Giant Slayer

LOR

LoR Competitive Week in Review for 2/21 - 2/28

Boulevard here with another weekly wrap-up - albeit a bit of a shorter one than normal. Without EU or BR Fight Night we seem to be lacking a little in the tournament department last week, but it’s going to be a long format and I’m not necessarily going to be upset if adaptations happen a little slower than normal. That said, let’s take a look at the decklists we DO have from the OLS #39 and Fight Night: Legends AM.

Online League Series #39 

1st SleepyPanda27 - Scouts / Demacia YiA / Sivir/Akshan

2nd Nawatix - Scouts / Gnar/Darius / Sivir/Akshan

Top 4 KevinLoR - Pantheon/Taric / Bandle Tree / Demacia YiA

Top 4 FloppyMudkip - Scouts / TF/Nami / Akshan/Gnar

Top 8 Scissorsbox - Scouts / Bandle Tree / Darkness

Top 8 Hepatia - Scouts / Pantheon/Yuumi / Akshan/Gnar

Top 8 Arussel - Darkness / Sivir/Akshan / Lee Sin

Top 8 OTK Camilari - Scouts / Demacia YiA / Draven/Rumble

Fight Night: Legends AM

1st Beastllama - Scouts / Akshan/Gnar / Zilean/Ekko

2nd FloppyMudkip - Scouts / Akshan/Gnar / TF/Nami

I have 2 gotcha stats this week, one for something we have an abundance of and one we’re lacking. If you hit ctrl+F and type in the word ‘Scouts’, you’ll see that 8 out of the 10 lineups I’ve laid before you contained the deck. While it’s not out of the question or frankly uncommon for a deck to have such a high presence, I don’t think a lot of people were expecting Scouts to clean house in the manner that they did. It’s hard to think of this as a fluke either, as looking at the top decks last week it makes sense that Scouts would do this well. Lee Sin / Darkness / Bandle Tree was a pretty well-performing lineup last week, and Scouts has a history of doing well into slower decks like Lee and Darkness who have overcosted removal that feel bad to play if you use it for tempo only to miss your opportunity to kill a Miss Fortune. As for Bandle Tree, Miss Fortune plays a big role in ripping through the defenses of the walls put up by Bandle City decks, and the low trading power of the value heavy units in Tree make it difficult to actually kill any of Scouts’ units before a rally finishes the deal. I can’t say for sure if Scouts can carry this dominance into the next week (I can say for sure actually; it can’t) but consider this a big W for the culture as one of Runeterra’s oldest decks showed it can still compete with the fresh meat. 

As for what was lacking from this week's tournaments, that was Gnar’s vice grip on the meta. Last week I begged the question of how long Gnar could keep up his total dominance and 100% playrate in top cut, only for his streak to last a measly 1 week as Arussel topped the OLS with no Gnars in sight. Speaking of things I said last week, I mentioned near the end of the previous recap that Tristana might be making her presence known soon. Demacia Yordles in Arms is Runeterra’s best Tristana deck to date, taking 3 top 8 spots at the OLS as well as 3rd and 4th place at Fight Night: Legends AM. It’s also perhaps the best iteration we’ve had of Yordles in Arms to date, making it the up-and-coming deck of the week in my eyes. It can be difficult to tell what decks are here to stay and which one’s aren’t sometimes, but this one seems cut and dry to me. 

If we continue to really just dial in on the results from this weekend, we need to mention the high presence of Akshan. Akshan/Gnar put up great results, topping 4 times across the two events and taking both finals spots at Fight Night, while Sivir/Akshan took the crown at the OLS alongside its 3 top 8 spots. While both decks play rather differently they do share the same overall Shurima package which is enough for me to lump their success together, at least for this week. With ‘go wide’ Demacia and Bandle City decks running the meta and clogging up boards everywhere, The Absolver is at an all-time premium as is Overwhelm in general. In fact the keyword is so good that Nawatix was able to nearly win the OLS with Gnar/Darius, a blip on the meta radar that has long been absent as a dedicated overwhelm deck. 

Overall the meta is looking pretty healthy to me - value heavy Bandle City go wide decks did very well week 1, and now Demacia has come to match it on board and flex its stats a little better. Overwhelm-based finishers picked up a few points in the polls, and everything feels pretty above board. Everything feels like it’s on the right course, almost too on the right course, and as someone who just got done writing extensively about Ahri/Kennen for a few months, I’m relishing in the lack of de facto ‘best deck’ at the moment and am afraid something is going to rip this bliss away from me at any moment. But for now, at least, I am safe, and you are now up to date on the happenings of the Runeterra tournament field. 

There are no comments for "LoR Competitive Week in Review for 2/21 - 2/28."
Are you sure you want to delete this comment?