In League with the Legends - Scouts and Lux Karma

It's been some time, so let us take a short reprieve from Magic the Gathering: Arena to delve back into Legends of Runeterra. Since we last entered Summoner's Rift, a new nation, and a brand new set of cards, has made its way into the game and people have been playing around with them to great effect.

So of course, we have two new decks that make use of these mechanics in different ways. Sit back, relax, and join we for a few rounds.

As always, the deck lists I use are taken from MobaLytics.

• Scouts: CEBQCAQGCYBQEAADAYEQQAIAAEERKGQ5E4VTGAIBAIAAOAICAEAAWEQ
• Lux Karma: CECAEAQCAMEQEAQAAMEQIAICAICCSOIEAEAA6GRBFIAQCAQAAEBACAICGEAQEAAF

The first deck we plays is built around being quick and aggressive, but using strong enough bodies so that swings are almost always in our favor. We also take advantage of the new Scout mechanic. If the first attack taken on a given turn is done by units with Scout, the attack coin is preserved and the player is able to make a second attack.

One of the deck's two champions, Quinn, both has Scout innately, and levels up when she witnesses enough attacks. Since the Scout attack is still an attack, she can bear witness to two attacks per turn and hopefully level up quickly. The Scout card we have use of is Grizzled Ranger, which can set up some awkward blocks for our opponent, since they know killing will just generate another creature.

The second champion in the deck, Miss Fortune, further takes advantage of our stream of attacks, while making them safer, by deal additional damage per swing. Like Quinn, she levels up after she's seen us attack enough times, and if she does it's basically game over. Not many enemies can stand up to repeated, reliable 3 damage per attack. (Shame we never once drew into her.)

And just so that we can attack even more than we already do, we make use of Relentless Pursuit, which restores our attack token. That said, I've played another version of this deck that instead uses Citrus Courier to both heal our army and induce that same effect, which I switched back to after the steam.

It's rare for me to play such an aggressive deck, but this is one that feels really good to pilot. We have more than enough tools to make our attacks as safe as possible with Challenger units and combat tricks to swing the math in our favor. Our champions also feed directly into our strategy, and when they level up our attacks are even safer than they were before.

------------------------------------------------

The second deck is built around champions we've seen before: Lux and Karma, using them as our finishers in a control strategy.

Since similar decks have already been featured, I won't go into too much detail, but this deck does tend to rely more on creatures than past setups I've run. Specifically, Radiant Guardian is an all star, allowing us to outpace more aggressive decks with careful blocks, giving us enough extra life to sustain through to our finish line. If we're fortunate enough to pair her with an Unyielding Spirit to keep her from dying, most of what we go up against just isn't able to handle her.

And with the density of units we have compared to a typical control deck, we can take advantage of removal options like Concerted Strike as well. Other new cards in our arsenal include Deep Mediation, which I would run even if we didn't already use a ton of spells to trigger Lux.

---------------------------------------------------

These new cards have been fun to play with, and I appreciate the variety of decks I'm seeing from the community. Such creativity is usually indicative of a healthy meta, and while the game will always be improving, it's in a good spot after its first real expansion of sorts.