LoR's Seasonal Tourney: The Lineup with Most Chances of Winning

The Legends of Runeterra World Ender Seasonal Tournament is coming, and after last year's Worlds, the competitive scene has never been so alive!

As I knew about all the hype involving LoR's competitive scene, I decided to build, myself, the lineup I consider the strongest possible to play this seasonals. Let's take a look at the three decks I believe will be the main characters in LoR's competitive scene this January.

Build

The first thing regarding building lineups is to know: what is strong, what wins against what is strong, and what is safe to bring in case you're caught by surprise.

After that, you can think of two things: building a lineup with the strong lists, or building a lineup to beat the strong lists.

After these ideas are organized and the decks are chosen, depending on your choices you'll certainly find yourself with some pretty solid decks, which make sense. The biggest problem is: is that enough?

The Meta and Its Problems

The current meta is very open, which means a lot of decks are good, and consistent. The game's ecosystem is quite volatile. That happens when there are a lot of cards performing well, in different regions and archetypes. This makes it hard for players to make their decision when it's time to build their lineups.

Remember also that many decks that do well in the ranked ladder are not necessarily good for tournaments. Decks that are based on the fact that your opponents can't see your decklist in the ranked ladder and bring unexpected cards, region or champion combinations that might be better in other archetypes and etc are some of the factors that may make a deck interesting in ranked ladder, but not in a tourney.

Let's get to the point: let's see which lists I think will dominate the World Ender Seasonal Tournament.

Aatrox Kayn (Darkins)

Even after the nerfs, this deck is still amazing. That is because of the consistency Darkins and Cultists have. Those are two sets of cards that together make this list the best possible Midrange list this game has ever seen. You have healing and freeze tools, and also very strong units and consistency in your card draws. That is without mentioning that, in general, your cards' health and attack status are quite high too.

This deck has a lot of removals and controls the board really easily. Board pressure lists such as Katarina Gwen and Taliyah Ziggs end up having some difficulty in following up with their game plan from turn 5 and 6 onwards.

The secret here is knowing you'll probably face a lot of mirror matches, as, possibly, your ban will be on your opponent's control lists. So, focusing on cooking up a list which have cards that, in general, win against your own deck, is very important. The Expanse's Protection, Ambitious Cultist and Heedless Resurrection are essential for that.

In general, this list doesn't have that many bad matchups, unless against Feel The Rush control lists. Against anything else, though, it is quite easy to play the matchups, and I think it will remain one of the best options for tournament decks.

Gangplank Sejuani (Plunder)

Without the shadow of a doubt, this deck doesn't have bad matchups, has a solid game plan and in the current metagame it only loses to itself. If it wasn't for the issue with champion draw, that is, if you don't draw your champions in the match, or if you draw too many of them in your initial hand, this deck would be unstoppable.

That's why cards such as Babbling Bjerg were added to the list, so they make the deck more consistent when it comes to drawing your champions. Level 2 Sejuani is the strongest tool in the game to stop the current meta, and Gangplank can easily close out matches for you. The only problem is Feel The Rush lists, but as you must have realized, the idea with this lineup is to ban this control deck.

Another problem would be an enemy lineup with three control decks and healing, as this deck doesn't deal with that well. But even still, it can still pressure your opponent until submission.

Of all lists in the game, this one is the one with the highest chances of winning against the wider range of decks of all archetypes. And it might also be the most recommended list to climb the ranked ladder.

Gwen Katarina (Red Gwen)

It has already become a classic. This list is the list that most pressures down opponents in terms of board that Runeterra has ever seen. It was a World champion list last year, and even after nerfs, it remains very strong. That is because decks which are strong against it, are not that good right now. This way it is still great, and in the right hands it will give everyone a lot of headache this seasonal tournament.

There isn't much to say about this deck. It is quite self-explanatory: just play the cards and let your opponent deal with them and deal with the pressure the next ones you'll summon will bring to the board, as they enter play with even more attack.

We close this lineup with three very consistent decks, a lot of board pressure, and many tools to deal with the current meta. The only thing we can't deal with is Feel The Rush, and that is why the idea is to ban this deck. Another threat would be triple control lineups, but even still, our decks are fast enough to deal with these issues. Anyway, I believe the list that might perform the worst will be Gangplank Sejuani, as this is a deck that loses a lot more to its draws than to the opponent deck.

Considering the popularity of Jinx decks, I assume we won't have many issues against the lists, even more so because we have enough tools to hit these decks' pressures head on, and more life and attack quality in general with our units. That is without mentioning Aatrox Kayn and Red Gwen's healing tools.

Overall, those who are not bringing control decks will have a lot of difficulty when banning our lists. Maybe an Aphelios Noxus deck might surprise us, but I believe we have resources enough to also work around that situation.

Other than that, I think we are prepared to face all possible lineups in the game. And more than ready to win the seasonal tournament with this winning lineup.

If you've read so far, congratulations, know you have all the supreme knowledge regarding LoR's competitive scene, and you're ready to win Seasonals.

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