LoR: 5 Different Ways to Play Poros

Today, we'll cover something that has been fascinating to me in the last few days: how much Poros have evolved as an archetype.

Once a meme, Poros became meta as the years went on, and today are one of the most interesting and "better built" archetypes in Standard.

Together, we'll explore a few Poro lists, analyze their data, and the different ways you can play them. I'll show you why you should explore and play these incredible lists!

I had the idea to write this article after I played the Beyond the Gloom Open, one of the most unusual types of tournaments I ever played because it had a Ban List. You couldn't play Elder Dragon, Hecarim, Jinx, and Sett.

So, you couldn't play half of the meta decks, considering Elder Dragon lists dominated the top rankings of data websites almost entirely, as did Hecarim.

Therefore, all we had left to play was Poros, any Vex list, and Mordekaiser. Some people even brought Deep. However, out of all of these decks, the one who performed the best, undoubtedly, were Poro lists.

This was the Poro list I brought to the tournament. (I tied for 3rd place).

Notice that this list leans towards Midrange, as it has a few control elements, like Thermogenic Beam, and one copy of Mystic Shot and Howling Gale.

I actually prefer this game style because I'm primarily a control player. So, to me, removing units on my opponent's boards throughout the match is something I'm very comfortable with. Even though Poros are usually in a combo/aggro deck, you can build your list to play slowly and remove enemy units, which is just brilliant in terms of deckbuilding.

You can play this archetype in many different ways; this is exactly what I wanted to show to you all! Let's see another list.

Currently, this list has the best win rate in the last 2 days, according to Runeterra.AR. "Somali", a BR player from the Americas server, got close to 64% win rate with it.

This version doesn't have any control elements; it focuses on drawing cards and filling your board with Poros as fast as you can. That's how you'll extract as much value as you can from Fabled Poro's effect.

So, cards like Sunken Temple and Soaring Cartographer are the most efficient cards you have to draw a bunch of cards all at once and keep playing Poros throughout your turns.

Unlike the first version we showed you, this deck focuses a lot more on just playing Poros and giving them keywords, just like the first Poro decks that ever existed. This reinforces the idea that "the first way people played this deck is still one of the best ways to play this deck".

This was the most played Poro list in the last 7 days. It is a very conservative deck, and doesn't bring a lot of innovation to the archetype itself.

This list has the "regular" Poro kit you expect in most Poro lists. This is the recipe: 2 Affectionate Poro, 3 Daring Poro, 3 Lonely Poro, 3 Prototype Porobot, 3 Patched Porobot, and also The Poro King.

Any deck that strays away from this recipe can already be considered a "new, emergent" list for this archetype.

That being said, there's not much else to talk about this deck in particular besides the fact it is the most "accepted" way to play this archetype. It even has Thermogenic Beam, which is a bit unusual as well.

This is the highest-performing Poro list across this entire season (since the new rotation came along, and we got new cards).

It was played by “RichGameBuddy” on the Americas server.

They managed to get 80% win rate in a total of 26 games. This version focuses more on abusing how easy it is for this deck to deal damage with Howling Gale and how versatile Soaring Cartographer is in terms of card draw.

(All of these different decks make me remember how LoR was in Beta, when everyone was testing lists all the time).

Notice that this list has a single copy of Ultrasoft Poro, one of the best-performing cards this season. This card truly makes a lot of difference and might, alone, win lots of matches against aggressive decks.

Check out the Poro list that has performed the best in the last 7 days, by the Spanish player "Jorge".

It is entirely different from the other lists, as it has Poro Sled. It also doesn't follow the "original Poro recipe", the one that is most accepted by the community.

This list includes: 1 Pouty Poro, 1 Proto Poro, and 1 Plucky Poro to level up The Poro King as fast as possible without compromising the consistency of the list itself.

Poro Sled is just a really beefy Poro that can also be one of your win conditions. It will bring you random attacking Poros for free, and that is many times just enough to break through your opponent's defenses.

This version is certainly a bit more ambitious. And that is because Poro Sled, despite strong, costs the same as The Poro King. It is also a relatively weak unit compared to the rest of the units that match this list's main goal.

Out of all the lists we showed you, this one is the slowest, but it deserved a mention because of its respectable win rate in the EMEA server.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you had fun and enjoyed reading this article.

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