The Twin Sunz Open Metagame Breakdown

Last weekend our partners over at Twin Sunz Podcast held the first day of the Legends of Runeterra tournament sponsored by RuneterraCCG, Casuals of Runeterra, and Optima. The Top 16 will happen this upcoming Saturday, starting at 1 PM PST. It will be a streamed event, cast by Scarzig and Shane at Scarzig’s Twitch channel.

The cap for entrants was initially set at 64 players, but it filled up so unspeakably fast, that it was shortly expanded to 128. This was filled nearly as quickly, but we stayed with this, creating a waitlist for whoever might want to get in. In the end, as is often the case with free-entry tournaments, not everyone checked in so it was 81 players who fought it out.

The tourney used the same format of the official Seasonal Tournaments: best-of-3 series with 1 ban, each player bringing three decks with no repeating champions or region combinations. The first stage required players to play 6 rounds in the Swiss format to determine the top 16, who will battle it out this Saturday in a single-elimination bracket. Each person who reached the top cut is guaranteed at least some pocket money, as they will clash for their share of the 400$ total prize pool.

In this article, I will go over the stats of that tournament so far: what decks have been the most successful, and which have disappointed. With a total of 81 participants each bringing 3 decks, there is quite a bit of data to go through, so let’s dive in and see what’s in store!

Important note: Unless specified otherwise, all the win rate numbers provided in this article are ‘lineups containing a deck’ win rates – i.e win rates of lineups these decks were a part of, not win rates of the particular decks themselves.

Here, I would also like to shout out Drisoth, a North American player. While I was making a spreadsheet with all the decks used and stats I wanted to include, I stumbled upon data he gathered from the tournament and it was really helpful for parts of this article!

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I will start off with some quick stats, so if you only have a little time or want to learn the very essential stats, you can take a glance at those. If you are interested in a more in-depth interpretation of those, keep reading!

• Most popular lists:

Spider Burn has been included in a total of 19 lineups, with little success (46% win rate);
Zoe Lee was a part of 17, but was much more successful (56%);
Scouts and Lissandra Control followed were in 15 lineups (60% and 58% win rate respectively).

• Most successful decks (included in at least 5 lineups):

Lulu Shen showed up strong with an win rate of 63%, with 8 lineups including the deck;
Ezreal Draven clocked in at 61% over 5 lineups;
Scouts achieved a 60% win rate in 15 lineups, an impressive feat.

• Decks leading to the highest top cut conversion rate (included in at least 5 lineups):

40% of lineups that included Scouts made it to the top 16 (6 out of 15);
37.5% of lineups with Lulu Shen made it (3 out of 8);
30% of lineups with either Zoe Lee, Lucian Azir, Deep, or Ashe Noxus made it (5 out of 17, 3 out of 10, 2 out of 7, and 2 out of 7, respectively).

• Biggest letdowns:

Spiders, despite being the most played deck, only made it into Top 16 twice. That results in an 11% conversion rate (2 out of 19);
Nightfall Aggro, despite being in top 5 played decks, has only one representative in the top cut (8%, 1 out of 13);
Shurima Overwhelm and Thresh Nasus both failed to make it to the top cut, despite clocking in at 6 and 5 appearances, respectively.

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Archetype	Contained in # of lineups	Win rate, %
Spider Aggro	19	45.6
Zoe Lee Sin	17	56
Scouts	15	60
Lissandra Control	15	58
Discard Aggro	13	50
Nightfall Aggro	13	43.75
Targon Demacia	12	53.8
Lucian Azir	10	54
TK Soraka	9	51
Lulu Shen	9	63

Fast Decks

As we can see, out of the 10 most popular decks, 6 are aggressive. Between Spiders, Scouts, Discard, Nightfall, Lucian Azir, as well as Lulu Shen, that is 69 decks, out of 243 registered total. In other words, these lists made up nearly 30% of the field.

This is interesting, because many of those archetypes have been used to counter Fizz TF before, and that deck has been heavily nerfed and much less popular during the newest 2.5 patch. The reason for such a high play rate of aggro has to be elsewhere. What is important to note is that, while they’re all aggressive archetypes, matchup tables vary heavily between them.

Archetype	Win Rate, %	Top Cut Conversion, %
Scouts	60	40
Lulu Shen	63	37.5
Lucian Azir	54	30
Discard Aggro	50	15
Pirate Aggro	45	13
Spider Aggro	45.6	11
Nightfall Aggro	43.75	8

Scouts’ and Lucian Azir‘s heavy presence is very reasonable to me, as with the new patch, there has been a lot of talk regarding the potential new meta of Lee Sin and Lissandra Control. On top of that, Deep buffs made it fair to assume that deck can be another popular choice.

Fast Demacia decks generally do well into the three lists I just mentioned, so it comes as no surprise that their success rates were comparable to their popularity. Lissandra Control/Matron was the target in many cases (for lineups such as Scouts, Lucian Azir, Lee Zoe), and there were other triple Demacia lineups that targeted Lee.

While board-based Demacia decks were some of the most successful, the other aggressive lists like Burn, Nightfall, and Discard were absolutely horrific.

Spiders and Pirates, the most popular burn strategies, only have three spots in top 16 combined, despite the fact that both archetypes were commonly played. In a way, this was to be expected, as multiple factors worked against them. Lissandra Control can shut down small units efficiently while utilizing multiple heals. Demacia Targon is coming to power, which is also an awful sign for any direct damage-based strategy.

