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Deck Guide: Twisted Fate Nami Shadow Isles

Thanks to the brilliant Burble mastermind, Drisoth, TF Nami has become the fifth most played deck – Jasensational shares tips and insights for this wiggly archetype!

Hey guys, Jasensational here.

Twisted FateTwisted Fate and NamiNami have seen play together over the seasons across regions such as Bandle City and P&Z. But in the Worldwalker expansion, the archetype has received a great number of tools to augment its gameplan, such as Tentacle SmashTentacle Smash and the numerous Tellstones.

Thanks to the brilliant Burble mastermind, Drisoth, a Shadow Isles variant has quickly risen up to the fifth most played deck of the patch, and one of the best LoR decks, both for the Ranked ladder or for Tournaments & Gauntlets..

Let’s break down the new cards and the deck’s gameplan, so that you can join in on the action too. 

LoR Best Decks: Nami TF Shadow Isles

Regions
Bilgewater
26 cards
Shadow Isles
14 cards
Rarities
33 900
champion
6
epic
9
rare
13
common
12
eternal
Mana cost
2
0
3
1
10
2
9
3
5
4
5
5
2
6
4
7+
Champions
6
3
Nami
3
Nami
4
Twisted Fate
3
Twisted Fate
Followers
10
2
Coral Creatures
2
Coral Creatures
4
Zap Sprayfin
2
Zap Sprayfin
5
Fleet Admiral Shelly
3
Fleet Admiral Shelly
8
Wiggly Burblefish
3
Wiggly Burblefish
Spells
24
0
Fading Memories
2
Fading Memories
1
Shadow Isles Tellstones
3
Shadow Isles Tellstones
2
Answered Prayer
2
Answered Prayer
2
Glimpse Beyond
3
Glimpse Beyond
2
Vile Feast
3
Vile Feast
3
Double Trouble
3
Double Trouble
3
Tentacle Smash
3
Tentacle Smash
5
Eye of Nagakabouros
2
Eye of Nagakabouros
6
Vengeance
2
Vengeance
10
The Harrowing
1
The Harrowing

So what makes Shadow Isles such an appealing region pairing for the Twisted FateTwisted Fate NamiNami archetype? 

Vile Feast Glimpse Beyond

At first glance, strong staple cards like Vile FeastVile Feast and Glimpse BeyondGlimpse Beyond serve as solid tools to spend mana, stabilize the board, and draw cards. The ability to kill a unit and create a blocker while using spell mana – to work towards a NamiNami level-up – is the core aspect of a good card in this deck.

And since we can create many small units from Vile FeastVile Feast or Double TroubleDouble Trouble early on, we have many Glimpse BeyondGlimpse Beyond targets.

Shadow Isles Tellstones Fading Memories

But where the region pairing really shines is in its ability to create really explosive combo turns with the help of these two cards.

Not only is Fading MemoriesFading Memories just a 0-mana spell that can be used for a NamiNami or Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly buff, but it can be used on Wiggly BurblefishWiggly Burblefish to create an additional copy of it for free. 

Shadow Isles TellstonesShadow Isles Tellstones is where the real bomb is at. Many cheap spells is the name of the game, and if they provide additional stat buffs, even better. Being able to generate Mark of the IslesMark of the Isles off of the Tellstones can provide massive stats across the board.

Tellstones into Mark gives a total of +6/+4 stats if NamiNami is on board, or allows you to activate Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly, all for just two mana and one card.

And then sometimes you get to surprise your opponent with cards like CrumbleCrumble or Spirit JourneySpirit Journey to act as removal or protection. Overall, a very versatile card.

Shadow Isles Tellstones Coral Creatures Wiggly Burblefish

The added benefit of the new Tellstones is that they are all one-mana spells. Which means that cards like Coral CreaturesCoral Creatures and Wiggly BurblefishWiggly Burblefish can also generate additional Tellstones copies. And of course we want more copies of Shadow Isles TellstonesShadow Isles Tellstones.

Vengeance The Ruination The Harrowing

For some top-end cards, we have an additional layer of flexibility as well. Cards like VengeanceVengeance and The RuinationThe Ruination provide tech options against the harder Demacia matchups, allowing us to interact with the opposing board.

