Top 5 Most Forgotten Shurima Cards (which you've probably never seen!)

Carrying on with the series of articles covering "forgotten cards you've probably never seen", today we'll discuss Shurima, my favorite region.

In these articles, I always choose 5 cards which aren't necessarily weak, or bad, but were forgotten as time went on, and don't really make a lot of difference. If they ceased to exist, no one would notice they were gone.

If you want to check out the most forgotten cards from other regions, click here to check out my last article, in which I discussed the most forgotten Bandlecity cards.

Please keep in mind this article was centered around the competitive scene, and ranked queues (I don't play Path of Champions, unfortunately). It is also based on my 4-year experience playing and casting LoR professionally. You are welcome to create your own list of most forgotten Shurima cards in the comment section!

This card was released in the Empire of the Ascended set, alongside Shurima itself. Its goal was to support Sivir's archetype, which at the time was a Reputation card alongside LeBlanc.

As we all know, Reputation cards, the majority of them, didn't turn out very strong, particularly Shurima's - and, certainly, Callous Bonecrusher is one of these "failed" Reputation cards.

Bonecrusher is funny because her Reputation effect reduces her mana cost by 1. Only one. Which means, you need to Strike 4 times with more than 5 attack points to reduce this card's cost by 1. Maryam, Temple Caretaker, for instance, reduces the cost of any card in your hand through the Updraft mechanic, and she only costs two mana.

Some Reputation cards were centered around reducing their cost, and it even worked to a point with cards like Incisive Tactician, Bloody Business, and Whispered Words, which are literally the only Reputation cards that worked out. However, Callous Bonecrusher didn't work out due to several reasons.

The first one is that, as we mentioned, reducing its cost by 1 mana is incredibly weak. The second is that Callous Bonecrusher isn't an extremely powerful, dominant card when she enters the battlefield because, as we never play her on curve, your opponent will likely already be ready to control the board and protect themselves from her when she indeed goes on the board.

Lastly, she, alone, isn't incentive enough to make us use Shurima in Reputation decks, even more so because Freljord has always been better when we want to Strike with more than 5 attack points very early in the game. And, as the best Reputation cards are in Noxus, it makes more sense to create a Freljord/Noxus deck with this theme instead of using Shurima. So, Callous Bonecrusher was easily forgotten as time went on.

For a while now, Riot has been forcing a game style for Shurima that removes attack points from enemy units. The most recently released card with this mechanic was the new dragon, Horned Swarmcaller, which, despite being an excellent card, wasn't enough to make this archetype work, just like Vekauran Safecracker wasn't.

The Vekauran Safecracker was released to LoR in the Empire of the Ascended set with Shurima, and is one of Akshan's followers.

Akshan's followers target allied units to interact with Warlord's Palace's countdown, and many of them were meta-relevant, such as Vekauran Vagabond and Vekauran Bruiser, which were so iconic they completely stole the spotlight from Vekauran Safecracker.

Maybe the main reason why this card is so forgotten is that Shurima has always had so many cards that target allies and are so much better than Vekauran Safecracker's effect that it never made any sense to add it to any of our decks.

Even though she has strong stats, and an effect I consider mediocre, but relatively strong in the current meta, because Shurima has cards like Shaped Stone, The Absolver, Grappling Hook, and even Ruthless Predator, we have never had to use Vekauran Safecracker in our decks.

Runeterra's six-cost spells are cursed: they're either incredibly powerful, or way too weak - we have just a few spells that cost 6 mana and can be considered "fair".

Unfortunately, Shifting Sands is in the category of 6-cost spells that are just awful, and on top of it all, it was also forgotten as the years went on.

I had a theory about why this card deserves to be in this list, and it was because its artwork is incredibly similar to another Shurima spell. This ended up not being true: there isn't another spell with an illustration "similar" to Shifting Sands', but there are several characters that use staffs that are similar to this card's artwork. Maybe it created a sort of "Mandela effect" on me and other players and led us to believe there is another lost card, in Shurima, with an artwork similar to the one in Shifting Sands, but which has an entirely different effect.

