Tournament Tech

Hello! Wamuu here!

Today I have for you the first Tournament Tech article of 2022, with hopefully many more to come. These are going to be like my weekly Gauntlet series, but I will be focusing more on lineups that have the best tournament results each week. For each lineup, I'll include my opinion on whether it's suitable for tournaments, Gauntlets, or both.

For this week my pool of lineups will be coming from the Runeterra Academy Legends of Runeterra League. Because there are so many players in this tournament, I will be covering the players that won both their weekly matches with a 2-0 score. As always, I try to cover different types of lineups so readers can try out a lineup that fits their playstyle. This means that even though some players performed well with similar lineups to the ones on the article they might not be featured.

Without further ado, here are the top lineups:

#1 DARWINTHEORY

Darwintheory’s lineup is basically a triple aggro anti meta lineup. The most popular decks right now on high Elo ladder are Pantheon decks, Kennen Ahri decks, and Twisted Fate Nami decks. These three decks have one common weakness: aggro, and especially swarm types of aggro. 

Pantheon decks usually play one unit and put a bunch of buffs on it which doesn’t help too much against a large number of small units. Kennen Ahri doesn’t like to block as it wants to use their recall spells reactively rather than proactively and these decks force them to use it proactively or die. Finally, Twisted Fate Nami has a pretty slow early game and no healing so if they don’t draw Twisted Fate and Red Card the game is basically over.

Now you might be thinking: why is Lulu Ahri on the lineup? Aren’t there better aggro decks, such as Draven Rumble?

While Draven Rumble is indeed a better aggro deck, Lulu Ahri is included specifically to win the triple aggro mirror matchup. Lulu Ahri, although not as fast as other aggro decks, gives aggro decks a very hard time because they can pull units with Flame Chompers! and trade for free if they have an Ahri or a Lulu on board. So, instead of the opponent banning a strong aggro deck such as Miss Fortune Gangplank they are forced into banning Lulu Ahri while Darwintheory gets to ban their Miss Fortune Gangplank for example.

GOOD MATCHUP

As stated before, this lineup is made to counter the best meta decks so let’s say someone tries to bring the three strongest decks in a single lineup:

As you can see in this table we are very favored into them, we ban Twisted Fate Nami and it doesn’t matter what our opponent bans we are very likely to get one free win with either Miss Fortune Gangplank or Elise NX. Then, we have two chances to win a 50/50 matchup with Lulu Ahri which is very likely.

BAD MATCHUP

Because this is sort of a triple aggro lineup a triple control list can completely shut down this lineup:

Here we see that there is not much we can do to make our matchups better. If we ban Tryndamere Trundle and our opponent bans Lulu Ahri we have three terrible matchups and one 50/50 matchup. We pretty much lose the series most of the time. Now, even though this lineup is very counterable as you can see here, because Ahri Kennen and Twisted Fate Nami is so prevalent in the current meta they are gate keeping these types of decks from competitive play outside of Veigar Senna. This means in the current meta it is very unlikely to run into this matchup.

TAKEAWAY

Triple aggro is right now in my opinion extremely strong because running triple control is more or less suicide in the current meta because of all the Nami and Ahri decks going around. This lets you play triple aggro and go unpunished most of the time in a tournament setting. I personally run a triple aggro list for tournaments at the moment and I highly recommend it if you think you will be facing a lot of Ahri in a specific tournament. 

In gauntlets triple aggro should be an easy prime glory in the current meta. Specially since the players in gauntlet are not as good and aggro punishes low elo players for misplays heavily.

#2 三叫鼠 MILK

This is a very strong lineup in general, it is basically three strong decks in the current meta that target Twisted Fate Nami. These decks however are teched to be able to win against Kennen Ahri and survive against aggro, more or less covering its weaknesses. The Thralls list runs a bunch of removal in the form of three Ice Shard, three Avalanche, three Blighted Ravine, all of which help deal with aggro, Twisted Fate Nami and Ahri Kennen.

His Darkness list runs three copies of Go Hard, two copies of Despair and two copies of The Box. The Box and Go Hard are techs that wreck Ahri Kennen decks while Despair can help you kill Nami when she hits the board, not letting your opponent buff their units. Also, because this deck has nine ping spells and some drain spells, aggro has a pretty hard time killing you.

Finally, the Pantheon list runs five one drops: two Gift Giver and three Saga Seeker. This helps the deck be a bit faster than normal Pantheon lists and it also has a lot of spells that help interact with our opponent’s units like three copies of Confront, Single Combat and Cataclysm. These changes to the normal list helps the Ahri Kennen matchup because you can kill them faster, and help against aggro by giving us early game blockers.

