Five Nidalee Decks to start the Heart of the Huntress Expansion

Hello everyone, it is your boy Yangzera bringing some early builds for Nidalee in the upcoming Heart of the Huntress LoR expansion! I’ve been trying my absolute best to build as many competitively acceptable concepts as possible and the following five decks are the ones I saw the most potential in as of writing this article.

Obviously this is all subject to change as we gather information and feel for the cards in the Early Access event happening today with your favorite content creators! Definitely go check them out having a try at the new cards earlier to get a decent feel for how the expansion feels and how these decks can fare against the current top dogs of the metagame!

Nidalee Gnar (BC)

Regions

Bandlecity
21 cards

Shurima
19 cards

Rarities

29 600

6

4

19

11

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

9

1

8

2

11

3

8

4

0

5

2

6

2

7+

Champions

6

4

Gnar

3

4

Nidalee

3

Followers

24

1

Byrd, The Bellringer

3

2

All-Terrain Trooper

3

2

Conchologist

3

3

Avenging Vastaya

2

3

Chief Nakotak

3

3

Curious Changelings

3

3

Pakaa Cub

2

4

Portal Scholar

1

6

Towering Pairofant

2

7

Big Game Tycoon

2

Spells

10

1

Facecheck

1

1

Pie Toss

2

1

Prowl

3

2

Electro Harpoon

2

3

Wallop

1

4

Rite of Negation

1

It comes as no surprise that the first deck anyone probably builds for nidalee revolves around a lot of transforming and copycating! Curious Changelings and Chief Nakotak are obvious synergies to the Ambush mechanic and bandle city offers a few tools that Shurima currently lacks in the deckbuilder.

Access to cheap pings and a bit of extra card generation oomph are something that Shurima decks generally lack and can make great use of. Big Game Tycoon comes as our top-end card that synergizes very well with the ambush units and Curious Changelings, as any doubling effect will be quadrupled (since Changeling will become an exact copy of a double unit, and then get doubled again by Tycoon!).

Extra things to consider when making your own version of this is that other champions can also synergize well with this, like Kennen can easily level up from the amount of Shadow in the Brush you’ll end up playing throughout the game. You can also add Swinging Glaive or The Darkin Bloodletters to this deck and it will be pretty decent too.

Akshan Nidalee Combo (IO)

Regions

Ionia
9 cards

Shurima
31 cards

Rarities

26 200

6

2

13

19

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

10

1

6

2

13

3

9

4

0

5

0

6

2

7+

Champions

6

2

Akshan

3

4

Nidalee

3

Equipments

5

3

Swinging Glaive

3

1

The Darkin Bloodletters

2

Followers

18

1

Forsaken Baccai

3

2

All-Terrain Trooper

3

3

Avenging Vastaya

2

3

Pakaa Cub

3

3

Vekauran Vagabond

3

4

All-Seeing Oracle

2

7

Big Game Tycoon

2

Spells

11

1

Ghost

3

1

Prowl

2

3

Grappling Hook

2

4

Deny

1

4

Flurry of Fists

3

Combo players, rejoice! I tried building a quick combo oriented Nidalee deck that tries to use the effect of Big Game Tycoon to double up her stats (or a leveling Akshan’s stats) to make use with Ghost and Flurry of Fists. Sadly, Packmother Nidalee will transform back into Nidalee after the first hit and we can’t abuse just the Overwhelm, so Ghost had to be added to make full use of the Double Attack keyword, but still this should be a really funny combo to pull off!

When doing your list, you can try considering using less weapons like Bloodletters or less smaller units in favor of more negate spells to enhance the combo round, but the deck won’t go very far off of this shell. You could also include Heedless Resurrection to get Nidalee back and keep threatening kills with her.

Nidalee Samira

Regions

Noxus
8 cards

Shurima
32 cards

Rarities

29 800

6

6

9

19

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

14

1

6

2

14

3

5

4

0

5

1

6

0

7+

Champions

6

2

Samira

3

4

Nidalee

3

Equipments

6

1

The Darkin Bloodletters

3

3

Swinging Glaive

3

Followers

14

1

Forsaken Baccai

3

2

All-Terrain Trooper

3

3

Avenging Vastaya

2

3

Merciless Hunter

2

3

Pakaa Cub

3

6

Towering Pairofant

1

Spells

14

1

All Out

3

1

Facecheck

2

1

Prowl

3

3

Grappling Hook

2

3

Pirouette

2

4

Rite of Negation

2

You know it, I know it, everybody knows it – Samira can still probably carry anything. Her pairing with Nidalee and the Ambush package makes extra sense because you’re doing two plays for the cost of one and Samira really likes that. Ambush units and their spells triggering Samira’s level up and rally effect is what sells the idea of the archetype, but we still have to see how strong it will be. You could build it just like Akshan Samira would in standard, with the Allegiance unit from shurima and whatnot, but I have yet to test the deck out to see which direction is better – missing Shaped Stone and The Absolver can be serious issues that we must fix before trying to go for a very specific playstyle.

