Breakout Decks from Aegis Esports League Week 2

Hello everyone, DragonGuy here, and today I want to talk about the best performing decks that emerged from Week 2 of the Aegis Esports league.

What is the Aegis Esports league though? Aegis Esports, formerly Runeterra Academy, hosts a 7-week LOR league that pits each team of 3-4 players against 7 other teams in their groups. Every week, they’ll face 2 other teams in their group. Each player has to bring 3 decks in the Riot Lock format, and with 3 players playing per team each week, this means 9 decks total.

The twist is that each region combination and champion can only be used twice, so each team can’t bring the same deck more than twice. Each of the 3 players plays a BO3, and the team that wins the most BO3 wins the match. The league contains many top players from the ladder, so I believe it is a great place to see what decks are doing well in the meta.

With 32 teams in the Americas and 16 teams in EMEA, there are a lot of different decks people could bring, so without further ado let’s take a look at the most popular decks and the best performing decks. 

Here I have featured 5 different decks from this week’s tournament. While these decks had some solid individual performances, it is important to remember they were just one piece of a 3 deck lineup. Still, decks that have a strong performance here could be something for you to try on the ladder or use for a lineup for Last Chance Gauntlet.

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Highest Play rate

Starting off, we’re going to showcase the two decks that had the highest play rate in each region.

1. Taliyah Ziggs

   1. Americas: 
      • 25 players
      • Times banned: 13/50 (26%)
      • Winrate: 21/46 (45.65%)
   2. EMEA:
      • 11 players
      • Times banned: 6/22 (27%)
      • Winrate: 10/13 (76.92%)

Taliyah Ziggs has been cropping up recently as a powerful deck, and it shows from the fact that it was the most popular deck in the Americas, and the 5th most popular deck for EMEA. The deck has been rising in prominence, and a lot of teams found a way to include it in their lineups. The deck only found mediocre success in the Americas region, but it dominated in EMEA with an astounding 76.92% win rate. 

The strength of this deck lies in its inherent landmark synergies. You have a lot of strong early game units, and with a plethora of Roiling Sands, you make it awkward for the opponent to develop their units while progressing your game plan. Taliyah and Ziggs are both incredibly powerful once leveled, and pair incredibly well with The Absolver to push for a ton of overwhelm damage. While you can pressure your opponent early on, with this deck you also have the ability to slow the game down and play for later into the game. Rite Of The Arcane provides a strong removal tool for enemy units, and The Arsenal can come down and end any game that’s been going on for too long.

With the general plan out of the way, the important question to ask for a tournament lineup is: what are its matchups? Good matchups into the other strong meta decks are imperative for a tourney deck, and this deck has several, including Sun Disc, Ezreal Caitlyn Tribeam, and Akshan Sivir Demacia. Many of these are other top decks currently, making it a solid choice to try and beat them. For bad matchups, it is weak to Fizz Lulu and Riven Viktor. Still, with a solid performance this week, I expect to see this deck remain a popular bring next week. 

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2. Feel The Rush

   1. Americas
      1. 10 players
      2. Times banned: 8 (40%)
      3. Winrate: 7/12 (58.33%)
   2. EMEA
      1. 12 players
      2. Times banned 5/26(19.23%)
      3. Winrate: 12/24 (50%)

After the most popular deck in the Americas was Taliyah Ziggs, here we have a change of pace in EMEA with FR/SI Feel The Rush. Feel The Rush served as the most popular deck from EMEA and posted a respectable 50% winrate. 

Feel The Rush is an older archetype that has undergone some changes at the top end thanks to all the Freljord control buffs. The usual staples of early removal tools are still present, as well as Trundle and Tryndamere as the champions of choice. What has changed now is that the deck is much more focused on ramping to strong late-game cards. Feel The Rush is no longer the only late-game card your opponents have to worry about. The buffs to She Who Wanders and It That Stares make them much more intimidating threats. Buried In Ice has also begun making its way into lists, acting as a 1 sided board wipe when combined with It That Stares. 

This deck heavily benefits from an air of inevitability, as you will almost always have the better late game. Because of this, the opponent is often forced to act first, which then allows you to play out an answer. The plethora of ramp also allows you to hit your power turns sooner, giving your opponent much less time to find a way to close out the game in time.

As for matchups, the deck has favored matchups into many aggressive decks thanks to its early sweepers, as well as Caitlyn Ezreal Tribeam, Darkness, and Sentinel Control among others. This makes the deck excellent against aggressive foes, and allows you to run over other control strategies that can’t threaten you in time. One important thing about this deck, however, is its bad matchups. Sun Disc and Viktor Lee Sin stick out as 2 decks that do very well against FTR. However, once these problematic matchups are banned out, you’ll often find yourself favored. While I don’t expect to see a resurgence of aggro in the coming weeks, I do think this deck will still find its way into lineups as a stable control lineup that can thrive once its bad matchups are banned.

