Deck Guide: Jayce Heimer Shadows

Hey guys, Jasensational here.

Today, I have the honor to introduce you to one of my favorite decks this season, which also happens to feature one of my favorite champions, Heimerdinger. With strong control tools and the ability to convert them into meaningful tempo with the turrets, this deck has really cool plays and is incredibly fun to pilot.

So without further ado, let's jump into it.

Win Conditions

Let’s break down the deck and understand what the core win conditions are, starting with my favorite, Heimerdinger.

Heimer is one of the most unique champions in the game, being able to generate free turrets with various keywords by simply casting spells, depending on the spell cost. For example, casting a two-mana spell will generate a 2/1 turret with Tough; a three-mana spell will generate a 3/1 turret with Fearsome, and a six-mana spell will generate a 6/1 Elusive turret.

So by simply using our spells to control the opponent’s board, we are able to create extra blockers and other big threats of our own.

And although the turrets may look frail with only one health, they will gain an additional +1/+1 once Heimerdinger levels up. Hextech Handler will also provide a +1/+1 buff to all of our turrets after we play a 6+ mana spell in this game, too.

If you’ve noticed a trend with the number six so far, then I think you will see a good tie into our second champion, Jayce.

This deck works seamlessly and synergistically to flood the board and level Jayce at the same time -- with a board full of turrets, a leveled Jayce threatens to end the game with a double-casted Acceleration Gate, granting our units the ability to completely trade down our opponent’s board.

And if we have both Heimerdinger and a leveled-up Jayce on board, then any six-mana spell will now be double casted, and generate us TWO Mk6: Floor-B-Gone turrets.

Our champions synergize very well with each other. If we can control the board and level our Champs, then we stand a very good chance to close out the game quickly.

Of course, in any aggro matchup, a control plan with Withering Wail and Vile Feast will almost always allow you to stabilize while keeping your health total high. From there, the rest is just putting together a board and pressuring their life total.

Key Cards and their Utility

Now that we understand how our deck aims to win the game, let’s go over some Key Cards in this deck and their applications.

Adaptatron 3000 is a very low-key card in this deck that can snowball very easily.

Having three health already makes it quite hard to kill, and sometimes the opponent does not give this card the respect it deserves. After the Adaptatron 3000 sees an Elusive turret being played or summoned, it will grant all future turrets Elusive as well. This can be very powerful once the Adaptatron 3000 starts to see a combination of Tough, Overwhelm, and Elusive keywords. A single one-drop can essentially give your board of turrets a level-2 Zoe effect and create a scary board for cheap.

And in combination with Production Surge, you can generate a smorgasbord of turrets with a bunch of random keywords. This is especially powerful when paired with the stat boost from Hextech Handler, allowing you to create some powerful tempo plays and going wide really quickly.

I also want to touch up on Production Surge and how I think a lot of players can easily play this at the wrong time.

The worst moment to play Production Surge is on turn three for six mana.

Unless you need to cast it to generate a couple of blockers, generating a lone Mk6: Floor-B-Gone that can be easily answered by a ping is a very low tempo play. And even if you get two or three turrets, oftentimes the strongest one can be dealt with easily and you’re left with very little.

Instead, consider casting Production Surge after you have activated Hextech Handler in order to make the turrets a little more sustainable, or when you have an Adaptatron 3000 on board.

Or, even better, when Heimerdinger is on board. The turrets that are summoned off of Production Surge actually count towards Heimerdinger’s level up. So if you play a six-mana Production Surge with Heimerdinger, you can instantly level Heimer, and generate an Elusive turret, which is one of your strongest threats.

A cool tip with Production Surge is that it will never “overflow” your board so to speak. If you have one board space, then Production Surge will spend all your mana to create one turret. This allows you to manipulate what turret you want, which in most cases is the Elusive turret. This can be especially helpful to set up threats, or look for specific keywords onto your Adaptatron 3000.

Production Surge will also never give you the MK0 turret in any instance.

Ferros Financier is a great flexible card.

It serves as a nice early chump blocker, and can also help you create synergistic spells for your Champs. The flexibility of the 6+ mana spell pool in the Shadow Isles and Piltover & Zaun regions makes it so that almost any set of choices has at least one good pick.

Cards like Piercing Darkness, Vengeance, or The Ruination are great hard removal, and Assembly Line or Brood Awakening allow you to go wide before an Acceleration Gate play. And we have access to extra burn with cards like Trueshot Barrage, Shock Blast, and Atrocity.

Choose wisely which card to Manifest -- they can help you fill in turns depending on whether you are still trying to stabilize the board or going in for the kill.

Hextech Handler is probably one of the strongest cards in our deck, since we play very few followers.

Most of our units are the turrets generated off of either Heimerdinger or Production Surge, so buffing them over ping range is super important. Just make sure you play the Handler after you play a 6+ mana spell!

