time you've seen one of those played?) which completely cleared my board.  From there on, it was an uphill battle with me top-decking and him with card advantage and plenty of good answers.  I did manage to get him down to 1-HP and threaten next-turn lethal, but he managed to get me to exactly 0 the round before.

I can't really complain--I imagine my deck seemed like super-cancer to all my previous opponents, plus 6 wins is still pretty good--but that last game just got me.  It was my first trial, but I need to take a mental palette cleanser before attempting trial #2 so I thought I'd post here.  I hope everyone is doing well!

EDIT: meant 6-1, not 6-0 lol.  Sorry; I guess I was more worked up than I thought!

I feel like Twisted Fate is a little mad he wasn't invited to the League card game, maybe he'll get a chance to twist his fate in the first LoR expansion?

Bilgewater could add
Twisted fate
Graves
Miss Fortune
Gank Plank

Shurima could add
Sivir
Azir
Nasus
Amumu

This could be called beaches expansion, or some pun on dry and wet, personally I'm hoping for Twisted fate and graves to be a confirmed couple in LoR, but maybe that's just me

Hey, everyone! So, just wanted to get some feedback on what everyone else's thoughts are on this new patch. I'm going to put some here in writing that I'm more curious about than other cards, but I did put up an entire video on each card change on YouTube if ya' wanna check it out: Patch 0.9.2 Review

Anyways, here's what I think on some of these. Also, I mentioned being Diamond purely so people can understand where some of these thoughts are coming from competitively. Obviously a Gold player may not necessarily be worse than a Diamond player, but the decks they're going to see more frequently will be largely different on ladder, etc.

Kalista - What's everyone's thoughts here? I really don't see her seeing much more play, however I do think she opens the game up a bit for some more combo deck idea's (just a quick example is her re-summoning a Rekindler to get a Draven, etc.). However, I still don't think she'll end up being good until a large amount of new cards are released.

Black Spear - Also think this was uneeded? Like wtf? Now this card just seems like another Get Excited - not sure if that was Riot's intention with this nerf? This also retroactively hurts Kalista even more - not like she needed that!

Iceborn/Pack Mentality - I know these still aren't necessarily OP cards, but I do feel that when the right cards are released that these cards will be incredibly good for some sort of token deck. I do believe Pack Mentality got substantially better now that it can't be denied with targeting spells and even though Iceborn can NOW get denied with targeting spells, I do think it's better with a +2 reward instead of +1.

Mark of the Isles - Is it me, or was this card just a giant friggin' mistake in the entire game? This was easily, in my opinion, the most OP card until this nerf....

Riot set themselves a target to include every single league champion in LoR eventually.

recently league released this guy(it's rework but his lore got altered):

And he is now classified as a demon, there are several other demons in LOL:  Tham Kench, Evelynn,Nocturne, Shaco, Brand.

As well as Aatrox, don't fit into any region as they can't call any their "home region" and less have followers as they all operate alone.

And there's also Kindred which is also "the angel of death" so it can't fit into any region.

What could Riot do with all those misfits? I looked at the icons of upcoming regions (why is Zaun there?)

My guess is that this symbol is demons + void as they all share the trait of being "monsters".

My previous guess was.. "they fit the shadow isles don't they" but no.. they don't actually fit there, because they have no ties to the region.

The follower problem

The void is easy to think of there are many other void creatures and they could have a lot of voidling tokens..

As for demons I am not sure.. It's said Fiddlesticks is "the first of ten" (from his voicelines (if you didn't hear it it's creepy AF)) so maybe the other nine fiddlesticks will appear in LoR? but what about Tham, Evelynn, Nocturne .. are there other similar creatures who would want to support them... and what Shaco will have?

I am really hopping the first expansion will be void and demons (most of them are junglers which is my main role so I am biased).

What do you think how they will handle this issue of the demons being region less? and them not having actual followers (as they operate alone).

I know most of you guys havent even heard of this card before and proably none of you heard of this card since the changes made to it.