All the cards above show characters that bear a scepter, or something similar, which really resembles the scepter in Shifting Sands' artwork.

All this madness aside, this card is terrible. Unfortunately, the Sand Soldier archetype and Azir Irelia lists have never benefitted from dealing damage to enemy units, even though, alongside this damage, you also summon 2 soldiers. These decks prefer to return cards to the opponent's hands or Stun attackers, or not even interact with their opponent in any way; just ignore their units and attack again and again.

Shifting Sands isn't terrible, but it is also not strong enough to be relevant in Azir Irelia lists. There are much better cards, cheaper cards, and more impactful cards, than this one.

Another critical factor is that Azir Irelia decks are part of an extremely closed-off archetype; this means that, usually, players always use the same list. They check the stats available, import the strongest deck, and rarely change a card in it. Additionally, as this type of list is incredibly strong, usually players don't feel inclined to change the deck itself, considering they usually start winning with it as soon as they start playing it. This makes them forget about Shifting Sands completely as a side effect.

You must be wondering - "wait, this is Sivir's signature spell, there's no way it is this bad!". Don't be mistaken: this isn't Sivir's signature spell.

I'll give you some time to double-check it.

Now that you're back, and you're shocked because now you know this really isn't Sivir's signature spell, let's once again discuss Shurima artworks that are just too similar, because this card might be the worst case of it.

Ricochet's artwork isn't even that similar to Boomerang Blade, if you really stop and look at it. The problem is that we're talking about two horrible cards, which are completely forgotten, and no one has truly memorized what they actually do. This prevents our brains from identifying which is which correctly; you end up giving up eventually, and you forget about both of them.

Ricochet itself only escaped this list because it is Sivir's signature spell, by the way. In any case, Boomerang Blade is a very slow spell, which, despite really matching Shurima's Akshan decks, has never seen any play, considering it costs 7 mana and is a slow-speed spell.

Once again, we have a card in this list whose main reason why it is forgotten is because there are many better cards in Shurima that do something similar to what it does, only better, and cost less mana.

As usual, the first spot in these lists is chosen through this method: I look at my collection and choose the card that I (after playing 4 years professionally and also casting LoR tournaments) can't even remember what it does, and I usually ask myself if I have ever seen it in my life.

In Shurima, the card I considered the most forgotten one was Void Seeker, which came along in the Worldwalker set alongside Kai'Sa, and like so, it is a support spell for the Evolve archetype.

All of us, who were there for the fateful day Kai'Sa was released, have "war flashbacks" whenever people mention this time. Mono Kai'Sa was one of the most absurdly strong lists of all time. The only thing that wasn't in this list was Void Seeker.

This spell supposedly represents Kai'Sa's "W" ability in League of Legends - you can, for just one mana, deal 1 damage to an enemy follower. But, if you have Evolved, you'll deal 3 damage to an enemy unit (wow!).

The problem with this card is that, when you finally Evolve, the game ends in 1 or 2 turns with you attacking with your level 2 Kai'Sa. Which means, there's no time to play slow spells at this point of the game, considering you need to play your actions very efficiently and take advantage of the game's "priority" system.

Another issue is that these Kai'Sa lists, as strong as they were, never really drew many cards every game. Slow cheap spells, like Void Seeker, usually work in decks that draw many cards or create a lot of value. These cheap spells fill out important slots in your list which would be much better filled with some type of protection spell, or a big unit, which also matched Kai'Sa's Midrange archetype a bit better.

However, the main reason why this card was forgotten is that we never got any new support for the Evolve archetype again. This means Void Seeker never had another chance, apart from Kai'Sa's first meta, to be relevant in the game, and ever since then it has never even been considered in any meta deck.

I particularly enjoy cards with purple artworks in Shurima, and I'd really like it if all of them were meta.

If you read this far, thank you. I hope you had fun.

Don't forget to share. See you next time!