LoR: The Best Tournament Lists and Strategies (March/2025)

Today, let's explore the LoR competitive scene and try to understand its meta. We'll compare the main competitive decks with a few popular lists from the Standard ranked queue.

It's nearly the end of the first season of the Aegis League, the biggest LoR tournament active right now. It is at this tournament that the meta is created, as well as explored, by the best LoR players in the community. Since I've been playing this tournament, I decided to show you all everything you need to know to understand this competitive meta.

Tournament metas are relatively different from ranked metas, but they're still heavily inspired by the Standard ranked queue. Many great lists from the ranked queue are also strong competitively, but there's always a way to play around them.

Best Lists and Their Counters

Currently, the core of the meta is Shadow Isles, which is, by far, the best region in the entire game. Shadow Isles is both the best control region and the best aggro region.

The best decks in the format - Fearsomes and Mordekaiser Kindred control - are both the most popular lists and the lists with the best numbers.

Here they are:

No one seems to have found a clear solution for Mordekaiser decks, at least so far. However, most teams and players are betting on strategies that beat Fearsome archetypes directly.

Triple Control lineups with 9 copies of Passage Unearned are common in tournaments. This card simply Obliterates any units that were summoned but not played that turn - which is perfect to deal with your opponent's board after they play The Harrowing, Risen Mists, or Mistwraith.

Another way to beat Fearsomes are midrange lists with powerful heals and blockers, like Udyr Morgana. This is currently the best midrange deck in Standard.

Another list that beats Fearsomes, albeit a bit differently, is Jayce Lux. This deck has a bit more reach and can finish the game by dealing damage to the enemy Nexus directly. It also focuses more on controlling the board instead of putting pressure with champions like Udyr Morgana.

You can also be faster than Fearsomes to beat them. The only deck that can do this nowadays is Overwhelm Draven. This is one of the few aggro lists in the meta that doesn't play Shadow Isles.

However, that's all the lists that can beat Fearsomes so far. The only lists that have good matchups against Mordekaiser are Ionian archetypes - but even then, these matchups aren't that easy, despite the small advantage. As a result, many teams in Aegis have brought Heimerdinger Viktor or Lee Sin Viktor, even Lee Sin Akshan.

Playing Ionia is great because then you're free to ban Fearsomes if your opponent brings both control Shadow Isles and aggro Shadow Isles. This way, you can prey on their third deck (which is probably a midrange list or another aggro list like Overwhelm Draven). Meanwhile, you'll have a good matchup against Mordekaiser (in theory).

Ionia's Problem in this Meta

Ionia is problematic in competitive settings (and has always been) because it gives players everything they need. However, Ionian units aren't great, so Ionian decks are often terrible early on - and, as such, very weak against aggro lists.

Right now, the meta has changed a bit. We're playing Ionia because it is the best way to beat the "counter" meta decks, even though this region is not that great against the main decks in the meta.

The meta will probably stay like this until the end of the tournament, and it is quite possible that, at the end of the entire league, we'll start playing the main meta decks again. This completes the "full cycle" of the meta ecosystem.

We need to talk about Janna Nilah.

This list isn't exactly part of the competitive meta, though it can beat nearly any list. The problem is that it is a bit difficult to play, and not all players are brave enough to take their chances with it.

It is currently the best strategy to bring as your third list if you still haven't decided what to play.

Despite everything, it is a consistent list that seems strong no matter the meta. Yet, everything seems to conspire against it in competitive settings. All decks seem to have an answer for it (landmark removal) and Janna Nilah always has an answer for everything else (infinite value)... In the end, whoever has the best answer wins.

This uncertainty is not what competitive players like to see, but, sometimes, it does work.

Another idea that a few players tried is building a lineup with 3 "identical" decks. That is, you can build a lineup with 3 Fearsome lists, and still respect Riot Lock. Like this:

This type of strategy sacrifices consistency to make sure you'll always have good matchups against any player who isn't prepared to deal with Fearsomes.

In the Aegis League, every week a different team gets to pick their opponents and players, so, essentially, that team can manipulate their matchups. In that week, this strategy can be incredibly strong because your team can simply pick an enemy lineup that loses to Fearsomes, and win that series immediately.

The Aegis League is an incredibly interesting tournament that encourages us to be creative when it comes to building lineups.

It happens every Friday at 10 PM ET. Click here to see the meta evolve in front of your eyes, as well as watch the best competitive LoR can offer!

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!