What it does is that it gives a unit a buff permanently  and gives the same buff to every copy on the board or created in the future.

In the latest patch riot decided that it was too rarely played and that doubling the effect (+2/+2 from +1/+1) for a higher cost would make the card more reasonable.

But as a compensation they nerfed it's speed from Burst to slow.

What was riot's problem with the card?

-It was very niche and therefore rarely played

- for them the card felt too unimpactful to justify playing it in a deck

Why will it always be a niche card?

The buff provided by the spell i quite small for it's cost (3 mana for +1+1 or 5 mana for 2+2+) so that if you affect only 1 unit by it its not good at all, affecting 2 units makes it okish but not good eighter and it starts getting really strong with 3 unit+ profiting from it's effect.

That makes it a exclusive card for token/ clone decks because you never will consistantly pull 3 copies of a minion anywhere else. (outside of 10 copy drafted expansion decks)

given that the majority of token decks use other ways to temporarily buff their tokens (because it is cheaper and higher tempo) and that you need to play around it, iceborn lagacyBADCARDNAME is easily skipped by most players

So why is the change so bad in my opinion?

Short: it didnt fix the niche situation of the card and made it even unattractive for decks using it

Long: The spell is usually used on token/cloned minions (like spiders) that are all low health and therefore are easy to remove.

Since the legacy is now a slow spell you run a huge risk that your spell gets cancelled by any type of creature removal or simply deny, destroying your deck's winconditon.

That scenario is very likely and COMPLETELY kills the card's and the deck's viability and will lead to even lower playrates of them.

It now is an card that is exclusively for expeditions and even there it will only be used to support decks that draft 10 copies of the same unit card (what should not be a thing in first place)

So lets revert the Changes or make it burst speed again (for 6 mana)

So I got it 2 or 3 months ago.  I quite enjoyed the pace of growing your collection, you don't get handed everything asap, but you also grow at a very steady pace.  You can cast things at different spell speeds to have windows of interaction like MTG, but the pace of the game didn't suffer for it.  Game aesthetics are on point, it feels well made and well polished.

But the immediate issue I ran into was 95% of my opponents were playing basically the same thing every game: Aggro.

- Elise + Fearsome

- Noxus free damage vomit

- Elusive + Autofill

- Aggro Champion with Quick Attack + Autofill

- Usually some fusion of two of the above

This meant I could literally only ever play Shadow Isles + Stuff myself, because Black Spear was a painful necessity against all the constant aggro swarms, Shadow Isles also has some of the only good card draw to dig with, and even Grasp of the Undying (which is overcosted) was also kind of necessary.

Doesn't help that, on top of this, the "control" deck's cheese of choice with Heimdinger and Karma also pretty much required a cheap 3 damage spell so you could cast 2 removals in a turn, or just get overrun by their endless value.  And "answer me or basically lose immediately" gameplay is VERY polarizing and not fun.  Any delay means too much damage or too many generated cards for the opponent, and you'll lose to THAT even if you find an answer after a short delay.

ALL OF THIS COULD BE ADDRESSED WITH MORE CHEAP CONDITIONAL REMOVAL OPTIONS.

Instead they nerf Black Spear.  It was already balanced and difficult to utilize without filling your deck with a bunch of 1-cost garbage which already can't block Fearsome, can't block Elusive, and is too weak to even BE called a roadblock against the Aggro decks.

So now literally only Culling Strike exists to deal with SOME of the overwhelming number of Aggro cards, and it doesn't work on several.  Noxian Guillotine is worthless because you can't EVEN do damage in the early game at all to units with Fearsome and Elusive going unblocked or Quick Attack not taking damage on attack.  Most games just degenerate into a game of chicken between who can vomit the most Elusive+Fearsome cards or some overpowered Champion like Zed not being immediately answered, starting at "only" 6 damage per turn for 3 and ramping up after.