GOOD MATCHUP

This lineup is targeting Twisted Fate Nami so we should be favorable most lineups with it:

Here we can see that our lineup does very well into Shellfolk decks like Twisted Fate Nami or Zoe BC decks. We just ban Kennen Ahri (which we are teched against anyways) and assuming our opponent bans either Lissandra Taliyah or Veigar Senna, we are still heavily favored as we have basically a free win and two chances to beat Zoe BC with a bad matchup and a good one.

BAD MATCHUP

Even though this lineup is a bit teched towards aggro it is still a weakness and if we run into a triple aggro lineup we might have some trouble:

This table shows our lineup against a beefy triple aggro lineup. It hard counters our Thrall list because some of the units in these decks have more than one or two health and the deck has no way of efficiently dealing with these units. Our opponent is forced to ban Veigar Senna and we should ban Fizz Lulu. This leaves us with basically one free win for our opponent and two chances to win a 50/50 matchup against our Pantheon deck. These are not good odds and we probably lose the best of three.

TAKEAWAY

If you are more of a control-midrange type of player this lineup should be better suited for you. It essentially is just three strong decks highly refined to deal with the current meta, you can’t go wrong with that. Outside of triple aggro you really shouldn’t have much trouble if you can pilot all three of these decks correctly. 

This is a very strong lineup in tournaments if you are expecting a lot of Twisted Fate Nami or if you are not sure what people will bring just because it is strong overall with few weaknesses.

I would not recommend this lineup for Gauntlet too much because Twisted Fate Nami is a very hard deck to play and not all Gauntlet players are Master rank so not many of them will bring Twisted Fate Nami in my opinion.

#3 SERGI2VAMOS

Sergi2Vamos’ lineup is a very meta-centric lineup. It runs two of the most popular decks which are Ahri Kennen and Pantheon with Akshan Sivir as its third deck. All three of these decks have a very high power level, they all have the potential to win matches out of nowhere. That's why I think this lineup did so well.

Both his Pantheon and Kennen Ahri lists are pretty standard but his Sivir Akshan list is very interesting, instead of running big mid-game card like Ruin Runner or Vekauran Bruiser it runs three Penitent Squire and three Vanguard Sergeant. This means it is more early-game oriented to deal with the current meta as it is filled with Ahri Kennen and aggro decks.

GOOD MATCHUP

This lineup just runs three strong decks so it doesn’t really target anything specifically but it is slightly favored against most decks out there. We will be taking a control lineup as an example to see what a good lineup looks for this deck even though it is not that common:

As we can see in the table our opponent is between a rock and a hard place, he needs to ban Kennen Ahri but if he does this we have a free win against his Veigar Senna deck. In our case we only need to ban our one bad matchup, which is Lee Sin into Pantheon, and we should get a win against Veigar Senna and then two chances to win a 50/50 matchup against Bandletree.

BAD MATCHUP

As always, the problem with running Ahri Kennen is that it has a huge target on its back and someone might be looking to get you with a triple aggro lineup like this one:

As we can see here Kennen Ahri has bad matchups into all three decks so our opponent basically has a guaranteed win and it will be tough for us to get a win with Kennen Ahri. Even if we ban Elise NX we are still very unfavored if our opponent bans Pantheon, as they can beat both Sivir Akshan and Kennen Ahri with Miss Fortune Gangplank, which in turn gives them the chance to win twice with Teemo Ziggs meaning we probably lose the best of three.

TAKEAWAY

This is basically the meta lineup and if you have been practicing a lot of Pantheon and Kennen Ahri you should definitely try it over other lineups. You just have to keep in mind that because these are both popular decks you might run into a lot of people targeting Pantheon, Kennen Ahri or both which can give you a hard time.

For tournaments I would not recommend this lineup unless you are super cracked with all three of these decks. As for Gauntlet I highly recommend this lineup because of its raw power. Gauntlet players usually just go ahead and play whatever they like and raw power decks like these can usually get you that sweet prime glory.

#4 KEVOR

Kevor’s lineup is a Pantheon target lineup. It runs one of the strongest decks in the current meta which is Ahri Kennen and two aggro decks that can go wide which are Draven Rumble and Fizz Lulu. 

His Fizz Lulu deck is a deck that is rising in popularity to deal with the aggro decks in the current meta as well as countering Pantheon. The basic gameplan is to go wide with discard synergy and make free trades with Lulu and Flame Chompers! to then finish the game with a Yordles in Arms .

