Lulu Jinx Deck Guide

Hello, Agigas here! I am a Master player since beta with several high ladder peaks, tournament wins, and a top 4 finish at the Empire of the Ascended seasonal tournament.

I love sharing my knowledge about the game and I have been a regular writer at RuneterraCCG. I write in-depth deck guides, articles for tournament players, and curate our constantly updated Meta Tier List.

This guide is dedicated to Lulu Jinx – the explosive aggro deck combining Discard and Support synergies.

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Lulu Jinx has been a known archetype for quite some time. For a long while, it was mostly considered to be a meme deck because of its lack of consistency. With Patch 2.11 bringing buffs to Young Witch, Twin Disciplines, and, most importantly, the addition of Boom Baboon, this archetype is now a serious contender in the meta.

In the first few turns, Lulu Jinx looks to create tempo advantages and push damage with a mix of discard and support synergies. Flame Chompers! and Jury-Rig are strong payoffs for discard, allowing you to use Zaunite Urchin, Poro Cannon, Rummage, and Get Excited! to their full potential.

On the other hand, the support synergies from Lulu, Pix!, and Young Witch give more punch to your attacks. These support units combine especially well with Flame Chompers: its combo with Lulu can quickly snowball a game.

To complement that aggressive game plan, Jinx comes down as a very oppressive threat. With your cheap cards and discard effects, you can level her up very quickly for extra draws and a lot of burn damage.

Later in the game, Augmented Experimenter is a very good top-end for your strategy. He will help to level up or trigger your Jinx while also refilling your hand and finding additional burn damage.

To back up your units, Suit Up! offers a very good synergy with smaller units like Daring Poro, Pix, Flame Chompers, or Young Witch. Twin Disciplines can also help you push more damage or get better trades, as well as to protect your champions.

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Techs and Options

• Greenglade Duo is an underrated unit in the deck and shows some strong performances. She adds another oppressive threat to your deck, can be protected with your tricks, and gives you more reach alongside your Daring Poros. Her fragility, and the fact that she doesn’t particularly synergize with Discard make her quite meta dependant, but if you face a lot of decks struggling to remove her she is a solid option.
• Mystic Shot can come in to replace Augmented Experimenter. This will give you more burn reach and explosiveness, enhancing some matchups where Experimenter usually comes down too late. However, it will make the deck a lot more susceptible to running out of resources or not finding the right cards in longer games.

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General Tips

• Find the best attack order. Finding the right attack order can be important for any aggressive deck (e.g. to play around Lifesteal, level-up your champions, etc.), but it is very core to Lulu Jinx’s gameplan. In addition to the usual considerations, you must also factor in support triggers to make the most of your attacks.
• Assess when to trade and when to go for burn. It is very important to know your reach, and know when you should give up the battle for board to focus completely on the opponent’s life points.
  • Get Excited! is an effective spell to get rid of a key opponent’s unit, and can also be a powerful burn spell.
  • Buffing Flame Chompers! can enable some very good trades. However, sometimes you might want to buff another unit instead and leave your Flame Chompers at 0 attack if you want to push a maximum of Nexus damage.
• You can level Jinx and get a Super Mega Death Rocket! in the same turn. If you can empty your hand, refill it, and empty it again, you can level up Jinx and get her first Rocket in the very same turn. This is actually quite easy to achieve thanks to Poro Cannon, Rummage, and Augmented Experimenter.

General mulligan tips:

• Your priority in the mulligan is to make sure you have strong early turns. Look for synergies to get a strong start and snowball on it.
• Flame Chompers! are a core part of your gameplan, so you should always keep one in your mulligan – either in the form on Flame Chompers themselves or a Boom Baboon. Look for an early discard effect such as Zaunite Urchin or Poro Cannon to get your Flame Chompers on board for free.
• Lulu is a very powerful early unit that synergizes extremely well with your numerous small units, and should always be kept.

Be aware that these are just the general guidelines to help you understand the deck’s gameplan. Mulligans are very matchup-dependant – please refer to the matchup section below for more specific advice on mulligans against different meta decks.

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Matchups

Mulligan for: Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu, Young Witch. Keep Pix if you have a good hand without a 1-drop. Keep Poro Cannon or Zaunite Urchin if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• This matchup is essentially a race. Neither of you can defend themselves effectively against the opponent’s aggression. Fortunately, our deck is more explosive, and we have some burn to top it off.
• Use buffed Flame Chompers to get rid of Sparring Student, Greenglade Duo, and Irelia. Azir is another pirority target, but he is harder to get rid of with his 5 health.
• Poro Cannon and Young Witch can trade with their Greenglade Duo. Without it, it’s harder for them to close things out quickly enough.
• They play recalls effects: Will of Ionia, Homecoming and/or Defiant Dance. Try to not bank everything on one unit.
• Use your 2-health units to block their Sand Soldiers and save health points.