Nightfall’s and Discard’s results are a little more surprising, as with the high popularity of aggro decks, which they counter, they should be quite well-positioned, especially that they can ban out their worst match-up of Lissandra Control. While Demacia Targon hurts them just as much as it does for Burn decks, the strong aggro matchups should easily make up for it. It is quite likely that Nightfall and Discard have suffered from being paired with other aggressive decks like Spiders and Pirates.

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Slow Decks

The most played ‘slow’ decks were Zoe Lee, Lissandra Control, Targon Demacia, and TK Soraka.

Most of these – except for Targon Demacia – have a single clear-cut win-con they aim for. Lissandra Control wants to summon The Watcher as fast as possible, Lee aims to kick you in the face for 20, while TK Soraka slowly progresses its Star Spring to eventually win the game.

Archetype	Win Rate, %	Top Cut Conversion, %
Zoe Lee Sin	56	29
Lissandra Control	58	27
Demacia Targon	53.8	25
TK Soraka	51	22

Lee Zoe and Lissandra Control share a very distinct weakness – Demacia and Rally-focused decks in general. While that would make for a pretty clear ban strategy (ban Scouts or Lulu Shen), Lee and Lissandra decks surprisingly weren’t paired together that often.

When they were, however, it did lead to success – for example, MiggyHustler has taken a lineup, running those alongside Deep, all the way to the Top 16. Pairing Lissandra Control and Deep overall seemed like a good idea, as the two times they were combined in a lineup, it ended up reaching the top cut.

TK Soraka was used to target Lee Zoe, as in both cases it made the top cut, the deck was combined with other lists that counter Lee – tt was paired with Lucian Azir and Scouts by attenti al lupo and with Scouts and Teemo Foundry by Manittas. The Star Spring-focused deck seems really well-positioned in a meta where the strongest decks, as well as their counters all have rather difficult matchups against it. Personally, I’d expect to see more of this deck in upcoming tournaments.

Finally, Targon Demacia makes a surprise appearance. Few expected such a strong showing from a region just hit by multiple nerfs, but with so much aggro going around, a deck that’s so strong against it was a great meta call. It had a high presence – and 25% of the lineups containing it had made into the Top 16.

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Region	Decks with a Region	Win Rate, %	Top Cut Conversion, %
Bilgewater	53	0.515	0,2452830189
Demacia	58	0.548	0,275862069
Freljord	40	0.518	0,225
Ionia	48	0.53	0,25
Noxus	73	0.466	0,1369863014
PnZ	39	0.492	0,1794871795
Shadow Isles	72	0.481	0,1527777778
Shurima	36	0.436	0,1111111111
Targon	67	0.503	0,2089552239

Regions

• Noxus

This region is the biggest disappointment of the tournament. Aggressive decks – Spiders, Discard, and Pirates, as well as midrange decks like Scargrounds, Draven Ezreal, and Ashe Noxus, led to the highest representation number for the region. However, it only reached a 46.5% win rate, which is the second-lowest after Shurima. Both Spiders and Pirates were in lineups that strongly underperformed with win rates of 45-46%. Ashe Noxus (mostly with LeBlanc) and Ezreal Draven brought in pretty good numbers.

• Targon

With heavy nerfs to Aphelios and The Veiled Temple, it was expected that Targon will fall off, only staying relevant thanks to Lee Zoe and TK Raka. That assumption couldn’t have been more wrong, as the region was the 3rd most popular with a middle-of-the-pack win rate.

Both Lee Zoe and TK Raka did not disappoint, being brought fairly often and making it to the top cut in about 25% of the cases. In more shocking news, Demacia Targon is back and it was the 2nd most popular Targon archetype in the Swiss rounds.

The main highlight among the ‘worse lists’ is Zoe Karma. While Coinflip did bring it all the way to the top cut, the lineups including this deck scored an overall 46% win rate. This is not even the worst, however, as Nightfall Aggro was played nearly twice as often as Zoe Karma and clocked in at 43%.

Overall, Targon did surprisingly well and seems to have coped with the nerfs.

• Demacia

In an article about decks that got better with the latest patch, I included multiple aggressive Demacia decks. It seems that was a correct call, as the region swept the competition in the Twin Sunz Open.

Demacia’s most popular decks were Scouts, Lucian Azir, Lulu Shen and Demacia Targon. ALL of them reached an above 50% win rate, while Scouts and Lulu Shen actually crossed the 60% mark; oftentimes being played together. There was not one popular deck in the region that underperformed – the only archetype with a below-50% win rate was Shen J4; which still ended up in the top cut.

The region seems to be really powerful in this meta, as Rally effects are great against the top dogs in Lee, Lissandra Control, and Deep. On top of that, Radiant Guardian is a great unit against aggro, so there are multiple directions that the region can go to find success.

• Shurima

It is really sad to see the new region at the very bottom of the standings every single time it is brought up, but we just have to face it: Shurima is weak. With the lowest play rate, lowest win rate, and even the absolute lowest amount of successful top cut qualifications, the region is desperately waiting for its second expansion to swing momentum in its favour.

The results are disappointing, but there is one little ray of light in the form of the emperor himself. Azir has a total of four decks in the top cut thanks to Lucian Azir and a Shurima Noxus burn deck. Other than Azir, not a single Shurima champion made it to the top 16.

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Closing Words

The competition was fierce in the Twin Sunz Open and it highlighted how quickly the tournament meta can change with some strong nerfs. Demacia seems to be taking over, while Shurima stays down, possibly until the next expansion.

Another highlight is the 16 fantastic players who made it to the top cut and will battle it out for their share of the 400$ prize pool.

You will learn more about them, their lineups, and their chances at taking 1st place tomorrow in another article in which I will go in-depth analyzing the top cut lineups and competitors!