Sirturmund and MonteXristo's Recommended Lineups

Hello everyone and welcome back to another recommended lineup article with Sirturmund and MonteXristo. Here we'll go over some of the best LoR lineups for Gauntlet and tournaments as of April 8th.

A week has passed and the sandstorm has started to settle on this new meta.

Buried Sun Disc's dominance is starting to fade, opening the floodgates for control to seep back into the Gauntlet. We've seen a recent tournament win featuring triple control prominently, and as a result we're going to get ready for that

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Landmarks for Dais

Mono Shurima

Aph Nox

Taliyah Ziggs

This lineup was stolen from Hash, the idea is to beat Demacia decks of all size. You can leave Pantheon up with this but you should be comfortable in the matchups if you choose to do so (according to the stats both Taliyah Ziggs and Mono Shurima are about 45% into it). This lineup will do really well into control archetypes as well. With last week’s focus being more on aggro, we should see some control coming back to counter them - making this lineup a particularly interesting choice for this week.

As far as bans go for this lineup, you’ll want to protect your landmark decks from counters, this means that Taliyah Ziggs is actually one of your better bans. You should also look to remove anything extremely burn-heavy like Riven Viktor or Draven Rumble if you encounter it. 

Alternate decks that could be slotted in include The Bandle Tree, or if you’re feeling particularly gutsy - Star Spring (I wouldn’t recommend this unless you’re very comfortable with the deck).

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Kill’em Dead

Azir Irelia

Yordles In Arms

Riven Viktor

Well, well, well, what have we here? An Irelia Azir lineup in 2022?! Yeap, the deck’s back and it’s good again, at least Darkodius seems to think so. This lineup was pinched directly from him and the goal with it is to beat up on Mono Shurima. We have two aggro decks in YiA and Riven Viktor to be able to kill them before the Disc completes its countdown and the tempo oriented Irelia Azir to keep them on the back foot. 

Irelia Azir is capable of keeping Sun Disc on the backfoot because of its ability to efficiently recall the opponent’s units while still pushing damage due to Defiant Dance. You can also recall Buried Sun Disc itself if you absolutely must but the better strategy is just going to be to kill them first. 

Ban strategy here is going to be a bit odd, you’ll have to protect your aggro decks. Any control lineup you run into will instantly ban out Azirelia as it’s still going to roll them over, despite all the nerfs. This means you’ll want to take our decks with good single target removal and healing - something like Feel The Rush can be incredibly problematic for this lineup.

A few alternative decks you could choose to include here are Ekko Zilean, Draven Rumble, Gnar Ziggs or some cheesy homebrew deck that fills a similar role to Riven Viktor

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Dance to the beat of my tune

Azir Irelia

Fizz Aphelios

Taliyah Ziggs

You may have noticed this is a different Taliyah Ziggs list than the one I have posted above. That’s because this is my own and I feel it is more tempo-oriented. I have crafted this lineup because these are the three decks I enjoy playing right now and I thought it’d be funny to play a lineup with three tempo decks.

You should look to this lineup if you like to control the pace of the game and make your opponent play awkwardly to keep up. These lists should all have a good shot into control and midrange decks that you may encounter.  Aggro can be a problem for this lineup however, it’s not completely doomed. You can race them with Irelia Azir and Taliyah Ziggs or stall out with Fizz Aphelios - it won’t be easy but it will be doable.

Our ban strategy is obviously going to be taking out the aggro deck. We’re particularly weak to anything fearsome heavy so you’ll want to remove Spiders as a first priority. If there are no arachnoids to spook you, just take out the deck you’re least comfortable playing into.

As this is a lineup that I kind of just threw together for fun you can swap out any deck you wanted for any other deck that’s in your back pocket. Whatever you feel is fun is what I would suggest playing here.

