5 Spicy Decks to Try Before the Season Ends

Beyond the Bandlewood meta is starting to settle, but in LoR, there's always more than meets the eye when it comes to competitvely viable decks.

Hello, Agigas here!

As we’re holding our breath for the seasonal top 32, we are getting closer and closer to the season’s end. This is the perfect time to try some fun archetypes before the meta changes in the next balance patch, so I wanted to share with you some of the most exotic decks I’ve found for the current meta.

However, exotic doesn’t mean weak – all these decks are competitive. Most of them were actually picked by great players in the seasonal opening rounds. Sure, those decks are not Tier 1 Staples – but they are good enough for you to find success all the while having a lot of fun to close this amazing season!

If you would be more interested in the best deck to climb the ladder quickly and get to your personal end-of-season objectives, feel free to check out Den’s recent article about the best decks to get to master as fast as possible.


Ledros Control is an archetype looking to control the game with strong removals and efficient mid-game units. With its fearsome units, the deck starts lowering the opponent’s health, then the massive burn reach from Ledros, alongside Mystic Shot, Get Excited and Atrocity finishes the game.

Elise and Senna, our champions, are not the center of our gameplay, but rather help us control the pace of the game. Senna offers particularly good synergies with slow spells like Ruination or Withering Mist. You can also find versions replacing Senna with Vi, which offers fewer synergies but has a stronger immediate impact on the board.

The deck shows a 54.5% win rate in plat to master during the last week – which is huge, especially for a Control archetype. The deck was also picked at the seasonal tournament by strong players, like Jasensational and Scathus who both went 7-2.

With Scathus’ recent in-depth guide on the archetype on Reddit, and the deck showing up on stats, this is the most hyped-up new deck to try out during this end of the season. If you love control-oriented decks with a decisive finish, do not miss on Ledros Control!


The Howling Abyss is an extremely entertaining card to play with and has always been part of lots of for-fun archetypes. However, it has historically struggled to find competitive decks.

Recently, Akshan Sivir Frejlord with 3 Howling Abyss has been showing up on stats. This version, not too heavily invested into landmark synergies, got a 58.3% win rate over 228 games in plat+ last week! You can also find some versions investing into landmark synergies to play Herald of the Magus, but those do not perform so well.

This deck looks to builds a strong board presence with the powerful Shurima midgame units, backing them up with the efficient Frejlord tricks. These alone can already put the opponent on the back foot – Akshan levels quickly, and you can finish games using The Absolver on Sivir, like the classic Demacia Sivir Akshan version.

The main win condition, however, is the Howling Abyss. With the constant generation of leveled champions, it will be very hard for the opponent to win the game if they didn’t manage to outrace you.

The deck doesn’t just randomly play Howling Abyss without synergies though. Siphoning Strike and Akshan’s Shield of the Sentinels are amazing buffs as they also affect all your generated champions. Sivir is very powerful in this deck as well, protecting your champions army with the Spellshield and Quick Attack keywords during attacks.

Out of all the spicy new decks that I’ve found, A.R.A.M. is my personal favorite. I’ve always been a big fan of The Howling Abyss – randomly creating champions give you the opportunity to discover so many awesome synergies on the fly and create so many different and unexpected ways to victory.


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Shell Game created by Agigas • last updated 2 years ago
Midrange
Combo

Tristana Sivir is a midrange archetype created by faint 2 weeks ago and got decently popular thanks to content creators.

Sivir is very famous for her ability to transform a keyword into a win condition – her combo with The Absolver is often the finisher of Sivir Akshan Demacia. This Bandle city version pushes things even further by also adding Shell Game, which gives the entire board the Elusive keyword when played on Sivir.

To pair with these combos, we want to have a wide and strong board. Bandle City has proven over the season to be an amazing region at flooding the board thanks to Bandle City Mayor, Loping telescope, and Tenor of Terror.

As we already play a lot of double region units, Tristana is a perfect fit in the archetype – her attack grows fast, she increases our aggressive power by distributing impact keywords, and is even an alternative target to Sivir for Overwhelm or Elusive keywords.

Over the last 2 weeks, the deck didn’t manage to get a spot among Tier 1 archetypes. However, it is a solid and really fun Tier 2 deck, standing at a 52.4% win rate in plat+ over the last week. If you still didn’t get to try it out, this is the perfect opportunity to play and climb with Tristana and Shell Game!


Fizz Lee is a very weird-looking deck. Lee Sin decks, such as Zoe Lee or Akshan Lee, usually focus on giving Lee Sin the Overwhelm keyword to OTK the opponent. This deck, however, plays him to control the board all the while dealing meaningful damage to the opponent’s face.

Alongside Lee Sin, we see a lot of elusive units to pressure the opponent, and Eye of the Dragon to resist their aggression. The deck also generates a lot of pranks to control the opponent’s hand and fish for information.

Almost every card in the deck is a spell and/or generates one, making it very easy to Level our champions and trigger spell-matters abilities.

With control over the board, control over the hand, high pressure, and resilient threats, Fizz Lee has everything to succeed.

This archetype was created by MistAssassin, who played it to climb very high on the ladder and gave me their insights in this deck of the day article. They also brought the deck to the seasonal tournament and made it to the top 32 with a 7-2 score, showing once again this deck is a great choice when you master it.

On the ladder, the deck shows decent results with a 50.5% win rate in plat to master over the last week. Fizz Lee is a versatile archetype with tons of synergies, and I had a lot of fun trying it out – I would recommend it with no hesitation.

Moreover, we finally get to play a competitive deck featuring the absolutely amazing voice interactions between Lee Sin and Fizz!


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Riven Vi created by Agigas • last updated 2 years ago
Combo
Midrange

Riven Vi is one of my most played archetypes this season, and I have written a deck of the day and a deck guide about the deck – feel free to check them out.

This archetype, created by Freshlobster, looks to grow a big Vi, Riven, or Ballistic Bot, then to give it Elusive with Ambush or Overwhelm with a Heavy Blade Fragment/Blade of the Exile. Then, if one hit wasn’t enough, Ruined Reckoner comes down to attack once more with our massive threat.

Thanks to the discard package, this deck is also able to grind out longer games and consistently find its combo pieces. Survival Skills is very helpful to protect our threat.

With its easy to set up OTK combo, this deck is very reminiscent of Zoe Lee Sin. Riven Vi is even more explosive than Zoe Lee and has a more consistent early game – however, it does not have the same late-game inevitability.

I would definitely recommend you to try Riven Vi if you enjoy OTK combo archetypes. This is a really fun and competitive deck.

However, be aware that, just like Zoe Lee, this is a challenging archetype to play – the deck only has a 48.6% win rate on the ladder in plat+ this week because of that. But if you put the effort into it, you will be rewarded, and a player took the deck all the way to qualify to the American seasonal top 32!


Closing Words

I hope this article will help you to find fun and strong decklists for this end-of-season meta!

If you have a question, want to share feedback, or discuss this article, I’ll be happy to answer you in the comments below!

If you like my content and don’t want to miss out on anything, you can follow me on Twitter, where I share every article I write, but also my tournament performances, my most successful decks, etc… 😉

Thanks for reading!

Agigas
Agigas

LoR player with multiple tournament wins and #4 ladder peaks. Ascended Seasonal top 4. I love writing guides to share my experience with the game with the community!

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