Heimer's Madness - Runeterra Labs

This is a guide for the Legends of Runeterra lab, "Heimer's Madness". It includes the special rules for this game mode, an overview of the premade decks, and a strategy guide.

The Rules

Heimer's Madness is a 1v1 PvP lab that uses randomly generated decks.

Quote From Lab Description

It's chaos in the Lab! The Mana Generator's offline and the Cost Reducer's gone haywire. Choose the right cards to add to your increasingly-discounted deck and defeat your opponent in the name of science!

• Start with a shallow deck of random cards and 4 mana
• Instead of gaining mana, each round every card in your hand and deck has its cost reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 1).
• Every round, one player gets to use Heimerdinger's Duplicator: choose one of 4 random cards. Add one copy of that card to your hand, and two copies to your deck!

Notes

• Heimerdinger's Duplicator is a fleeting zero-cost burst-speed spell. You will receive it at the start of the round if it's your attack round.
• The cost reduction applies to cards in hand, in deck, and future offerings of Heimerdinger's Duplicator. In other words: if you are offered a Gangplank after Round 5, it will already cost 1 mana -- you don't have to wait additional rounds to reduce its cost.
  • Cards that are generated (e.g., dragons from Egghead Researcher) and that are Recalled don't have this immediate discount. Their mana cost is reset to the original amount, but once in hand they will receive the reduction in future rounds.
  • If you have a champion in-hand that is a duplicate of a champion on-board, the discount will be applied to its signature spell. It is possible for signature spells to cost 0 mana.
• The cards you are offered will be from the same regions as your deck. You can be offered followers, spells, and even champions.
• Anything that would increases your mana count in constructed (Wolfrider, Catalyst of Aeons, etc) will have the same effect here.

Decks

The decks are randomly assigned and will be of 2 regions. Each deck starts with 16 cards (starting hand of 4, a draw of 1, and a remaining deck of 11). Since you are normally putting 2 cards into your deck every other turn, your deck will stay at 10-11 total cards for the entire game barring any additional card draws or effects like Counterfeit Copies and Avarosan Trapper.

Strategy

When it's your attack round, it's almost always best to use Heimerdinger's Duplicator immediately to see if it changes your attack plans. Exceptions include if you want to trigger a Daybreak effect and if you're so far ahead that you'd rather react to your opponent than optimize your attack.

In general, you'll want to favor mid-sized cards -- i.e., cards that cost between 4 and 7 mana. These cards will be discounted to the 1-3 cost range fairly quickly, allowing you to play multiple each turn and create some crazy tempo. A card like Will of Ionia, which is generally thought to be too expensive for constructed play, becomes backbreaking when it only costs 1-3 mana. Don't pass up on late-game bombs like Brightsteel Formation and Warmother's Call, though, as they can decide the game and never know when you'll get another offering.

Late game, most cards will cost 1 mana so you should have no problem emptying your hand. This makes card draw especially valuable in this game mode.

When We've Seen Heimer's Madness