Senna Review and Theorycraft

Hey, Agigas here! Senna is the newest Shadow Isles champion that will arrive with the Beyond the Bandlewood expansion!

In this article, I’m going to evaluate the power level of Senna and her archetype, share a couple of theorycrafts around her, and break down all the cards revealed today – with ratings.

Here’s our rating scale:

• 5.0: Meta-defining card, should prove itself as a staple in multiple top-tier archetypes.
• 4.0: Archetype staple, or auto-include in multiple archetypes.
• 3.0: A solid playable, could serve as a staple for some archetypes.
• 2.0: Could be used for specific synergies, or to counter some decks.
• 1.0: Unlikely to find its place in the meta.

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Senna – 4.0

When Veigar was revealed yesterday, the Darkness package was making little sense initially with so few supporting tools. But today, Senna comes in to convincingly complete the archetype.

Senna’s stat-line isn’t that impressive, but you can’t say that she will be easy to remove either. And thanks to the Quick Attack keyword, she will be able to go into combat often, activating her ability to generate Darkness.

Unlike Veigar, Senna is a self-sufficient Darkness engine already in her level 1 form. She creates a copy of the spell immediately when you summon her, guaranteeing you upfront value, and she will continue to make Darknesses every time you attack with her, granted you have no copy of Darkness in hand (note that you can put the copy of Fast-speed Darkness on the stack as she attacks – in this case, Senna will also be able to create a new Darkness in your hand from her attack).

Darkness is a pretty good removal spell once you’ve buffed it with Twisted Catalyzer or Veigar, or discounted it with Stilted Robemaker. Therefore, Senna’s ability is very valuable.

Senna also gives you a unique second passive, ‘accelerating’ all your Slow removals to Fast speed. There’s an obvious synergy with Darkness, but you can also think of a lot of other interactions with Slow spells. Here are a few that caught my attention:

• Fast speed The Ruination would be very hard to play against.
• At Fast speed, Go Hard becomes much more nimble as a spell. You can also put your 3rd and 4th copies of Go Hard on the stack in one action – the second copy to resolve will be transformed into Pack Your Bags at no additional cost for you, meaning you’ve just played a 1 mana Pack Your Bags (0 mana – if Senna is leveled)! This synergy is really impressive.
• Senna’s Dawning Shadows that accelerates to Fast speed thanks to Senna’s passive is essentially a better Vengeance.

All these abilities make Senna an awesome level 1 champion. As for Senna’s level-up requirement – it doesn’t have a big deckbuilding cost and should happen quite naturally given enough time, thanks to Darkness and other Shadow Isles control tools.

However, unlike many other champions, she doesn’t significantly ‘spike’ after leveling up, only gaining +1/+1 in stats and a cost reduction for removals – a lot of her power budget is already in her level 1 form.

Overall, Senna looks to be an amazing champion that will help the Darkness archetype a lot but could also become a staple in other Shadow Isles control decks such as Go Hard.

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The most obvious shell for Senna would be this Veigar Senna strategy, and it looks like an amazing deck.

This archetype is all about buffing and discounting Darkness with Twisted Catalyzer, Stilted Robemaker, and Veigar. It also runs a solid amount of cards that can create Darkness, such as Darkbulb Acolyte, Solari Sentinel, Veigar, Senna, Ixtali Sentinel, and Dess & Ada.

With this density of Darkness cards, you should be able to consistently generate a ton of value, control the opponent’s threats, and level up your champions. While Senna is both an engine and an enabler, Veigar can act as a finisher – his level-up will allow you to close out the game with a couple of Darknesses to the opponent’s face.

To round out the deck, we add some draw to make the deck more consistent: Aloof Traveler, Stalking Shadow, and Hidden Pathways.

We also have access to some powerful interaction spells: Vile Feast – for the early turns, Piercing Darkness – to keep our health total safe, and Minimorph – to deal with appropriate end-game threats. Otterpus will help us to keep up on tempo – we need to compensate for the fact that Darkness is rather weak early into the game.

Against fast, board-based archetypes, this deck should be able to control the game with its massive Darkness value and stay alive with life gains. When against slower or combo decks, Aloof Traveler and Minimorph will be key pieces to counter their strategy.

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Because Senna is such an inspiring champion, I couldn’t resist featuring a second theorycraft.

Here, we’re not making Darkness a key card in our deck, but we rather focus on Senna’s ability to accelerate slow removals. Go Hard is our build-around, and we will be abusing its interaction with Senna to unlock its speed limitations and set up a 1-mana/0-mana Pack Your Bags.

The rest of the package is pretty similar to the ordinary TF Go Hard deck we know and love, but it also features a couple more new cards.

Demacia Sentinel and Buhru Sentinel both fit pretty well into the deck and work well with our strategy that is so oriented on cheap removals. Finally, Catalogue of Regrets allows us to get more value out of our spells and it looks particularly great with Go Hard.

TF Go Hard has never been able to find a fully synergistic second champion for itself, but Senna might just be the one.

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Closing Words

Today’s reveals were packed with some really interesting stuff. I’m really excited about the Darkness deck, but I’m also hyped for all the other archetypes that might be improved with these new cards. I expect to see a lot of Senna experimentation, and she should be a successful champion.

I hope you’re enjoying Beyond the Bandlewood spoilers as much as I do – we’ve got to see so many new cards already, and yet there are still so many ones to be revealed!

If you have a question, want to share feedback, or discuss this article, I’ll be happy to answer you in the comments below! 

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Thanks for reading!