‘sup everyone, Leer here! We finally return to Eternal, the best game mode in LoR!
Between old staples that are only allowed to exist in Eternal, we can already see the influence of Fate’s Voyage: Onwards and the latest balance patch!
Legends of Runeterra Eternal Decks
Sorting MaRu’s LoR Eternal Meta Tier List and meta stats by playrate (PR), we see the following:
Nilah Twisted Fate is the most popular brew. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as Riot has said in a dev blog that they rotated Twisted Fate
to open up new card designs without breaking the game. Guess what’s possible in Eternal! =)
A fan favorite, Azir Irelia, spikes in popularity – just like at the start of every Eternal season so far! This time, there is a good reason for it, though, as they got a new and shiny tool in Desert's Wrath
.
Elise 
Freljord is one of the new faces, thanks to the buffs to They Who Endure
. Before we had Elise Warden of the Tribes
and now this. Clearly, 
Shadow Isles Freljord is a broken region combination. =)
Ezreal Seraphine Janna (Bandle Bar), my beloved! I am so glad to have you back, please don’t leave ever again! 😭
No matter the meta or timeline, Gangplank Sejuani (Plunder) is the everlasting constant. Being 50/50 against every deck that has existed, is existing, and will ever exist in LoR, there is no surprise Plunder is seeing a sizeable amount of play.
Volibear Aurelian Sol is the latest iteration of 
Targon ramp – and it’s as whacky as it has ever been.
Annie Jhin (Jhinnie) is another constant in the Legends of Runeterra meta decks, existing both in Standard and Eternal.
Nasus Thresh is the counterpart to Azir Irelia, a remnant of the devastating meta-game that existed years ago. Will Trundle Lissandra Control return as well, with the creation of Boadir of Blackened Ice
?
Ryze 
Ionia is another deck people love to come back to in Eternal. As winrate numbers indicate, the deck finds middeling success though.
Nasus Kindred is the final deck, being a more controlly spin on Nasus Thresh.
Turning to winrates (WR), we get this result:
Nasus Thresh stands at the pinnacle of the competition. Since it’s essentially a different They Who Endure deck, it doesn’t come as a surprise that They Who Endure Shadow Isles, with and without Kalista
, also performs well above average.
Jayce Lux is an outlier, being the only 
Demacia featured this week. It seems to me that the Demacian era is over!
Plunder also performs well, being a safe choice for pilots in untested waters.
Jhinnie is the most proficient Aggro deck at farming experimental homebrews during this first week of the patch.
Nilah TF is not only extremely popular but it can actually back it up with power! The same can be said for Azir Irelia.
This fact gives an indication that both these decks might be good enough to stay in this meta for good!
Bandle Bar, despite its skill intensity, is seeing a sizeable winrate this week. Previously, the deck struggled to find a positive winrate, but with the introduction of Sunken Temple
and Janna
, as well as bad matchups (Demacia decks) being absent, the deck can prove itself.
Finally, Nasus Kindred also wins a lot. There’s a 3% winrate gap between Bandle Bar and this deck – not because there are no decks between them, but because those decks have a playrate below 1% and won’t be featured here.
This is a great sign that the meta-game is luscious and diverse!
Factors Shaping the LoR Eternal Meta
Nasus Thresh demolishes the field in this early meta. Let’s find out why:
As many of the seasoned readers here know, Nasus Thresh is the kryptonite of Azir Irelia. Nasus Thresh has plenty of early plays to withstand their pressure, and once Thresh hits the board it’s free farming all day long.
The deck is also favored against the combo brews Nilah TF and Bandle Bar, as they tend to struggle with cheap high-health units. They also lack an answer to Nasus
, sealing the deal.
Most importantly, to substantiate Nasus Thresh’s position at the top, it beats its biggest competitor They Who Endure Shadow Isles by a big margin.
This is because Nasus is essentially They Who Endure but it also grows after being played. This, and the fact that Thresh
makes the deck more consistent at finding their big unit makes this matchup so favored for Nasus Thresh.
On the other side, we only see niche decks as trouble for Susan – Trundle Volibear, Ryze Ionia, Gnar Norra 
Noxus, and Anivia (??!) are all rarely seen decks. We could see Rzye in the playrate graph, but it had a horrible winrate that will push it out of the meta soon.