It’s easy to forget that Shock Blast can also be used to target the opponent’s Nexus. With three copies of this card in our deck, as well as any duplicate Jayce spells, we have access to a good amount of burn.

With a leveled Jayce, we can now suddenly deal six damage with a single card. Keep your eyes open for opportunities in the midgame to play for tempo and get some chip damage in, because for a control deck, we have quite a lot of reach.

Mulligan

Since there aren’t many actual units from our side, the mulligan is definitely focused around being able to control the early game.

Look for early control tools depending on the opponent’s units. Keeping early units like Ferros Financier and The Forge Of Tomorrow is good too, just to chump-block and stall.

Against slower decks, Heimerdinger is one of the most potent cards. It’s a great value generator, and a way to create threats.

Look for your Production Surge, Hextech Handler, and Adaptatron 3000 to set up proactive plays.

Situationally, cards like Jayce as an early challenger unit, or Vengeance or Shock Blast as spot removal are good in specific matchups.

Matchups

Burn Aggro (70/30) Favored

Against aggro decks like Spiders, Pirates, Bandle Burn, and whatever else you might encounter, you should have a very clean matchup.

Cards like Vile Feast and Withering Wail are your friends. Once you stabilize the few early turns, the opponent will have an extraordinarily hard time removing Heimerdinger, which will allow you to start snowballing your board.

Once you run them out of cards and have a healthy life total against any additional burn, you can simply take all the time you need to piece together 20 damage. Just make sure you look for early blockers and control tools.

Tristana Faeries (60/40) Favored

Much like the aggro matchups, the opponent’s deck has no removal for Heimerdinger. As they are a pure board-based deck, we can generate infinite blockers with Heimer’s turrets, and eventually pick off all their threats. 

Ensure that you have early blockers like The Forge Of Tomorrow or Ferros Financier.

Thermogenic Beam will be your most flexible answer to their engines like Tristana or Gleaming Lantern -- just be wary of cards like Sharpsight or Ranger's Resolve when using removal.

Midrange Piles (55/45) Slightly Favored

Whether it be decks like Pantheon, Gnar Swain, Galio, or any other sort of midrange decks, we will have a slight edge with our heavy Shadow Isles removal.

Cards like Vengeance and other big spells that we can Manifest from Ferros Financier are premium at dealing with big threats. These might not be matchups where we can easily execute a Jayce Heimerdinger combo, so our goal is to just incrementally outvalue our opponents, generating turrets where we can, and chipping away at their health total.

On the other hand, if we ever catch the opponent lacking appropriate removal, then we can steam forward and capitalize on it. An unremoved Adaptatron 3000 or Heimerdinger can easily spell disaster for the opponent, and even a leveled-up Jayce can cause havoc by duplicating resources or damage.

Play it slow; play it cool.

Darkness (45/55) Slightly Unfavored

This matchup heavily depends on how big their Darkness gets.

If their three-mana Darkness deals two damage, both sides will have relatively equal sorts of removal. In this case, our game plan is the same: gain incremental value through our Champs and keep prodding until we can stick a threat.

But once their Darkness starts to deal 4+ damage and can one-shot almost all of our threats, the matchup will immediately become difficult.

Try to outscale the opponent with Hextech Handlers and pressure their life total with Elusive turrets. Cards like Thermogenic Beam and Vengeance will be necessary to remove Veigar or Senna on sight. And consider slotting in Mystic Shot if you face a lot of Darkness, as having a perfect answer into Twisted Catalyzer is crucial.

Lurk (35/65) Unfavored

Lurk is just one of those matchups where our removal is completely inadequate at dealing with their threats.

Into the late game, their units completely outscale ours and we likely won’t have the right removal, unless we bait them into overdeveloping into a Manifested The Ruination.

And with no way of protecting Heimerdinger, he easily dies to Death From Below, Jaull-fish, or even from a Vulnerable pull.

The goal here is to hope the opponent misses a lurk or two, and stick a Heimerdinger onto the board. And then snowball board advantage to sneak damage through.

Tournament Considerations

Ultimately, there are a plethora of archetypes that aim to beat down on board-based decks with decent matchups into other midrange decks, such as Draven Sion, Zoe Lee Sin, Gnar Swain, Pantheon, and the list goes on

Even in the same Shadow Isles / P&Z region combination, decks like the Kindred Sentinels is a strong contender for a deck that does very similar things.

If you are to bring Heimer and Jayce to a tournament, it is because you are more comfortable with this style of deck than your other best three choices. That’s not to say the deck is weak, but there are likely stronger decks that fit the bill.

Wrapping Up

This concludes my write up of Jayce Heimerdinger!

I hope you guys enjoyed it and decide to give it a go for yourself. The combos you can pull off with this deck are insane, and it’s always a blast to play.

Let me know if you have any questions! You can find me here:

Discord: Jasinsane #0246

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jasensational

Youtube: youtube.com/c/Jasensational

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