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Strong performers

Next up, I wanted to highlight some of the decks that had a solid win rate in both regions. While there are other decks that had a higher play rate than these decks, most of them had a negative win rate in one or more regions.

3. Fizz Lulu YIA

   1. Americas
      1. 18 players
      2. Bans: 14/36 (38.89%)
      3. Winrate: 15/23 (65.22%)
   2. Europe
      1. 12 players
      2. Bans: 8/24(33.33%)
      3. Winrate: 10/16(62.50%)

Fizz Lulu YIA PNZ is a deck with a lot of short words and little units that quickly ramps up into a lot of power. Last patch, YIA was considered one of the strongest cards, and the deck is showing that despite the nerfs to Loping Telescope, it is still putting up a strong performance. While the Demacia version may have fallen off, the PNZ version is still going strong and boasting impressive results, boasting over a 60% win rate in both regions.

The deck has a few ways to play. It can flood the board early to set up an early Yordle In Arms attack to push through a ton of damage. Bomber Twins has now replaced Loping Telescope as a follower to secure a 4th region, and additionally provides more discard fodder. Lulu and Flame Chompers have an incredibly strong synergy point, able to kill many early units and help secure board control early. To close out games outside of smacking face, spells like Get Excited and Mystic Shot give you a burn finish while also acting as flexible removal.

The deck has many favorable matchups into quite a few meta archetypes, notably Sun Disc, Taliyah Ziggs, and Pantheon decks among others. On the other hand, it has a weakness to control lineups like Feel The Rush and Viktor Lee Sin. Still, with its amazing matchups into many of the top decks currently and solid results, it is well-positioned to continue showing up and winning games.

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4. Riven Viktor

   1. Americas
      1. 9 players
      2. Bans: 5/18 (27.78%)
      3. Winrate: 6/11 (54.45%)
   2. Europe
      1. 5 players
      2. Bans: 1/10 (10%)
      3. Winrate: 7/10 (70%)

Riven Viktor took off after the Viktor buffs and had one of the highest win rates in the days following the patch. However, the hype has since died down, and the deck is not posing a high play rate. Still, the deck performed quite well last week, with a positive win rate in both regions showing it is still strong.

Riven Viktor combines the power of augment from Viktor and his followers with the Blade Fragments of the Riven package. The deck seeks to build up a large unit, then give it either overwhelm from the blade fragments or elusive from Ambush to push a lot of damage. These units can either be the namesake champions Riven and Viktor, or Ballistic Bot and Nyandroid. With all of their major threats having at least 3 HP, it can be difficult for the opponent to remove all of them in time. While these combo turns are often lethal, if they don’t finish the job, burn like Get Excited and Decimate can cross the finish line.

Notable strong matchups for Riven Viktor include Sun Disc, Taliyah Ziggs, and SI/FR Feel the Rush among others. All 3 of these decks were among the most popular this week, making Riven Viktor a great deck to bring to answer them. For bad matchups, the deck struggles with both Demacia decks, such as Scouts and Akshan Sivir, and Aphelios decks. Still, the deck brings a lot of power and showed this week that it is solid into the prevalent meta decks.

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Dark Horse

For the final deck, I wanted to go over a deck that did not have a lot of success in both regions but has been on the rise this patch. Ekko Zilean has been on the rise lately, and while it had a subpar performance in EMEA, it terrorized the Americas, so let’s take a look.

5. Ekko Zilean 

   1. Americas
      1. 9 players
      2. Bans: 3/18 (16.67%)
      3. Winrate: 14/18 (77.78%)
   2. Europe
      1. 6 players
      2. Bans: 1/12 (8.33%)
      3. Winrate: 5/11 (45.45%)

Ekko Zilean has risen up from being a subpar deck that could barely maintain a 40% win rate. This week, it boasted the highest win rate in the Americas for decks with more than 2 games, and still put up a decent performance in EMEA. 

Ekko Zilean is a deck that is looking to predict a lot in the early game to turbo-level an Ekko. You run a ton of predict cards to accomplish this quickly, enough that you can usually level him by turn 4, and almost always by turn 5. Once Ekko is leveled, you get access to some powerful synergies. Voice of the Risen and The Absolver both get additional power with a leveled champion. Chronobreak is where a lot of the power lies, as it allows you to get back any units you lost this round and rally to attack again. 

Ekko Zilean has strong matchups against decks like Fizz Lulu, Pirate Aggro, and Targon’s Peak. While it has a few good favorable matchups, it has quite a few unfavored matchups as well. Against many of the other top decks in the format, it is slightly unfavored, but most matchups are within 5% of 50%. This means that while the deck may not be favored, you still have a solid chance to win the game.

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Wrap Up:

There we have it, there are 5 decks that performed quite well last week in the Aegis Esports league. While there are other decks that had a high presence, I have not listed them here as they did not perform as well. Some of them did not break a 50% win rate in either region, such as Sun Disc, Scouts, and Akshan Sivir. It’s quite interesting to see how things can look different in a tournament environment compared to ladder. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you all have a great day.