Standard Deck Guide - Pyke and Rek'Sai, the lurkers that always come out on top!

Lurkers maintain their dominance among the good decks in this season, and Rek'Sai and Pyke won't have mercy on any prey they catch in their way on the ranked ladder.

Only someone who has seen a unit with ever-growing stats on decisive turns knows what it's like to face Lurkers.

Their units don't stop growing and put a lot of pressure on board at every turn, without giving much time for their opponents to think about the best ways to answer.

By playing this game of hoarding stats at every turn, Rek'Sai and Pyke are the greatest stars, because they put on pressure even off the board, helping the deck in many ways.

Deck Summary: Fast and Easy to play

Lurker decks tend to be very fast, which means, if you're lucky or force the Lurk activation at every turn, they have an advantage over their enemy.

There are not that many barriers to piloting a Lurk deck: we will try at all costs to hit our enemy with big units in massive ways, leaving them always in tough spots when it comes to decision-making. That will repeat until a unit with Overwhelm comes in to finish the match or until the damage declared on board is big enough to end the enemy.

Our deck is extremely fast. In most matches, you'll be able to feel early on whether you have a shot or not of guaranteeing the victory. For instance, control decks that prevent our attacks or if you are unlucky when activating Lurk, might be the signs that certain matches are not worth drawing out until the end, because the deck ends up losing gas and many times doesn't recover in time.

But, in matches in which your plans work out, the enemy has just a short amount of time to answer that much damage declared in combats, which will usually put the enemy at a disadvantage.

The List

Pyke

Pyke has a psychological terror effect which is very interesting, because he can go into the game as a champion or a spell, damaging an enemy unit or removing it, and speeding up his level up progression.

With this versatility, the champion already becomes very interesting.

Rek’sai

All we want is for Rek'Sai to be on top of our deck in an offensive turn. Her passive is amazing and speeds up the game in an absurd way, allowing for offensive turns which are much more solid and tough for the opponent to ignore.

Starting the match with her in hand, on the other side, is not very good, because many times we'll try to return her to the deck as soon as possible, and the same goes if we draw her too soon.

Ever since the release of the Lurk archetype, we have solid and early units in the decks. They will hardly change it from one deck to another, because they are very dependent on each other to work in a synergistic way.

Forsaken Baccai is an excellent unit. Though it doesn't have the Lurk keyword, it helps you fill your deck, replacing a Lurker like Sharkling, which doesn't have much of an x factor besides Lurk as its keyword.

Xer'Sai Hatchling comes in with more board pressure, as it has, besides Lurk, Fearsome as an x factor, forcing out more advantageous trades and taking out more valuable units from the enemy board.

In a deck that focuses on good trades, a unit that allows you to give an enemy unit vulnerable is very interesting, and Redfin Hammersnout comes on board for that.

As for Snapjaw Swarm, it is an excellent Lurk activator on defensive turns, forcing the opponent onto complicated situations, because dealing with it at a certain point in the match might cost them a valuable unit.

With Aspiring Chronomancer, we can guarantee our topdeck has the best cards for any given situation, and the same goes for Xer'Sai Caller, which even brings an interesting body on board.

And, finally, Xerxa'reth, the Undertitan and Xer'Sai Dunebreaker are excellent finishers for a match that might have extended itself more than expected. These units are dependent on good rounds activating Lurk, but once on board are tough to deal with.

Lurk decks usually focus on units, just a few spells being necessary to work well. Having too many cards without Lurk or too many spells might slow down your game plan.

Among the few spells in this deck, we have Call the Pack, which helps you insert Lurk units on your topdeck.

Ruthless Predator helps you trade favorably, focusing on removing any problematic unit on the enemy board.

Rite of Negation can save a unit or champion that is the target of removals on your board and that is important for you to control the game rhythm.

As for Blood in the Water, it is one of the few spells in game that also has the keyword Lurk and can help you close out matches, by attacking more than one time with a unit with Overwhelm or by forcing an extra attack in a defensive turn.

Champions aren't the best options to have early on, and, in case they show up, we must return them to the deck and wait, so they can gain more strength throughout the match.

Units such as Forsaken Baccai, Aspiring Chronomancer and Xer'Sai Caller are very important in the early game to guarantee your attacks will always activate the keyword Lurk.

Throughout the match, we will try to take out as much Nexus health as we can from our opponent or keep the enemy board controlled, so that big units with Overwhelm can come on board later just to finish the game.

Favorable

Shyvana / Aurelion Sol

This is a slower deck, but whose strength focuses on units with good health stats. Long term, it ends up becoming an easy target for gigantic units with a very high Lurk stack.

Lissandra / Taliyah

This is also a slower deck which has just a few tools to handle the board pressure Lurkers will declare.

Ryze

Ryze decks tend to have fewer units, fewer ways to deal with Lurkers and hold off their massive damage to the Nexus, which forces them to sacrifice their own units. Considering that point, it becomes an easy target for our archetype.

Unfavorable

Annie / Jhin

This deck has excellent removal spells at a low cost, such as Disintegrate, and also counts with board control tools, which prevent our deck from creating that much value in the long run.

Karma / Sett

Another board control deck with tools to recover Nexus health, which makes the game's rhythm very slow and many times prevents any possibility of victory when you play a more aggressive deck such as Lurk.

Norra / Illaoi

A deck which, even though many cards were removed after rotation, it still presents good ways to remove and control the board in the regions Bandle City and Bilgewater, which many times prevent the activation of Lurk, which is essential for our deck to work.

I hope you liked this Lurk guide! May the tide ever be in your favor on the ranked ladder!

This is my cue. See you in the next article!