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Chad Rally Abusers

Rally lineups have been a constant in our recommendations for months now. The new patch changed things enough that it seemed like Rally would take a back seat to new decks, but two big developments this week have made Triple Rally appealing again. First, Kevor won Fight Night AM with a control lineup. Second, Viktor Lee Sin is on the rise. Triple rally should do very well versus both of those lineups. 

Pantheon Yuumi

Akshan Sivir

Scouts

The idea of the lineup is as straightforward as it gets: win through a rally play. By now these decks are a staple of the meta and one of the most played lineups. In my predicted meta for this week, I foresee a lot of Thresh Aurelion Sol, Feel The Rush, Darkness and Viktor Lee Sin. All three of these decks should do very well against any lineup containing any of those decks, putting you in a favourable position to win the whole set.

The addition of double Bastion on the Pantheon decks also gives you an answer versus things like Minimorph or to stop an Aphelios from stunning your Wounded Whiteflame, making those match ups better for your whole lineup as well.

Another matchup that is surprisingly in our favour is Riven Viktor. All three of our decks sport a 55%+ win rate versus the deck, giving us another deck we can target in our opponents’ lineups. 

In terms of ban targets, some of our biggest hurdles come from facing Noxus control decks. Two targets come to mind, Ezreal Caitlyn and Aphelios Zoe Noxus. Both of these decks play enough stuns, Ravenous Flock, and other removal tools like Culling Strike, that it can make our life very difficult to keep a strongenough board to win. 

When looking at this lineup, I would say the weakest link is probably Scouts, as it opens us up to being countered by decks like Pantheon. However, it is hard to find another Golden Aegis deck that is as good as Scouts. There are some options like Lux Jayce splashing rally, or simply playing Tristana Fae Swarm, but both of those options lose you some points versus heavy control, so keep that in mind. Another option is running Mono Shurima in this lineup and focusing more on purely countering control lineups, instead of targeting Viktor Lee. 

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Runeterra’s Most Hated

Folks have started to play control decks again, including Darkness and Feel The Rush. It seems when a popular player wins a tournament playing some Shadow Isles decks, everyone follows along! As such, this lineup is a mashup of Runeterra’s most hated decks which just so happen to do well versus control. 

Bandle Tree

Mono Shurima

Scouts

Historically all three of these decks have done very well versus control archetypes, making them excellent candidates for this weekend as Darkness starts to rise again. All these decks play at different speeds, so make sure you practice the lineup before starting up your Gauntlet run to understand when you go for lethal and when you have to be more conservative.

In terms of what decks to target with this lineup, our prime prey is Darkness. Both Sun Disc and Bandle Tree have something ridiculous like an 80% win rate into Darkness, meaning you will almost always have a 1-0 edge in the match even if the opponent bans one of the two decks. Scouts, while not as potent against it as the other two, still does very well versus the slow nature of Darkness.

Other decks you want to see and face include Feel The Rush, Thresh Aurelion Sol, Twisted Fate Go Hard, among other slow variants.

In terms of bans, all of our decks are weak to different things, which can be both a blessing and a curse. However, my main suggestion would be to ban Pantheon decks as we have no way to really stop their big Wounded Whiteflame assuming the opponent bans our Bandle Tree deck. I would also consider banning Viktor aggro decks such as Viktor Riven as they might kill us too fast with their Ambush combo. 

For alternate deck ideas, if you are not a fan of Mono Shurima, you could replace that with Azir Irelia. It both has a great match up versus control, and it is also one of Runeterra’s Most Hated, fitting both of our requirements 🙂 

Otherwise, we could replace any of the decks with Ziggs Taliyah, which also does very well versus most control lineups. 

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Sirturmund’s Pick: Return Of The Lee Sin

This week I discovered what I believe to be one of the strongest decks in the current meta, Lee Sin Viktor. The deck plays like a slow burn deck, using Lee more as a support card than its main win condition. After hitting rank 3 with the deck, I just had to make a lineup around the deck!

Lee Sin Viktor

Darkness

Aphelios Zoe Vi