Legends of Runeterra - Returning to Eternal: Top 5 Best Lists

The Eternal competitive season is here! As usual, many players are a bit lost in the Eternal meta. As a result, I decided to bring you 5 lists I believe are the most relevant in Eternal so you can train and prepare yourself to climb ranks on the ranked queue.

As all cards are valid in Eternal, it's common to find unusual combos and synergies that go by unnoticed while we focused on Standard. So, I brought you a list that focuses on an extremely ancient concept and goes well with all Elder Dragon cards: the Matron + Cithria combo.

This combo is centered around summoning Cithria on the board really early on with Spectral Matron's effect. We used to play this combo with Demacia + Shadow Isles, but, because of Elder Dragon's Origin, we can now use other cards in this deck, like Heisho, Shell of the World, without using Ionia, for instance.

This deck plays half the cards in the original Dragons archetype, and some essential tools you need for this combo, like Mobilize and Cloud Drake. These two cards, together, will discount the cost of the units in our hand, and eventually let us play the Matron + Cithria combo as early as turn 7 or 6. This will practically win us the game on the spot.

Only a few Eternal decks can handle this game style, and trust me when I say you'll surprise all your ranked queue opponents with this list. Most of your opponents expect your Elder Dragon list to be a traditional Dragons deck, so we'll surprise them with this cost reduction combo.

In the last competitive Eternal season, with just a few days left, this list came up and completely dominated the ranked queue.

This deck focuses on discounting the cost of Arbiter of the Peak and Ancient Yeti as we target allies, and this way speed up Akshan's landmarks. This will draw us many cards constantly, and also create extremely explosive turns. It also has Shurima's excellent control package, so we'll always win trades.

We also have Captain Arrika, which is a staple in Eternal Elder Dragon lists because it is the most powerful card in this format.

I'll highlight Forsaken Baccai as well, as it was the most powerful unit in Standard last rotation. It is a must on Eternal Shurima lists, and you must bring all 3 copies of it.

Lastly, we have Rite of Negation, which is extremely powerful. Every once in a while, we'll make incredible plays targeting allied units with it (as is the deck's main game plan).

However, this list is incredibly difficult to pilot, so I suggest you train a lot with it. Slowly, you'll notice several play patterns in it you can use, such as playing Xolaani to count down our landmarks twice.

Nilah's card draw archetype was almost entirely destroyed in Standard, and players are slowly forgetting about it, but, in Eternal, because of Twisted Fate, this list is still quite powerful.

Some versions of this archetype don't even use Sunken Temple, for instance, because they truly don't need it. The list above has three copies of it, but, as the format adapts and this list becomes more popular, landmark removal will be more popular as well. Eventually, a version without this landmark will probably be more efficient as a result.

The most important unit in this list is Ruined Rex, which, after years, finally found a deck to call home. This card really fits this list's aggressive combo style, and it is extremely easy to stack its cannon barrages.

I'll also highlight Suit Up!, an ancient spell that will always surprise our opponent. Currently, almost no one plays around this card. Lastly, we have Get Excited!, which is the best Burn spell in the entire game and certainly wreaks havoc in this deck.

Keep in mind that you can build this list in several ways, and it is quite open to different game styles. You can, for instance, use Ballistic Bot for more Burn, or even Wizened Helmsman for more explosive turns. At the end of the day, it's a matter of personal taste.

This deck was made for us, Seralovers, who are still grieving after they rotated both Seraphine and Karma at the same time.

The most updated version of this deck has Nine Lives to make sure we'll always have some board presence. This card is quite strong and, at times, summons strong units to your board, like Sparring Student, Forge Chief, or a Vastayan Disciple.

Sputtering Songspinner slowly disappeared from this archetype, but now it is back, just one copy. It is an incredibly useful card to use with level 2 Ezreal, and deal lots of damage to the enemy Nexus.

As this is a Seraphine deck, we have many "1-offs", particularly cheap spells. This is quite normal, but it might be a bit much, or just too much information, for anyone who isn't used to playing this archetype.

As we recently got an influx of new players in Standard, it's fair to assume many current players aren't used to this game style.

If you're one of these players, don't be scared and don't feel bad for spending your "1-offs".

I'll highlight the three cards above. The first one is Fallen Feline. Even though it creates a Hexite Crystal in the bottom 10 cards in our deck, if we use Predict, or Updraft other cards in our deck with Sunken Temple, we'll eventually draw this spell. So we don't need to get to the bottom 10 cards in our deck.

Divine Whirlwind has, historically, not done much in this archetype, but we're still bringing it. That's because the Eternal meta, right now, has many aggressive lists with small units. However, as the days go on, the meta might change and this spell might become inefficient, as it has happened multiple times.

This also happens to our third card, Ionian Tellstones. It tends to get worse as Eternal changes and adapts. You should swap it for cards like Encore, Called Shot, Iterative Improvement, or even a Trail of Evidence.

This list had the best win rate in the last Eternal season when it ended.

It has the best cards that deal damage to the enemy Nexus directly in Piltover & Zaun and Shadow Isles.

The main combo in this deck is basically playing Fading Memories on Doombeast, then play any Burn spell, like Mystic Shot, on the enemy Nexus until you deal all 20 points of damage.

The Burn archetype is maybe the main reason why Eternal metas constantly evolve into control lists with lots of healing. At the end of every Eternal season, Targon lists with Viktor and Karma Sett decks always stand out because they're the only ones that can deal with the sheer amount of damage these Burn lists deal.

Besides all of this, this list is possibly the easiest to pilot because many content creators focused on it in the past and won many games. They'd just ignore the enemy board and focus on the enemy Nexus.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you had fun and enjoyed reading this article.

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See you next time!