Mulligan for: Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu. Keep Poro Cannon or Zaunite Urchin if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• This matchup often is a race. If you give them too much time, They’ll be able to close things out with the powerful Ruin Runner and/or combo with a leveled Sivir. They can struggle against early aggression, so pressure them as much as possible.
• To control the board, they’ll grant your units the Vulnerable keyword with Rock Hopper and Merciless Hunter. They can then challenge your units with Sivir for an easy kill. Try to avoid getting the Vulnerable keyword on a key unit, when possible.
• In terms of their defense capabilities, they are very limited.
  • Their best defensive tool is often Concussive Palm – and for some versions, Will of Ionia. Avoid banking everything on one unit.
  • Spirit’s Refuge is their only other way to defend themselves. When looking to close things out, use Flame Chompers to challenge their unit in the very last position to play around it.

Gameplay Video

Mulligan for: Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu, Poro Cannon. Keep Get Excited if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• Discard Aggro is a similar deck to Jinx Lulu, the main difference is we run support cards instead of board-wide synergies, such as Crowd Favorite, Vision, and Arena Battlecaster.
• With our aggressive gameplan we can force them to keep trading units. It will be beneficial to us – we don’t really have board-wide synergies of our own, and dealing with a large Crowd Favorite can be hard.
• Use the Lulu + Chomper synergy to take control of the board and start a snowball. It’s quite expensive for them to interact with it, especially if you can protect Lulu.
• If you manage to go even or pull ahead in the early turns, their back-up plans are Jinx and Augmented Experimenter – just they are for you. It’s hard for any of you to efficiently deal with the opponent’s threats, so aim to be the one ahead.
• They usually don’t have any protection spells – sometimes they run Survival Skills. If you can challenge Jinx with a buffed Flame Chompers and kill her it will make the game that much easier.
• It’s quite easy to deal 3 damage with Get Excited or Augmented Experimenter, but they can’t deal more to a unit with only 1 spell. Try to play Jinx only when you can level her up safely, or with protection spells.

Mulligan for: Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu. Keep Poro Cannon or Zaunite Urchin if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• Viego Midrange leverages sacrifice synergies to get a powerful early to mid-game. Later on, Viego and/or Nasus come down as powerful payoffs for those strategies.
• When their sacrifice strategies are not coming together nicely for them, it will create an opening for you to snowball on. If you can get ahead of them, they will struggle to come back. Their expensive mid-game champion won’t be able to contain your board.
• When their synergies are working smoothly, for example if they have Cursed Keeper and Ravenous Butcher on turn 2, it will be a lot harder to get an early snowball. Jinx can be a very good threat as they don’t have many removals.
  • Their main efficient answer to Jinx is often Black Spear. You can protect her with Twin Disciplines. They also can’t kill her unless one one of their unit died this turn, and they can’t sacrifice units at Burst speed.
• Augmented Experimenter can come in handy to refill in the midgame, but is unreliable because of their Rite of Negation. When possible, try to force them under 4 mana before playing him.

Mulligan for: Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Poro Cannon, Jury-Rig, Lulu. Keep Get Excited if you have discard fodder, Flame Chompers if you have Lulu, and Jinx if you have a great early hand

Matchup tips:

• Pirate Burn is an extremely aggressive deck, looking to play powerful early units to push damage and finish the game with burn spells. You need to be very conservative with your Nexus health.
  • Once you’ve established control over the board, most of their damage will be coming in from burn spells. Be willing to chump block with Flame Chompers or Pix if you can save Nexus health. However, don’t do it if it will lead to them winning the board back and pushing even more damage in future turns.
• Try to trade your 1-health units as much as possible. If you have too many 1-health units on board, Make it Rain and Miss Fortune can punish you very hard.
• When possible, prevent them from spreading their damage between turns. Slowing down Gangplank‘s level-up condition is quite important – if they get to play a level 2 Gangplank you’ll take lots of damage and lose control of the board.
• Once you get control over the board, close out as fast as possible so they don’t get time to find more burn or Gangplank.
  • Jinx level 2 is very effective to finish them, as they don’t really have a good answer to her. Noxian Fervor is their strongest removal, but they would rather use it for burn and it isn’t enough to get rid of her by itself – they’ll also need a Make it Rain or a Powder Keg.