Legends of Runeterra was already plagued by Aggro being overpowered, Combo being overpowered, and Control pretty much not existing.  For an online card game that FINALLY offered some promise of Mutually Interactive Gameplay (without the toxicity of unlimited value Planeswalkers), instead windows of interaction are being closed.  Almost every low-cost Champion in this game now cannot be meaningfully interacted with, Elusive and Fearsome based aggression is even more dominating, and decks have even less variety in builds and gameplay than before because CONTROL isn't allowed to exist to balance the meta.  (And even on Control's end, I don't want an unlimited value engine like Heimerdinger to exist in his current state either.  That's the SAME issue MTG has.  The card goes a minimum of 2 or 3 for 1 if he even gets answered or just oppressively wins without an immediate answer.)

There's no decisions or variety in deck-building or gameplay.  You play Aggro of some flavor and vomit cards at the opponent and whoever can vomit harder wins.  I don't care that there's 4 or 5 flavors of THE SAME EXACT THING WITH THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL GAMEPLAY, it's still the same deck with the same playstyle.  Vomit difficult-to-block guys, go aggro.  Mostly, it's just whichever aggro deck in the aggro mirror draws more of their unanswerable aggro Champions first and can attack with them first to snowball the game.  Some combat tricks can shift this but those are again just standard aggro cards for standard aggro decks.

Do I really care if it's Shadow Isles, Noxus, Ionia, or Demacia?  Nope.  It's all the same deck doing the same thing.

And that's why I want to put the game down.  It has a fun core, it has promise.  But it's like the developers only like Aggro and Combo and hate Control, like the usual kids in other card games who whine whenever anything Control based is viable.  Instead of playing better, balancing threat output, not overextending, finding ways to increase value generation... these kinds just whine that the other guy's Control cards need nerfs.  It's a childish way to play, wanting to treat the game like a singleplayer race and then complaining that you hit a speedbump instead of asking what you could do to play around your opponent.  And it's a childish and self-defeating way to build a game.

I have 3 copies of all Demacia Champions, and Demacia is my active road.

I just opened a platinum chest at level 18, and one of the capsules upgraded to Champion. I figured the Champion would turn into shards, but no! It became my second copy of Ashe instead!

So there you have it: a Freljord Champion from a Demacia chest when no more Demacia Champions are needed.

"swap 2 allies"  

What does this mean?

Hecarim + The Rekindler was bad enough, but now Kalista + The Rekindler is ridiculous. Once you've set the combo up, she just keeps resummoning Rekindlers, which resummon her. Once there are a couple of Kalista's in play, there's really nowhere near enough removal to deal with it.

This wouldn't be such a huge nuisance, except they didn't do nearly enough to nerf all the other Shadow Isles tools that get those kinds of decks into the late game.

Why do y’all think Runeterra allows duplicates in chests? Wouldn’t it be better for the chests to always give new cards?

I know this will be a moot point in a few hours, but it's driving me crazy. A lot of people are misinterpreting the text or are just puzzled by it, when it seems pretty clear to me.

"Once you've cast a 6+ cost spell this game" is a binary condition. Either it has happened, or it has not. It doesn't have to happen while the Mageseeker card is in play. Once the condition is met, it affects all Mageseekers in your deck or in play for the rest of the game, but only once. The effect does not repeat if you cost more big spells.

If you cast a 6-cost spell on turn three, every Mageseeker/Voltician you ever summon will come into play with the kicker activated.

If you play a Mageseeker/Voltician before casting a big spell, it doesn't get the kicker until you do. Obviously, if the unit is killed before you can activate the kicker, it doesn't matter for that particular instance of the unit.

In summary, casting the big spell only needs to happen once, at any time during the game, but casting more spells does not reactivate the effect.

As the title implies, I've seen a few images and videos of the game, but my interest is piqued regarding the game.

