
Deck of the Day: Poppy Lulu











- Origins
This archetype takes inspiration from the popular Zed Lulu deck of the previous metagame.
Just like its predecessor, this list relies on building a solid board and pressuring the opponent with more attacks than they can handle.
Zed as champion was pushing for immediate pressure, forcing the opponent to have an answer before he levels up and becomes too big of a problem.
Poppy pushes for a different kind of gameplay, and she wants us to build a board and spread out our sources of pressure – this kind of strategy is more in line with how Lulu operates as well.
Overall, this build doesn’t have too many brand new inclusions, but Poppy is enough to give a whole new dynamic to the archetype. She synergizes very well with a lot of its core cards – ex. Inspiring Mentor, Young Witch, attack-buffing spells.
- Gameplan
Poppy Lulu is a snowball deck in essence, and there are 2 main routes it can snowball to victory.
One win-condition is to stick our Elusive units onto the board and repeatedly get in for big chunks of unblockable damage.
Another route to victory comes with Poppy abusing her attack ability – using Rallies to buff a large board will make our pressure unsurmountable.
In order to set up either of those situations, the early turns are key as this is where we build up our board. Depending on the opponent, we either want to go wide early or store some mana to protect our champions later on.
It matters a lot whether we attack on odds or on evens. Odd attacking turns favor Lulu, while evens are better for Poppy – so keep that in mind when developing and planning mulligans.
In this early meta, the Darkness decks are very popular, and they pack a lot of removals. Banking mana for a timely Ranger’s Resolve or another combat trick can help a lot.
In a more board-centric environment, cutting the Pompous Cavalier to replace it with Blinding Assault or Laurent Protege can net huge dividends in the trading department.
- Verdict
Personally, I have never liked Zed Lulu much – it felt too susceptible to removal-heavy decks.
Shifting to a more midrange approach done this list a lot of good, and thanks to Poppy it feels like a very different deck.
This new version looks like it can go the distance against other midrange decks, and you don’t feel doomed when facing control decks because Poppy gives us a sustainable board advantage engine.
It is early to say if Poppy Lulu will do as good as its predecessor Zed Lulu, but it has been a nice climbing archetype for me so far in the Diamond rank.
It is also important that the deck plays towards a very similar gameplan in most matchups, which means you don’t have to play around your opponents too much. In an unstable meta where we get to see a little bit of everything and sometimes don’t even know what we’re facing it is a nice trait to have.
I think Poppy Lulu is a nice choice for week one, and it’s a very safe build to invest in.