Deck of the Day: Viktor Aphelios

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Viktor Aphelios by Snnuy created by twinsunz • last updated 2 years ago

Regions

16

24

Types

6

15

16

3

0

Rarities

6

7

11

16

Mana Cost

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7+

Champions (6)

3

Aphelios

3

4

Viktor

3

landmarks (3)

4

The Veiled Temple

3

followers (15)

1

Lunari Duskbringer

3

1

Spacey Sketcher

3

2

Ballistic Bot

3

2

Mountain Goat

3

4

The Fangs

3

Spells (16)

1

Heavens Aligned

2

2

Mystic Shot

3

2

Time Trick

3

3

Get Excited!

2

3

Starlit Epiphany

2

5

Starshaping

2

10

Glorious Evolution

2

• Origins

Aphelios has had a very interesting history in Legends of Runeterra. On his release, he was incredibly dominant but has since received multiple nerfs that affected both the champion and the support package. To this day, he is struggling to fully recover from those hits.

As for Viktor, he was never a dominant force and one could say he was released quite underpowered initially. After a couple of patches, he received a solid buff that enabled him to use Hexcore Upgrades more efficiently, after which he started seeing use on the ladder and in tournaments.

Viktor has always been a personal favorite of mine to pilot and he perfectly fits in with Targon, that as a region has access to a lot of created cards: Gems, the entire Invoke package, and of course, Aphelios’es Moon Weapons.

Most recently, Aphelios got buffed back to 3 health, which I believe is a significant change that many are underrating. On top of that, Viktor got a wild new support card, Glorious Evolution! Another new spell, Starlit Epiphany, is wildly hilarious and effective with Viktor.

This version of the deck is brought to you by an awesome Legends of Runeterra content creator Snnuy, and I highly recommend checking out the gameplay video he recorded with this list. He insists that this deck is not a meme and having played it multiple times, I do agree. 

• Gameplan

This deck requires a lot of thinking on your feet. You will constantly be given options and have to make the best choice for various situations when you Invoke or pick the Moon Weapon.

If you’re making all the right calls in these small early decisions, you will have an extremely flexible early game that can either apply pressure or switch to defense.

Once you reach the mid-game, you really want to focus on leveling up your champions, as they are a key piece to victory – Viktor especially. Once Viktor is leveled, all of the cards you create will be cheaper by 1 mana, and since this deck is producing a ton of created cards, this will give you a huge mana advantage every single turn.

Pair that with The Veiled Temple for even more mana-cheating and you will be playing waaay more cards than your opponent each turn. With all of the draw and card generation in this deck, you will never run out of things to do with your mana as well!

Once you move into the late game, things can get a bit wild. You will look for a window to cast Glorious Evolution or Starlit Epiphany and really lean into the creation theme.

The Invoke package that you rely on has its ups and downs. You don’t have any notable Burst or Fast speed effects there, but you will have really solid units and very good removal Slow spells. If you already have a leveled Viktor, this will all come at a cost reduction.

Glorious Evolution is somewhat of a delayed finisher in this deck. Making all of your cards cost 1 less naturally and giving them Augment is huge for a deck like this that can create so many cards. This can really help to make up for the 10 mana you have to spend to play this.

• Verdict – 7.0 out of 10

Overall this deck is immensely flexible and the outcome of your games will be often decided based on the skill.

I wouldn’t say this archetype really counters or preys on many meta decks currently, but having mostly even matchups lets your player expression shine through and gives you the agency to win any game.