Top 5 Most Forgotten Targon 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 go through Targon, one of the most polarizing regions in the game.

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

If you want to check out forgotten cards from other regions, click here to read my last article, in which I discussed Shurima 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 Targon cards in the comment section!

Targon, for now, has been the most difficult region for me to choose its most forgotten cards. It seems like Riot put in special care into its cards, and almost all cards in this region are quite memorable.

Lawkeeper, even though it shows up in Ryze's level up animation, has conquered our 5th place. Even though many players know about this card, many don't remember what it does.

This card was released in LoR in the Darkin Saga set, alongside Kayle. At the time, Bard was already in the game, and it is visible that Riot wanted us to use Lawkeeper as a support card for Kayle's "handbuff" archetype.

There are two problems with all of this that make this card a very forgotten card.

The first is that Kayle has never been a meta champion per se - when she did show up in a deck, she was always filling a secondary role in an aggro list, but it also didn't make a lot of sense to play a 6-cost unit such as Lawkeeper in these lists. The "popular" archetypes Kayle played in were never lists that buffed cards in your hand.

And secondly: Targon has never been the best region for the handbuff archetype. Freljord has always been the region that did that a lot better because it was Overwhelm region.

As a result, throughout the years, we forgot about Lawkeeper's existence, and we only remember it exists when we lose to a Ryze.

You must have tested this card once or twice in your life while playing a Soraka Tahm Kench deck three years ago, saw that this card didn't impact your matches a lot, and gave up on it.

At least, that's what happened to me because, after these matches, I never again played or saw any Stargazer in any deck.

This card was relatively interesting in Soraka decks, but the best version of this archetype has always been the version that focused on Star Spring, controlled the board better, and didn't transform into an aggro deck out of nowhere.

Actually, the Star Spring archetype has always been a bit crazy because we had fast-paced cards, like Star Shepherd, which were a perfect target to give Elusive to in this list. She, definitely, would stack a lot of attack power during matches and was a sizeable threat at the time.

Time wasn't kind to Soraka, and the last card released to this archetype was Cosmic Youngling, which, despite being one of the best Targon cards, maybe in the entire game, wasn't strong enough to revive the Star Spring archetype in Eternal.

These lists struggle a lot against aggressive decks, which, throughout the years, have become more and more efficient when dealing damage to the Nexus directly. As this type of strategy is more popular in Eternal, it was no surprise that Soraka lists would disappear from the ranked queue.

As no one plays Soraka, no one tests out Stargazer, and this completely erased this card from our memories.

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel, considering Soraka Tahm Kench can now be a relevant deck again because it is favored into Azir Irelia and some Janna Nilah and Twisted Fate Nilah lists in the Eternal ranked queue.

"Wait, a card that represents an iconic item from League of Legends is in this list?" - you must be asking yourself. Yes, and tell me, without looking it up: do you remember what Mikhael's Blessing does in LoR?

This is the main problem with Targon to me: the cards are memorable, but you never remember exactly what they do, and Mikhael's Blessing is the perfect example of that.

This is that card you know it exists, but you know it's bad, and it will probably not fit into your Pantheon deck. So, the years go by, no one plays Pantheon anymore after he was nerfed, and you don't remember what Mikhael's Blessing does anymore.

It was released in the Worldwalker set, and, from day one, this card was considered a "meme" for a few reasons. The first is that Targon was going through an experimental phase, and Riot didn't release any Targon champion in Worldwalker. The cards from Targon revealed in this set only helped or reinforced some archetypes in this region that already existed, and Mikhael's Blessing was supposed to fit into both Yuumi and Pantheon lists.

These decks were popular at the time, but they didn't bring Mikhael's Blessing because literally the only negative keywords you'd care to remove were Vulnerable and Stunned. Let's admit you might as well just protect your Vulnerable unit with spells, and it is also just much easier to deny spells that Stun your units - which was what Pantheon decks did with Spellshield.

Curses can't be removed with Mikhael's Blessing either, and that was also one of the greatest reasons why we completely forgot about this card.

This card is funny because I can just imagine Riot devs saying stuff like: "we can't release Freed Colossus with 5 attack because when we play it on the board it creates a Gem, haha, it needs to have 4 attack."

Freed Colossus has 4 attack, and has never been popular in the history of LoR. It has never made sense to play it for so many reasons, we might as well just list a few of them:

It is clearly a Golem, and not a Colossus. (For the love of God, Riot!)

Ad

All of these reasons made LoR players forget about Freed Colossus completely. The only time you'll see a Freed Colossus will be when it is summoned randomly through a level 2 Norra portal in some Eternal match.

1 - Against the Odds

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.

The most forgotten Targon card we choose for today is Against the Odds, released in the Beyond the Bandlewood set alongside Pantheon.

The concept behind this spell is fascinating, considering you'll grant stats to one of your units based on how behind you are board-wise compared to your opponent's board. The problem with this is that the math never maths, and just granting attack and health points to an ally, for 3 mana, isn't all that relevant, even more so when you grant an average of 2 or 3 attack and health points to the ally unit.

If this card Stunned enemies or had any other effect, it probably would be considered in some Pantheon deck. Its problem is its spell speed, focused, which prevents us from playing it on a stack - which is extremely inefficient for Pantheon's archetype, considering most times you'll try to answer your opponent and play reactively, and to do this you need burst spells.

This card's artwork is similar to, or "resembles", Shield Vault's artwork, and this also helps us forget about it because many think that, actually, Against the Odds is Shield Vault.

It was difficult to write this list, as I mentioned before, because it seems like Riot really did give Targon as much love as it could, and most Targon cards are either memorable or were popular in a meta-relevant deck at one point. Against the Odds ended up getting the title of most forgotten card, and is, at the same time, forgotten because it is inefficient, and because it isn't memorable.

Final Words

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

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