What are some draws to this game versus Hearthstone? (As someone who has played HS since it's beta)

I guess I'm asking for Pros and Cons.  How easy is it to gather a viable collection as a casual player versus Hearthstone? (I buy the 80 dollar expansion pack in Hearthstone each expansion, I'm fine with that, but want to get a comparison on cost analysis between the two)

What are your favorite moments of Runeterra?  Also, I don't plan on stopping Hearthstone, I think they both are probably fun games in different ways, but I'm curious if it's worth investing both time and/or money into Legends of Runeterra at this time.

Thanks in advance!

I absolutely loved:

• The Kalista rework.  Honestly, she might be a little too good now, but as much time as she's spent in the dumpster Girl could use a little time to shine.  The best part is: it's not just good, its novel.  My mind is already spinning on all the ways to possibly abuse her L2 ability.
• Mageseekers rework.  The whole "discard a card" thing was really discouraging, so I love that they dumped it and now made it more fun.  Props for making them all reactive, too, since pretty much every 6+ cost spell is something you want to play at the right time and not just as an activator.
• The Rummage change.   It sounds like a small thing, but honestly most successful Jinx decks will cut this card because it absolutely sucks to "lock up" your hand.  But even bigger than the specifics is how they are proactively bandaging this very niche scenario.  It shows a familiarity with how an off-meta deck performs and nourishment to want to essentially "unburden" it without necessarily buffing it.

I liked

• The down-tuning for Black Spear, Crowd Favorite, Chump Whump, and MotI.  All essentially went from "Why wouldn't you run 3x of this card?" to "Are you sure this is the best card for you?", which is exactly what you want from a balanced card game.
• The up-tuning on Brood Awakening, Poro Snax, and Iceborn Legacy.  The latter 2 are opening up new possible archetypes; the former is giving some deckbuilding flexibility to what is currently a very narrow archetype.  Kudos all around.
• In general: how this was a regularly scheduled balance patch that shook things up, and now I'm already excited for / dreaming up totally new deck archetypes.  Compare this to other CCG games' who will remain nameless' balance patches, where effectively announcing which Tier One decks are now dead and leave me waiting to see what inevitably fills the power void.

I'm not sure about

• Pack Mentality.  I do like that its less confusing now, but this is really just feels like a variation on For Demacia.  It's uninspired brute force.  Plus: I'm still not sure who's actually going to run it.  Decks that run wide, sure, but that's usually not Frejlord.  Maybe someone that wants to make use of Unscarred Reaver and Scarthane SteffanBADCARDNAME outside of a subpar Vlad deck?
• Troop of Elnuks.  The chance of a complete whiff on this card (not adjusting for what you've drawn or if you've copied) is roughly (34/39)^N, where N is the number of cards, so the change goes from a ~25% chance to a ~44% chance.  I'm guessing that's enough of a swing to scare off meta decks from just splashing it, but it doesn't feel comforting.  I do like that they identify preservation of the counterfeit coin strategy, but honestly if that trick wasn't working at 10 cards I don't think it will get any more popular now.
• Flash of Brilliance.  The bigger thing to me was the free mana, so I'm really disappointed they didn't at least make it a 4 cost spell.

I'm disappointed with

• The Vanguard Lookout "buff".  Boring, and ironically he probably still isn't going to see play because there are better 2-drops for elites.  If you want to make people play him, he needs some interesting tag or ability.

I can't beleive

• That Hecarim "nerf".  He's even more disgusting on a Harrowing now, I don't think reducing his damage by 2 is going to slow him down.  Really should have been either an increase to 8 mana or a removal of Overwhelm tag IMHO.
• Rekindler.  I actually really like that you can rez champions; what I don't like is that this is so often double-digit stats for 6 mana--raising to 7 doesn't hurt the bottom line enough.  IMHO, should either be a smaller body or changed to rez the weakest champion so you need to build your deck more carefully if you're just going to cheat out infinite Hecarim / Garen / Ashe / (Kalista ;-) ) etc.
• No change to Shadow Assassin.  This card is just disgusting, and its the lynch pin of all elusive cancer decks.  I do appreciate that they at least identified it and played around with some of the numbers, but not converging on any actual changes is a huge miss IMHO.