Nidalee Fizz

Regions

Bilgewater
19 cards

Shurima
21 cards

Rarities

31 200

6

6

16

12

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

9

1

12

2

5

3

7

4

4

5

2

6

1

7+

Champions

6

1

Fizz

3

4

Nidalee

3

Followers

23

2

All-Terrain Trooper

3

2

Coral Creatures

3

2

Deck Hunter

3

2

Father Fury

3

3

Avenging Vastaya

2

3

Pakaa Cub

3

5

Fleet Admiral Shelly

3

6

Towering Pairofant

2

7

Big Game Tycoon

1

Spells

11

1

Facecheck

3

1

Prowl

3

4

Barbed Chain

3

4

Rite of Negation

1

5

Blood in the Water

1

After talking to some people, they mentioned how easy it could be to use Nidalee’s package for spell slinging cards like Seraphine, Mischievous Marai, Fleet Admiral Shelly, so I tried my hands at what a Nidalee bilgewater deck could look like. It’s obviously not the best deck in the world at first glance, but it was a nice deck-building exercise to try and find a way to tie Ambush and spell slinging together.

While the next deck is closer to reaching the final goal of the deck building exercise, I still wanted to show these first steps that are inevitable in the deck builder's path to breaking an archetype. Pick two concepts and find ways in which they could interact and you might come up with something interesting.

Nidalee Seraphine

Regions

Piltover & Zaun
26 cards

Shurima
14 cards

Rarities

33 300

6

9

10

15

eternal

Mana cost

0

0

3

1

13

2

6

3

6

4

3

5

4

6

5

7+

Champions

6

2

Seraphine

3

4

Nidalee

2

6

Nasus

1

Landmarks

3

7

Back Alley Bar

3

Followers

10

2

All-Terrain Trooper

1

2

Blimp-Pack Poacher

1

2

Flashbomb Peddler

2

3

Aurora Hallunatis

1

3

Avenging Vastaya

1

3

Pakaa Cub

1

4

Augmented Clockling

1

6

Towering Pairofant

1

10

Plaza Guardian

1

Spells

21

1

Epic Scraptraption

1

1

Piltovan Tellstones

1

1

Prowl

1

2

Advanced Intel

1

2

High Note

1

2

Mystic Shot

2

2

Rummage

1

2

Time Trick

1

3

Aftershock

1

3

Quicksand

1

3

Sump Fumes

1

4

Blowback

1

4

Caustic Riff

1

4

Rite of Negation

1

5

Glory's Call

2

5

Purrsuit of Perfection

1

6

Formula

1

6

Hexbliterator

1

7

Sputtering Songspinner

1

This final brew is the one that interests me the most and that I will refine in the first days of the expansion. Personally, I feel like the concept of leveling up Seraphine with the ambush units gives you a nice and comfortable way to get through the early stages of the game, since units to block with are premium things a Seraphine deck could have, and it is a very good plus if they can also advance the game plan.

You also don’t really need to use all the ambush cards, since you could simply play a Towering Pairofant or Blimp-Pack Poacher as a Shadow in the Brush and use their generally bad transform spells as discard fodder for other cards like Rummage or Blowback, while still getting a 2/2 body out while you’re at it.

Nasus’ cost reduction to Glory's Call – which can be reduced further down to 2 mana with the help of Back Alley Bar allows us to double cast it with Seraphine after she levels up, and almost makes me want to have 2 Nasus in the deck for the extra consistency in doing that, but I’ll settle with 2 Nidalees for now. 

In Conclusion

Those were my Nidalee decks for this super early stage of the Heart of the Huntress expansion! I will search for more decks and look to post a new batch by the end of the day or early in the morning tomorrow so you get your strategies ready for the early ranked climb! Thank you so much if you’ve made it this far into the article and I’ll see you all very, very soon.