The HarrowingThe Harrowing is an excellent finisher as well. It often only costs a net total of six mana, since a lot of the units you bring back have Attune – so they will replenish your Spell mana after Harrowing re-summons them – and can also refill your hand with random one mana-spells or whatever Zap SprayfinZap Sprayfin can draw from your deck, therefore allowing you to utilize the rest of your mana for NamiNami or Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly buffs.

Our list runs two copies of VengeanceVengeance and one of The HarrowingThe Harrowing. If you are running into a lot of BardBard Demacia decks, consider a The RuinationThe Ruination or two.

Playing out the Deck

At a high level, the deck concept is simple. Play a bunch of spells, reduce the cost of our Wiggly BurblefishWiggly Burblefish, then buff them up and swing for big damage.

Simple as it sounds, this requires a few skills to get to that point. The first is leveling up NamiNami as fast as we can, and the second is managing resources so that you still have enough spells to pop off.

Nami

Let’s talk about the first one: leveling NamiNami.

NamiNami is an insane stat engine for this deck, as long as we have units on board. It becomes difficult for our opponent to remove NamiNami as it might leave them vulnerable to us using our spells to buff up the rest of our board. Ideally it is a board of Elusives, but the stat buffs will give the opponent a hard time blocking regardless.

Because NamiNami is one of our strongest engines, it’s important to level her up as fast as we can, which in most cases will be round five. In order to achieve this, we need spells that we can proactively play so we can spend our spell mana on rounds three and four.

Vile Feast Double Trouble

Answered Prayer Tentacle Smash

Double TroubleDouble Trouble is the ideal card for the early game. It spends all three of our spell mana if we float the first two turns, and gives us blockers to trade down. Other cards like Answered PrayerAnswered Prayer and Tentacle SmashTentacle Smash will help us achieve our goal in a similar way.

Something to note is that our deck doesn't have too many ways of spending exactly three mana on turn three. Sometimes we will spend two; sometimes we will spend four. Depending on the outcome, we may have to adjust our mana usage in the next few turns so that we can promptly level NamiNami.

Now, it’s not always the case that we want to level up NamiNami by round five. Sometimes we will be forced to play Coral CreaturesCoral Creatures on turn two followed by Double TroubleDouble Trouble on round three to stay alive. Or we will have to play Twisted FateTwisted Fate on round four for a Red CardRed Card or Gold CardGold Card. Staying even on board will be a lot more important in the early turns than blindly rushing towards a NamiNami flip, as NamiNami won’t win us the game on the following round if we’re super behind.

Against Burn matchups, I have found myself just playing NamiNami on round three and using the +1/+0 buffs to make sure my units can trade profitably. As powerful as leveled NamiNami is, make sure to change your game plan accordingly to the matchup.

Fleet Admiral Shelly

Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly is like our fourth, fifth, and sixth copy of NamiNami. The great part of Shelly is that we can play Shelly unconditionally and still be able to benefit from his board buffs, unlike NamiNami.

The wider our board, the stronger Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly becomes. One thing that we want to be aware of when playing Shelly is to make sure that we are developing as much as we can before playing any spells, to maximize our buffs. This sounds relatively straightforward, but can matter for instance when we accidentally play Double TroubleDouble Trouble as our second spell and not our first. Or if we want to go wide with Fading MemoriesFading Memories, that will count for a spell.

Resource Management

For the second part, I want to talk about resource management, which mostly refers to the usage of your spells.

As you know, you need to play spells in order to level NamiNami, but you also need to keep spells until after NamiNami flips, or to play after Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly.

The first aspect of this is pretty straightforward: what spells are better used before NamiNami levels, and what spells are better afterwards? This basic understanding will help you figure out what spells you want to play, and which you'd rather save.

Vile Feast Double Trouble 

While technically no spell is bad since you will always get a buff off of NamiNami, you generally do not want spells that generate additional units. As your board gets wider, the buffs will be more spread out, and you won’t be able to pump up your Elusives as easily. Cards like Vile FeastVile Feast and Double TroubleDouble Trouble typically do not generate Elusives, so they lose some value being played after NamiNami is leveled. 