In conclusion: Nasus Thresh beats all the popular Legends of Runeterra meta decks and only loses to unpopular brews. This makes Nasus Thresh the best ladder deck in the game right now!
It is also the best tournament deck! I tied first in a tournament this Friday – check out my write-up about the tournament meta and my winning lineup strategy!
To the surprise of no one, Elise They Who Endure finds similar success, though stifled due to the bad Nasus Thresh matchup.
The biggest takeaway here is that Kalista makes or breaks the Bandle Bar matchup. Mono Elise is slightly unfavored against Bandle Bar, whereas this brew isn’t.
This makes sense, as Kalista is a high-health early unit that forces out several resources. Since Bandle Bar will remove our units either way, if Kalista goes unchecked she will swiftly level and become a serious threat.
While the rule of Demacia is over, one deck has snuck out into the meta to prove itself once more. Jayce Lux is the only Demacia deck finding success amongst the best Eternal LoR meta decks, let’s figure out the reason why:
As previously mentioned, Bandle Bar finds success in this meta because Demacia is dead. Jayce Lux exploits the fact that Bandle Bar roams freely on the lader, farming it with a 70% matchup winrate.
Otherwise, there is nothing really attractive about this deck. It can hold its ground versus Nilah TF and Azir Irelia (... and Asol Volibear, but who doesn’t beat that deck?!) but loses to Plunder, Nasus Thresh, They Who Endure Shadow Isles, and Aggro.
Overall, not a great show for Jayce Lux, as it lives and dies with the popularity of Bandle Bar. Personally speaking, while I love my Demacia decks, I would steer clear of this brew!
Honorable Mentions
As previously mentioned, there are a ton of low-playrate, high-winrate decks. Here are my favorite three!
Draven Vi
21 cards
19 cards
29 200
At first glance, Draven Vi reminds me of Riven Viktor. On closer inspection though, it is a lot more cheesy with Overwhelm cards though.
Thus, Draven Vi is somewhat of a symbiosis between Discard Aggro and Riven Viktor. Early, it plays a lot like Draven Jinx, while transitioning into a go-tall Overwhelm deck on rounds five to six with Kato The Arm
and Might
.
On ladder, Draven Vi sports a 61% winrate over 2k games in the past three days. There is a guide coming up by our seasoned writer Sorry!
Poppy Taric
18 cards
22 cards
29 800
We witnessed the death of Demacia, with Jayce Lux being the lone survivor. As it turns out, Poppy
fled to the Targonian Mountains and came back with new-found allies!
Poppy Taric was severely hit by the nerfs to Relentless Pursuit
and Golden Aegis
a while ago. Nonetheless, the old-school Demacia blend finds success on ladder.
With a 60.5% winrate over 2.7k games in the past three days, Poppy Tarix is a force to be reckoned with. And look at that, we have a beginner-friendly Poppy Taric guide by yours truly available! =)
Teemo Zoe Elusives
26 cards
14 cards
27 900
So you thought you could escape the Elusive menace by switching to Eternal, huh? Think again!
Teemo Zoe Bandle City was a dominant meta deck a year ago or so but fell off when The Sudden Surge
got gutted. The archetype switched over to Piltover & Zaun for a while but died down when Purifying Flames
got hit as well.
With the introduction of Skip, "King of the Reef"
, the archetype has enough reason to return to Bandle City again, and it appears to work out exceptionally well.
On ladder, Teemo Zoe achieves a 60% winrate over 1.8k games in the past three days. And look at that, there’s another in-depth guide by yours truly available! =)
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this week's meta-report and making it this far. If you’re still here and read this, leave a “Hi” in the Reddit thread comments, and I will “Hi” you back! =)
The data has been due to MaRu’s Eternal Meta Tier List, while the matchup tables have been from Legna’s brilliant homepage. They are doing an insane job at collecting all this data and presenting it to us in an approachable manner. They deserve all the praise in the world!
The talented Hazy has been converting the metadata into stunning graphs for the Monday Legends of Runeterra Meta Report, I can't express my gratitude enough to him!
Thanks to Herko Kerghans for his ever-lasting influence on this series and my writing as a whole.
You can reach me on Twitter (@Leer97) or Discord (Leer#2026).
Thanks for reading this Monday's LoR Meta Report and see ya next week!