Legends of Runeterra

[popsofctown]

I don't really understand the metal colors and which ones are which but I think I'm at least gold

[Lady Lambdadelta]

I just hit plat!

[Espeonage]

I'm climbing Gold at the moment with a Midrange Evasive deck. Need extra Shens, but it's been doing me decent at the moment.

Really bad against Ez control, really good against heimer control interestingly. Defs not a top tier deck but deals pretty well with what I am facing atm.

[popsofctown]

Why would you want Shen with evasive?? The units aren't allowed to block anyway, so the barrier does nothing?

[Espeonage]

Shen is there to force through safe buffs. Transformed Shen means I can respond to removal with spells that also buff my dudes, especially with PZ control variants being the top decks in format.

[popsofctown]

Troop of Elnuks is an abomination that needs to be removed from the game.

[Espeonage]

I hate seeing someone who drafted the nuts elnuks.

[popsofctown]

Draft elnuks is crazy yes, but it's pretty crazy in constructed too. Based on what I see from streamers it's not OP or UP, some Freljord decks are able to not include it, but it's not very fun. When I summon four monsters with it it's just oops I win

[Titus]

Is there a newbie guide on how decks are assembled?

[popsofctown]

Do you mean using the user interface to access the deckbuilder and add decks beyond the default at all, or making up your own decks that are decent?

[Titus]

Both?

[Espeonage]

Best comp resource is Meta Mondays, just google search LoR Meta Mondays.

Mobalytics is also the best resource for basic decks with a LoR version of a public deck library.

[popsofctown]

On the left side of the main UI, press the brown bag that says "collection".
In the bottom left there's a grey button that says "New deck"
At the top there's a button that says "all regions", life is easier if right off the bat you click on that and select just any two regions
The cards on the screen are you collection, you click on them to add them to your deck. You click on a card that's already in your deck, on the left, to remove it again. You can only have up to three of a card, but if you have fewer than three copies owned you might be limited to fewer than three.
You have to keep selecting cards until your deck has forty cards exactly.
I'd reccommend playing your favorite faction even if you haven't gotten lucky getting champions for it yet, a lot of champions are overrated and when people get hype about them it's because they are pivotal for some specific deck context.

[popsofctown]

I would guess if a good guide exists that google is going to assume you want something you didn't ask for just because so many people are coming from other card games and the core design principles mostly still apply.

Some basic ideas of ccg deckbuilding include:

-Evenly distribute the costs of your units so that you maximize the chance you have a card you can play that spend all of your mana every turn. Spell mana has its limits. Slower decks can sometimes skip the cost "1" entirely. You do a little bit of a bellcurve in including slightly fewer of the most expensive cards in your deck, generally, until the most expensive cost only happens 2-3 times. That might be a 10 but it might also be as low as 6 if your deck punches lots of face
-For each card in your deck try to think about whether drawing multiple copies together is a good thing or an indifferent occurrence, or if drawing multiple copies together would be a bad thing. If drawing multiple copies together at least indifferent, always run the maximum number of copies. If multiple copies are bad together, consider playing only 2 copies or even just 1. For example, Trueshot Barrage deals 3 damage, 2 damage, and 1 damage each to enemy units, which can be really strong, but sometimes you don't get the right targets, and if you draw two of them, your second Trueshot Barrage gets mad that the 1st copy already removed all the enemies with the perfect amount of health.
On the other hand, for anything that doesn't get bad in multiples, Consistency is King, and it's helpful to help your deck have themes.
-"Have enough bodies": if you decide to utilize some cards that enhance all your units, try to restrict that to ~3 slots, to maintain enough focus on cards that will guarantee you have units to buff in the first place - either units themselves, or cheap fast spells that will reliably rescue a unit that was going to die.
You don't want to go too overboard with tricks that rescue a unit either those generally cap at about 6.


These advices are kind of geared or skewed towards making a midrange deck, but that is most decks and generally the best way to start. If you see people breaking some of these guidelines and still beating you, it's probably because they are playing aggro, control, or combo-control and they are breaking those rules in ways that they are supposed to for those styles.

[popsofctown]

Most of those were stated in the negative, in the affirmative: do look for cards you like that encourage you to use other similar cards with them, then try to add as many cards like those as you can without breaking those negative rules. For instance, the Rime Wolf says he always kills an enemy with zero attack, and Icevale Archer says when you play him, he frostbites an enemy to have zero attack. Rime Wolf costs 3 and Icevale Archer costs 2, so in your process of trying to get several cards of each cost, you could slot in 3 Icevale Archers and 3 Rimewolfs.

Picking which theme you want to focus on is the fun part. Usually no theme is inherently bad in and of itself, and what ends up making it good or bad is how many cards there are that fit the theme and whether the cards that happen to fit the theme are the above average ones or below average ones.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Slowly climbing Plat. You gain 20 for a win and lose 20 for a loss, so it is a slow process but as long as your winrate is above 50 which mine is, it works out. Biggest issue is as a control deck I do not play many games when I feel like playing due to game length so, just gotta keep grinding. Hoping to hit Diamond soon. Currently Plat 3.

[popsofctown]

A lot of control players I watch stream complain about other player's concession assessments and I think if those were more accurate the discrepancy wouldn't be as bad. Maybe after the game has been out longer that part will shift more from people understanding (lack of) outs.

[Espeonage]

I think there's an issue with people onceeding where they have the out unless the control player is holding any of 10 out of 17 win plays. But it will come with experience.

[popsofctown]

I've thought about the potential of games benefiting from a "reveal my hand" button, in cases where the presence of a certain stop-the-out in hand would make your opponent no longer have any outs. It is rare in MtG (the online clients don't allow it and shouldn't bother because it's pretty rare, but the rules for IRL play are explicit about it being ok to do it, and occasionally this is exercised) but I think it's pretty possible that the structure of gameplay in Legends of Runeterra make this stuff come up a lot more. I don't play

UW control

Shadow Isles/Freljord control so I'm not positive, I don't match against them often.

[popsofctown]

I think that's the same color my icon is LLD so I guess I am platinum too, unless I tanked elo with Eznuks so much I went back to gold

Eznuks is fun even if you lose, please send help.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

[popsofctown]

Yeah I am definitely either high gold/low plat
I'm a little offended by that poro cause I immediately IAP'ed to replace mine with a cute birdie.

I don't really know what to play so I've been playing Rallysplash Shadow Isles lately and it kind of usually wins.

[xRECKONERx]

i'm terrified to craft a real deck

[popsofctown]

About 48 hours ago I would have told you to craft a Shadow Isles deck and be confident that they'll never nerf it aggressively enough that you regret it, but I think the Black Spear nerf was surprising, especially in the same patch as the less surprising Mark of the Isles nerf.

[Klick]

So what makes this stand out from other CCGs so far?