If you need to play these cards for an extra buff, try to play them as the last spell you are planning on casting at Slow/Fast speed. Now this is less relevant when you have a Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly on board, as he buffs all units on your side of the board.

Shadow Isles Tellstones Fading Memories

As I mentioned earlier, these two cards provide a lot of gas for big burst turns. Shadow Isles TellstonesShadow Isles Tellstones will generally have less applications outside of a big turn, so you don’t really need to think too hard about it. I would try to avoid using it purely to get a buff so you can trade.

Fading MemoriesFading Memories would love to be played on a Wiggly BurblefishWiggly Burblefish on a combo turn, but this may not always be applicable. Also, remember that this card has the added benefit of being able to be played onto your opponent’s unit. Sometimes it can be correct to use it on an opposing House SpiderHouse Spider to quickly get two blockers, or a ConchologistConchologist to cycle a spell. Or sometimes you can just use it on a Zap SprayfinZap Sprayfin if you don’t have a round five play.

Look out for niche cases where you can find uses.

Generally speaking, there is plenty of draw with Glimpse BeyondGlimpse Beyond, Twisted FateTwisted Fate, and Eye of NagakabourosEye of Nagakabouros, with additional spell generation off of Coral CreaturesCoral Creatures or Wiggly BurblefishWiggly Burblefish. It should be hard to ever find yourself stranded for spells to play, but as a rule of thumb, if you want to end the game with NamiNami and a board of Elusives, prioritize which spells you use. 


Matchups

(70/30) Annie Jhin - Very Favored

Most Aggro/Burn matchups lean towards the Twisted FateTwisted Fate NamiNami deck. With a combination of Vile FeastVile Feast, Coral CreaturesCoral Creatures and NamiNami, we have a decent early game to stabilize.

NamiNami should be played on round three, and used to help make trades.

Red CardRed Card from Twisted FateTwisted Fate creates a huge development deterrent, or a winning board clear.

If we take a little bit too much damage, Nami's Ebb gives us access to an additional four healing. Don’t fall behind on Tempo, keep all early cards.


(65/35) Red Viego - Favored

Generally speaking, large single-target removal such as VengeanceVengeance is not super effective against NamiNami. If your opponent expends all their mana to kill NamiNami, you can simply use your turn to buff up the rest of your board for a swing. 

Outside of specifically The RuinationThe Ruination, most Shadow Isles decks lack substantial ways of dealing with the tall, wide board that you can generate. But since most of our spells are Burst/Fast speed, we can easily play around those. 

Look out for a leveled EliseElise, and you won’t be super pressured early on.

Tentacle SmashTentacle Smash is your friend, and then race down your opponent with NamiNami or Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly.


(50/50) Thralls - Even

This matchup comes down to surviving one attack turn of Frostguard ThrallFrostguard Thralls. It’s not easy to end the game before then, but becomes much easier on the turn after.

This will depend on a few things: how many Thralls were summoned, and if you have NamiNami or Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly on board. 

You will require quite a few health buffs to survive, but it is doable against three or less Thralls. Try to squeeze in as much damage as possible early in the game, to alleviate the amount of damage you need to do after blocking down. 


(40/60) Fizz Riven - Unfavored

Without easy ways of interacting with their engines, FizzFizz RivenRiven can often out-Tempo early on and get to their combo quicker. Cards like Gleaming LanternGleaming Lantern and RivenRiven pose large threats, for which we have no answers.

Try to hold up Twisted Fate's Gold CardGold Card when needed, and level NamiNami as fast as you can. You need to race this match.


(40/60) Bard Demacia - Unfavored

Challengers bad.

Also, SharpsightSharpsight, Rallies, and Strike spells make the matchup difficult.

Try not to commit NamiNami or Fleet Admiral ShellyFleet Admiral Shelly before the buffs can be utilized, as our foe can easily deal with them.


Wrapping Up

This concludes my writeup of Twisted FateTwisted Fate NamiNami

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