Heimer Jayce SI: The Spooky Age of Hextech

Heimerdinger Jayce has been a common champion pairing for a while, but the Shadow Isles version has started to pick up only recently.
  • Origins

Hello everyone, Dragonguy here with a deck featuring one of my favorite champions, Jayce. This time, we’re pairing him with Heimerdinger and taking that pair on a spooky trip to Shadow Isles. 

Heimerdinger Jayce has been a common champion pairing ever since Jayce’s release. These champions have a natural synergy, as they both care about spells, and Heimerdinger‘s turrets play well with Jayce’s ability to copy spells.

They have been tried together in quite a few region pairings, like with Ionia and Bandle City – however, the Shadow Isles variant has not been seen too much at a higher level. Jayce had enjoyed some success with SI in a Sentinel deck, but since the buff to Kindred, he has been phased out of those builds.

Recently, a new Heimer build has been pioneered and piloted to great success by TealRed, and it caught my attention. 

  • Gameplan

Heimerdinger Jayce SI is a controlling deck that seeks to utilize the Tech package combined with 6+ cost spells to close out games.

Shadow Isles gives us more answers to opponents’ threats while we set up our win conditions. Both Heimerdinger and Jayce can quickly get out of hand if left alone, especially given all the support they have in the deck.

Jayce can come down on turn 4 with Challenger or Quick Attack, depending on the matchup and board state. This gives us a solid body early, and once he levels up, he can turn into a win condition doubling our expensive spells.

The deck has plenty of ways to level Jayce, with a total of seven 6+ cost spells, and six more with scalable cost (Production Surge and Thermogenic Beam).

Ferros Financier can generate us even more spells, and really benefits from Shadow Isles as a second region – he can generate some game swinging cards like The Ruination. The Forge of Tomorrow gives us an early body, and can give us mana back when we go for a big spell. Finally, Albus Ferros comes in as a one of to draw a Jayce and threaten a lot of damage.

Heimerdinger pumps out value just by staying on the field and watching us play our spells. He generates a free turret for every spell he sees resolve, and can allow us to flood the board while also removing our opponent’s stuff. The recent buff to Vengeance is great for Heimerdinger, as this 6-mana spell now creates Elusive turrets, which creates a huge tempo swing. 

To supplement our gameplan with Heimerdinger, we have our other primary win condition for this deck, Techs. Hextech Handler buffs up all our tech units once we’ve cast a 6+ cost spell, and Adaptatron 3000 suits up our Techs with keywords. Production Surge gives us another way to make tech units outside of Heimerdinger, and can help trigger the 6+ cost effect. Importantly, this can be played for 0 mana to summon a Challenger turret which benefits from all our tech buffs. 

It will take time to put all our pieces together, so we’re leaning into Shadow Isles for some stalling tools. Vile Feast serves as our low-cost removal spell that also puts a body on board. Withering Wail heals us and gives us a way to deal with wide boards. The Box lets us punish an opponent for developing multiple units in one round.

Thermogenic Beam is flexible removal, able to snipe units early or take care of a larger threat later in the game. Shock Blast serves many purposes in our deck, from removing medium-sized threats, to fulfilling our 6+ cost condition, to giving the deck some reach with burn damage.

When these aren’t enough to take units out, we resort to our kill spells, Vengeance and Dawning Shadow. Vengeance has been on the rise since its buff, and can kill anything for 6 mana. Dawning Shadow may seem like an odd addition, but it’s a great punishment when the opponent chooses not to open attack, as it kills a unit and weakens the rest of the board. 

Finally, we have Glimpse Beyond to serve as our main source of card draw. While it may seem we don’t have many units, we have a few spells that generate units, like Production Surge and Vile Feast. Plus, it can be used if our opponents go to remove champions, giving us a chance to refill.

  • Verdict

The deck has felt incredibly competitive from all the games that I’ve been playing with the deck. While it can be slow in the early game, it has enough interaction to get to a much stronger mid-game.

At that point, you can start deploying threats and controlling the board. Leveling Jayce puts a lot of pressure on the opponent, as you can essentially guarantee a kill on any unit by doubling up on a kill spell.

Heimerdinger and his techs quickly snowball, especially when you can remove their units and generate a unit of your own.

If you’re looking for a new control deck to play, then this is a great list to try out.

Dragonguy
Dragonguy

Dragonguy is a just a guy who enjoys playing some fun LOR decks. After taking targon's peak and Deep to top 32 of Guardians of the Ancient, he's been constantly looking to improve his game. Also, he's been playing a lot of Path of Champions lately, and is really enjoying Jinx.

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