Ekko Zilean Deck Guide

The deck’s gameplan relies on these two pillars: 

• Controlling your opponent’s tempo and development. You can’t afford to lose too much health, as your main weakness is the absence of healing. Devoted Council can help with that – I found the card to be a bit clunky for my taste, but feel free to give it a try if you face a lot of aggressive decks.
• Advancing your own win condition through the Predict mechanic. Ekko‘s level-up can be our route to victory in most games, but we need to create a good situation to play him. If the opponent will be able to deal with him before we is able to pay us off in value, we will find ourselves out of resources. If you face a lot of control decks, you can add Khahiri, the Returned as a second win condition.

Almost everything in the deck, both in the way it is built and in the way we will be piloting it, is revolving around these two pillars that are essentially tied to the concept of tempo.

Because the deck is a bit slow out of the gate, and because we have neither a big-damage finishing combo nor healing, we need to have a proactive mindset, while also playing a control role for most of the game.

Against aggressive and unit-oriented decks, the gameplan shouldn’t be too complicated as you’ll assume a defensive role. The Predict should be used to find your most important cards in order to survive what your opponent could throw at you.

The more intricate decisions will come against decks that can compete with us in a resource war or deal with Ekko fairly easily. Against those, cards like Rite of Negation and Ancient Hourglass will be premium to create tempo and gain an edge. 

Against combo or control decks like Thralls, for example, the deck can really struggle as it can be hard building up early pressure. Going all-in with Xenotype Researchers and finding the buffed units early usually is the best way to develop pressure before they reach their comfort zone.

Mulligan Tips

• Generally good to keep: Fallen Feline – Aspiring Chronomancer – Zilean – Xenotype Researchers. All of these are useful to develop tempo early and advance your deck’s win conditions.
• Against aggro (ex. Pirates, Discard): Mystic Shot – Scrying Sands – Thermogenic Beam. Removing early board will go a long way towards helping you stabilize and develop your synergies.
• Against control (ex. mirror, FR/SI): Fallen Feline – Aspiring Chronomancer – Zilean – Xenotype Researchers. Greedier cards that advance your deck’s win condition but don’t do much on board are fine to keep against slower opponents if you already have a way to pressure early.
• Against combo (ex. Thralls): Fallen Feline – Xenotype Researchers – Ekko – Aspiring Chronomancer. We want early pressure, force them into being reactive, and not allow them to assemble their combo peacefully. Predict as much as possible to level Ekko – especially once you’ve already played out your Xenotype Researchers.

Matchups

The metagame is still evolving, so treat this section as an assortment of recommendations rather than some definitive guide. Here I’m going to mention some of the most popular matchups and use them to extrapolate into how to play against similar archetypes in general.

Highly unit-reliant decks are usually a great thing for us, as they don’t have a lot of removal for our important units and we have a lot for theirs. In this case, play to destroy their tempo and let your win conditions develop naturally as the game progresses.

The main thing is to not get caught up in a race/unit battle which they will likely win in the end. An empty board on both sides is way better than a full board for each player.

Because we lack healing, reducing the damage we take from units is key in those matchups. Either go for a quick board development with aggressive Predicts to find the Dropboarders or the Hexite Crystal (if you had a turn 1 Fallen Feline), otherwise, just use spells and units to prevent as much Nexus damage as much as possible until you can stabilize and naturally take over.

These tempo-oriented matches are usually difficult to navigate as we have to constantly switch from developing our side to controlling our opponent’s side.

The key to these matchups is knowing what you can and cannot leave on your opponent’s side of the board. Usually, the champions are must-kill targets. Keep in mind that also in these matchups, most of the time, no one has healing, so getting chip Nexus damage can be very valuable. 

Although it may not look like it, we are capable of quite a punch in the early game and Mystic Shot alongside Hexite Crystal can serve as decent finishers.

Go all-in on early board, you have a lot of units with 3 health which is great against Avalanche and Blighted Ravine. You won’t last long once the 8/8’s are getting onto the board, so don’t even try to make it a late-game battle. Rite of Negation on their Promising Future can be game-altering and give some precious time.

These matchups are very hard as we will be under pressure the entire game. The best way to win them is to go full-tempo early on or try to be lucky with Fallen Feline and find the Hexite Crystals early on.