Mulligan for: Zaunite Urchin, Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu. Keep Poro Cannon, Get Excited if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• Lurk is a midrange deck that ramps up its units’ attack as the game goes by. It also has access to dangerous powerplays with Death from Below and Jaull-fish. To close things out, they can count on their large Overwhelm units, such as Rek’Sai, Xer’Sai Dunebreaker, and sometimes Xerxa’Reth, the Undertitan.
• Their midgame is often far too powerful and decisive for you to withstand. Moreover, they often play 1-2 Rite of Negation, which can prevent you from refilling your hand with Augmented Experimenter. Their Death from Below and Bone Skewer are very efficient answers to Jinx.
• The early game is where you can find and snowball an advantage. As their units are still small at that point, your can try to force value trades and win control over the board. Moreover, they can have some early inconstencies -if they miss a Lurk trigger it will make your job that much easier.
• Be careful about Redfin Hammersnout. Thanks to the Vulnerable keyword, they can very effectively remove Flame Chompers, Pix, or get a good trade with Lulu. If they manage to stabilize the board, the game will get harder and harder as you get into the midgame.

Mulligan for: Boom Baboon, Flame Chompers, Lulu. Keep Poro Cannon or Zaunite Urchin if you have discard fodder. Keep Jinx if you have a great early hand.

Matchup tips:

• Akshan Lee is a combo deck, looking to stall out the game with stuns, recalls, and Eye of the Dragon, to later OTK the opponent with the Lee Sin + Overwhelm combo. With Akshan‘s landmark, the deck can eventually give Spellshield to Lee Sin, making the combo very hard to interact with.
• You need to rush them very fast to win the game. If they get to their Lee Sin combo, there won’t be much you can do.
  • You can try to Get Excited the unit challenged by Lee to make the kick fizzle. It’s a big investement and can be prevented by their Deny or Nopeify!, but it can give you one more turn to finish them.
• Early on, the main obstacle for your aggression is Eye of the Dragon. Look to remove her with Flame Chompers or Get Excited. Be aware they have counters (Deny, Nopeify), protection spells (Shaped Stone, Retreat, The Absolver, Twin Discplines), and stuns/recalls (Concussive Palm, Homecoming or Will of Ionia). Removing Eye of the Dragon can be very hard, but if you manage to do it or if they don’t find her, it will create you an opening in the early turns to push lots of damage.
• When they have Eye of the Dragon, they need to cast spells during their attack turn to get the Dragonling when you want to attack. A lot of their spells are reactive, so try not to give them opportunities to cast spells during their attack turn. This way, they’ll be forced to either go for proactive spells which will have less value, or to miss the Dragonling activation.
• Jinx is a powerful threat, as they don’t have a lot of quick and efficient answers – only recalls, or challenging her with Lee Sin.
• Augmented Experimenter is often quite slow in this matchup, and will often meet a Deny. To improve the matchup, consider replacing him.

Mulligan for: Lulu, Flame Chompers. Keep Boom Baboon if you have no Flame Chompers. Keep Poro Cannon or Zaunite Urchin if you have discard fodder. Keep Jinx if you have a good hand.

Matchup tips:

• Gangplank Sejuani is a midrange deck, looking to regularly deal damage to your Nexus to enable Plunder payoffs, and level up Gangplank and Sejuani. As they come into the midgame, your gameplan stands pretty much no chance against their powerful leveled champions.
• You need to create a board snowball and pressure them in the early game. Lulu and Flame Chompers are often the most effective way to do that.
• Avoid having too many 1-health units on board, unless you a read on their hand. Make it Rain and, for some versions, Ice Shard, can punish 1-health units very effectively.
• Try to prevent them from spreading out their damage between turns when possible, so you can slow down their champions’ level-up conditions and make Plunder effects clunkier. However, don’t make large sacrifices in order to do that – your main focus is to build up your own early gameplan, if the game goes too long you’re likely to lose even if you slowed their Plunder triggers down.
• If you manage to push enough damage early on, it is quite easy to finish them with burn spells, as they don’t have any healing or counters.

Mulligan for: Lulu, Flame Chompers, Boom Baboon. Poro Cannon, Zaunite Urchin, Get Excited if you have discard fodder.

Matchup tips:

• Jarvan Shen is a midrange board-centric deck, looking to play powerful Challenger units, like Screeching Dragon, and value units, like Rivershaper. It then back this units up with combat tricks and Barriers to snowball their board out of control.
• Because they are very strong on the board, it’s very hard to take control of it and snowball. Their Challenger units are very effective agaisnt Pix, Flame Chompers, or Young Witch. In the midgame, They can deal very effectively with Jinx thanks to Single Combat and Concerted Strike.
• The most likely way to win the matchup is to create a very early snowball. They are a bit slower than us to get on board, and they can sometimes have rather slow draws. Use that to push damage and create a snowball before they get back into the game.
• Force trades with their key units when they tap out of mana. They have a lot of protection spells, but if you manage to kill their key units (Challengers, Rivershaper) their hand can become very clunky.

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Closing Words

With a good matchups against both Irelia Azir and Sivir Ionia, Jinx Lulu is currently very well-positioned in the meta and it is a great choice to climb the ladder. I would recommend it to any aggro player looking for a new deck to learn, especially if you like playing with a lot of synergies.

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