Deck of the Day: Senna Veigar Darkness

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Senna Veigar Darkness by BBG created by Agigas • last updated 2 years ago

Control

Midrange

Regions

18

22

Types

6

18

16

0

0

Rarities

6

0

10

24

Mana Cost

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7+

Champions (6)

4

Veigar

3

5

Senna

3

followers (18)

1

Burgeoning Sentinel

3

2

Conchologist

3

2

Darkbulb Acolyte

3

2

Twisted Catalyzer

3

6

Ixtali Sentinel

3

7

The Rekindler

3

Spells (16)

2

Pokey Stick

3

2

Vile Feast

3

3

Stress Defense

3

4

Withering Wail

3

6

Hidden Pathways

3

6

Minimorph

1

• Origins

Hey everyone, Agigas here! During the reveal season, a lot of players doubted Veigar and his Darkness archetype, saying that the champion would be very bad, and the deck – too slow.

Personally, I was a believer, and gave Veigar a high rating in the review, putting him in the 10th place in my Top 10 cards of the expansion article (while Senna ended up in the 3rd place). Therefore, it is with a lot of satisfaction that I watched BBG crush the NA ladder on his day 1 stream, reaching Diamond very quickly with his version of the Darkness archetype.

There is likely still some room for optimization in BBG’s featured list, but we certainly can say it is one of the first successful Senna Veigar builds that proves the power of the archetype and shows off its potential.

Myself, I also enjoyed playing my own version of the deck quite a lot. It features Aloof Travelers and the list worked very well.

• Gameplan

Senna Veigar is the archetype revolving around the Darkness spell. You have quite a lot of Darkness generators – Veigar, Senna, Darkbulb Acolyte, and Ixtali Sentinel, – which means you will consistently have access to the spell at almost any point in the game.

Veigar and Twisted Catalyzer are key units to increase the damage of your Darknesses to make them more impactful and mana-efficient. Once your Darknesses start growing, it will become very hard for the opponent to stick a threat on the board.

Senna further enables your Darknesses by accelerating them to Fast speed, making the play patterns of the deck feel a lot smoother. She also can level up quickly, making your removals and Darknesses cheaper.

With our numerous supporting tools for the Darkness spell, Veigar really gets to shine in this deck. With him staying on the board for just a couple of turns, your Darknesses will grow to really high amounts of damage.

From that spot, Veigar will level up easily, and finishing a game is just a formality when you can burn the opponent’s Nexus down with huge Darknesses. Ixtali Sentinel also helps closing out games.

We are not running all the possible cards from the Darkness package card pool – for example, units like Solari Sentinel and Stilted Robemaker didn’t make it into the list. We don’t need too many Darkness generators – we can’t have more than one Darkness in hand at a time anyway. Instead, we would rather fill our deck with some good tempo and control tools.

Pokey Stick, Vile Feast, Withering Wail, and Minimorph all help the deck to control the opponent’s board and remove key threats.

Stress Defense is a very flexible spell that can be used to protect one of our champions, or as a stalling tool when cast on the opponent’s unit.

Demacian Sentinel and Conchologist are great early plays. Hidden Pathways and The Rekindler offer a ton of value, making sure you don’t run out of threats and answers as the game goes on.

Senna Veigar Darkness plays out as a mix of a control deck – thanks to the numerous Darkness generators and ping damages, and a midrange deck – thanks to its numerous well-stated units and its ability to finish games quickly.

• Verdict

So far Veigar Senna has exceeded expectations that the community seemed to share during the spoiler season. It is one of the best-performing new archetypes, and Darkness players seem to climb quite quickly. I am personally very happy to see the deck being successful, as I really enjoy the archetype.

However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we’re still in the early days of the new expansion. While the Darkness archetype has been showing good results, it is in a meta filled with a lot of unrefined, or straight-up bad archetypes.

Once the meta settles, and mostly strong refined decks will be played, the archetype’s win rate and play rate will eventually be affected. Beating a bunch of theorycrafts is really not the same as going against an army of Sivirs and Azirs.

Because of that, it is still way too early to say if the archetype will shape the meta or not. However, I do expect it to at least get a solid Tier 2 spot in our Meta Tier List, which will be updated as soon as we get some data on the new set!

If you have a question, want to share feedback, or discuss this deck, 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, as well my tournament performances, my most successful decks, etc… 😉

Thanks for reading!