The Draven Rumble list is an aggro list that goes very fast and has a lot of alternative win conditions like burn, Rumble or Ballistic Bot plus Ambush or Might. Very effective against decks in the current meta such as Ahri Kennen, Pantheon and Twisted Fate Nami.

All of these three decks combined make a strong lineup that counters most of the meta with very little hard counters.

GOOD MATCHUP

Kevor is targeting Pantheon decks so any lineup with Pantheon should be a good lineup:

Even though the table shows Draven Rumble as a 50/50, Kevor’s list is faster than other Draven Rumble lists because he runs cards such as Reborn Grenadier that help deal more damage in the early game so I would say it is more favored into Pantheon than it looks. As for bans, it doesn’t matter if our opponent bans Fizz Lulu or Kennen Ahri, we just ban Lissandra Taliyah and we have the series in the bag no matter what.

BAD MATCHUP

Because Kevor is running two aggro decks a triple control lineup with Shadow Isles as its main region should be very troublesome to deal with:

We can see here that our Fizz Lulu deck is hard countered by this lineup and we are forced to ban Lee Sin Zoe. Our opponent probably bans Kennen Ahri to avoid the Lee Zoe vs Kennen Ahri matchup and suddenly the odds are not very good. Our opponent basically has a free win against the Fizz Lulu deck and he just needs to win a 50/50 matchup against Draven Rumble. Although, I personally think Draven Rumble is unfavored into both Elise Vi and Anivia contrary to what the table says.

As stated before, this lineup is super rare because of the current meta so the chance of you facing it in a tournament or gauntlet is very unlikely.

TAKEAWAY

This is a very strong lineup both in tournaments and in Gauntlet because of the enormous amounts of Pantheon decks people are running. I recommend this lineup if you like discard synergy and also know how to play Kennen Ahri.

The one thing I would be mindful of is that people can target your Ahri because of its popularity so don’t bring it to tournaments unless you are very good with it.

#5 CODEMANJACK

This lineup is basically any Lee Sin player’s nightmare. It runs three decks that hard counter Lee Sin while also being a good all-around lineup that does well into meta decks such as Pantheon, Ahri Kennen and Twisted Fate Nami.

His lists are pretty standard outside of his Darkness list in which he teched against both Ahri Kennen and Spider aggro with two copies of Withering Wail and one copy of The Box to keep up with the fast paced meta. This lineup does have one weakness which is an Ahri Kennen target with triple aggro which a lot of players are starting to do in tournaments. Outside of that it is a pretty solid lineup and if you are comfortable enough with these decks you can even beat the aggro lineups.

GOOD MATCHUP

A triple combo lineup with Lee Sin is this lineup’s dream scenario:

Looking at the table we are extremely favored into this lineup. We just need to ban Twisted Fate Nami and force our opponent to beat one of our decks with Lee Sin which is pretty tough given the stats. Our opponent should ban Kennen Ahri for better chances and we end up with three very favorable matchups and one bad matchup, probably winning CodemanJack the series.

BAD MATCHUP

As I have mentioned multiple times in the article, Ahri Kennen is easy to target so a triple aggro lineup should give CodemanJack a hard time:

In the table we can see that even though Senna Veigar is favored into all the opponent’s deck, it doesn’t mean anything since it gets banned. This leaves CodemanJack with three bad matchups for his Ahri Kennen deck and one bad matchup for his Teemo Swain deck. No matter what he bans, he needs to win a game with Ahri Kennen which is very difficult given the circumstances, and even then, the opponent might beat his Teemo Swain deck since it isn’t favored at all into any of these decks.

TAKEAWAY

This is an extremely strong lineup, especially in the highest level of play because Runeterra pro players love playing Lee Sin Zoe. Even though it is not a good meta for Lee Sin Zoe at the moment, this might quickly change because of the amount of aggro decks resurging to counter Ahri Kennen. Definitely keep an eye for this lineup in the next couple of weeks depending on what the next patch looks like.

I recommend this lineup for tournaments if you think players are going to bring a lot of Lee Sin Zoe, as for Gauntlet it is a fine lineup if you are good with all three of these decks, you just need to dodge the triple aggro lineups and you should get your prime glory.

Wamuu

Top 200 Master LoR player. I have a lot of passion for this game and love sharing my thoughts and game knowledge through deck guides and articles for competitive play. 

If you would like coaching from me you can dm me in Discord at: Wamuu#7531