HotH World Qualifiers: Best Decks and Finalists Lineups

Hello everyone, Yangzera here to talk about the lineups that performed the best in the last weekend Runeterra Opens across all regions! The current competitive standard format revolves around a few high performance decks with some room for innovation. Let’s recap a little bit of the meta and talk about the winning and runner-up lineups, shall we?

The Best Decks

Jayce Heimerdinger

SI Heimer/Jayce had the most total brings across all shards but no appearances in any of the finals which makes me thing the deck is very good, but not good enough. After playing a bunch of Aatrox myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a lot of nuance to that matchup and it’s not entirely Heimer Jayce favored, a lot more even then you’d think.

Aatrox Vayne

Probably the “deck to beat” of the format, with a massive amount of brings in a field where everyone wants to try beating it so they’re not forced to ban it. This deck is extremely good and consistent and it might just be the top deck of the format, but the format is filled with very beatable decks, and most of the “good decks” are decks that have at least a decent shot against Aatrox.

Pink Seraphine

The one deck with the most appearances in the final, in a total of 4 out of 6 lineups. This deck was discovered very close to the Open and had very little time for refinement and improvement, but Seraphine and Sett just are such good champion cards that I’m impressed some seraphine deck didn’t show up before in the season.

Jhin Broadmane

This deck remained the same from the last patch and it really benefitted Siren Song just not being meta anymore. It has got some really tough matchups to play though, so I would only recommend the deck to specialists.

Jax Varus

Another deck that showed up in the last week before the open and ended up winning the event twice. This deck, Jax/Ornn and Aatrox Vayne show us that Fish Fight really is the most relevant card.

Americas Lineups

Winner - Da Tank Buster

The winner of the Mastering Runeterra Open ran it back and won the Official World Qualifier event with a more refined lineup this time, notoriously bringing his real version of Samira Gnar Darius, a list that looks very promising as a proactive deck that beats on most midrange matchups.

Runner up - NNT Space

The second place came home to Brazil in the hands of Space and the most interesting part of his lineup was the mono Ekko deck, opting out of Jinx for more consistency on having Ekko on board with the Heedless Resurrections, having better builds against Aatrox Demacia across the board.

EMEA Lineups

Winner - AtLeastIGotTheCS

I really like the way Cas built his Jhin deck, with just the right ratio for the EMEA field. With very little Aatrox advancing on the brackets, he had an easy ride to the finals with a lineup that looked to beat on greedy, slower decks.

Runner Up - BranchOfTurtwig

Branch of Turtwig was the only finalist to feature Sump Monument puffcaps. With the Eternal season right around the corner, I worry about this card and how it could affect the metagame granted we get access to not only better puffcap specific support cards, but better control decks that would really love this card.

APAC Lineups

Winner - Soraharu

I find it interesting that SoraHaru’s Pink Seraphine has a bunch of units, probably to make the deck much better into other midrange or aggressive strategies, and I really like the inclusion of Grandfather Fae in these control ionia decks.

Runner Up - THC Raphterra

Raphterra’s lineup really wanted to face Aatrox, but Soraharu didn’t bring it. I really like the new Samira Varus lists and think it’s a much healthier deck now that the Momentous Choice interaction was fixed.