Deck of the Day: Akshan Combo

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Akshan Combo created by Agigas • last updated 2 years ago

Combo

Regions

26

14

Types

3

20

17

0

0

Rarities

3

1

12

24

Mana Cost

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7+

Champions (3)

2

Akshan

3

followers (20)

1

Dancing Droplet

2

2

Clockwork Curator

2

2

Navori Conspirator

3

2

Ribbon Dancer

1

3

Shadow Assassin

3

3

Solitary Monk

3

3

Vekauran Vagabond

3

6

Zephyr Sage

3

Spells (17)

1

Rite of Calling

2

2

Retreat

3

2

Time in a Bottle

3

2

Twin Disciplines

3

4

Concussive Palm

1

4

Deny

1

4

Homecoming

3

6

Promising Future

1

• Origins and gameplan

Hey everyone, Agigas here! Today, I’d like to introduce you to a brand new archetype that’s making waves on the ladder: Akshan Combo.

The version of the archetype listed above was created and piloted to rank 2 EU by Gamebreak0r, but you can find many lists from different players.

With this deck, you want to defend yourself in the early turns and level up Akshan. Always keep Akshan and Vekauran Vagabond in your mulligan.

Once you’ve leveled Akshan and then also completed Warlord’s Hoard‘s countdown, the deck can start an infinite loop, usually around turn 7-10. Once the deck goes into its combo mode, it is extremely hard to stop.

• The combo

While the deck works very well and the combo is very smooth once you master it, it is quite complex to understand it at first so I’ll do my best to explain it. If you want to see one way of doing the combo, here’s recorded gameplay of me doing it.

The key card allowing your infinite combo is the token spell created by Warlord’s Hoard: Fount of Power. By itself, it reduces the cost of all your cards by 1 mana for one turn, but Ionia and Shurima provide some tools that allow us to cast several copies of Fount of Power in the same round, effectively making all of your cards free.

To abuse the effect of the card and establish an infinite loop, we need ways to create and cast several Founts of Power in the same turn. In the list above, we use Promising Future and Zephyr Sage, but there are other options available, like copying it with Taliyah (who is often used in Piltover and Zaun builds of the archetype), or sometimes just by naturally spawning a second Warlord’s Hoard and completing it right away in the same turn.

Once we’ve cast 2 copies Founts of Power, our Clockwork Curator and Time Bottle become free, as well as Navori Conspirator. If you have 2 Navori Conspirators, you can use them to bounce each other and progress the countdown of your Warlord’s Hoard for no mana investment.

From that point, it is usually not a problem to get to the third Fount of Power. Solitary Monk will then cost 0 mana, and it will us allow to bounce and replay all of our units. We can now abuse play and summon abilities infinitely as long as we have another Solitary Monk or a Navori Conspirator to bring back our first Solitary Monk.

With infinite draw thanks to a Shadow Assassin or a Dancing Droplet, and all our cards being free to cast, it is pretty easy to close things out. Most versions use Zilean to finish the game with infinite Time Bombs, and the version featured in this article uses Ribbon Dancer for infinite attacks.

• Verdict

In the past, we’ve seen a couple of various infinite combos in LoR, but none made it to competitive play because they were either too inconsistent, or too slow. So, is this Akshan combo just a fun meme or a real competitive deck?

While it is too early to say with confidence, the deck is showing some promise. It is able to combo off quite early into the game, and once it goes off it is extremely hard to stop. There are many ways to start your combo, and an experienced player won’t find it too difficult to pull off.

I personally was surprised by how good the deck is. Of course, we must consider the surprise factor, and as players learn to play against it the archetype might get a bit weaker – though it is also possible that we see more refined versions emerge and make the archetype stronger.

We will keep track of the performances of this combo deck in the Tier List, but so far I’m quite hopeful. Whether or not it ends up good on the ladder, it will be for sure an option to consider in tournament plays in lineups aiming to punish slower decks.

Infinite combos are a very rare experience in Legends of Runeterra. If you’re interested in combo decks, I would heavily recommend you to try out this deck. While the deck is quite complex, the payoff is really satisfying.

While the version presented in this article uses a lot of recalls and Ionia cards, be aware another version of the archetype using Piltover and Zaun is also being played a lot with success. This list is from Teddy, who currently is rank 21 EU.

Thanks for reading, have fun on the ladder!