Deck of the Day: Taliyah Malphite

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Taliyah Malphite by GrandpaRoji created by twinsunz • last updated 2 years ago

Regions

18

22

Types

6

17

8

9

0

Rarities

6

3

8

23

Mana Cost

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7+

Champions (6)

5

Taliyah

3

7

Malphite

3

landmarks (9)

1

Ancient Preparations

3

2

Preservarium

3

4

Salt Spire

3

followers (17)

1

Chip

3

2

Blue Sentinel

3

2

Rock Hopper

3

3

Merciless Hunter

2

4

Earth Elemental

2

4

Solari Sunforger

2

6

Stonebreaker

2

Spells (8)

1

Shaped Stone

2

3

Unraveled Earth

2

4

Ground Slam

3

4

Rite of Negation

1

• Origins

Malphite and Taliyah is a design-intended champion pairing, which Legends of Runeterra was pushing since Guardians of the Ancient expansion. Initially, the archetype landed a bit flat, as both champions fell short of the expectations.

It took a round of buffs to Taliyah and Malphite before the deck started showing some promising results. Last season, I really enjoyed the deck and even did a full breakdown of it previously. And now in Patch 2.11, with yet another Taliyah buff and the meta getting shaken up violently, I want to revisit it in this Deck of the Day highlight!

The main reason for this feature though is because of GrandpaRoji, who recently took this exact list above straight to Masters in the first three days of the patch! They are a true Taliyah Malphite believer, and so am I. Please check them out on Twitter and catch one of their streams!

• Gameplan

This deck is all about value. You are not running a ton of combat tricks, but you have very consistent units and landmarks, that can really allow you to outvalue your opponent in a midrange battle.

You want to finish the game between turns 7 and 9. Before that, try to maximize trading while also building toward your champions’ level-ups. Luckily, they are playing towards similar conditions, and you will achieve them naturally by virtue of how this list is built.

While working on developing your landmarks, you will also make Stonebreaker and Earth Elemental into much stronger threats.

However, don’t forget about tempo – sometimes you might not have a comfortable enough board state to play landmarks. In this instance, cards like Blue Sentinel and Rock Hopper are amazing for maintaining a solid board presence while helping your end-game plan.

After you’ve leveled your champions, the gameplan becomes pretty straightforward. Utilize board-wide Unstoppable Force, or pummel the enemy Nexus with rocks. Note that Taliyah now always triggers her Level 2 ability three times – the recent patch removed a requirement for that.

The other realistic path to victory that doesn’t involve Taliyah or Malphite is just having a massively wide board that your opponent can’t keep up with. You can achieve this by duplicating the Salt Spire with Taliyah.

• Verdict: 8.0 out of 10

If you like midrange decks, this is a really fun one with a pretty unique and effective payoff. You have a ton of flavorful abilities on your followers that find very versatile uses.

People are still sleeping on this deck a bit, so if you like to play something a little off-meta, this is a great choice for you. 

Overall, the list is pretty versatile into various matchups. It can outvalue a lot of midrange decks, finish off control opponents before it gets too late, and can even have a decent amount of sustain through some beefy units into aggro lists.

Even though Ground Slam is pretty great, the deck does lack combat tricks and healing overall. It can find itself getting overwhelmed early if you don’t find the correct drops, and since our curve focuses on the midrange plan, this will happen from time to time.

With all that being said, this archetype really can compete in this meta and should be taken a lot more seriously.