[Top 5] Legends of Runeterra Decks That Are Powerful

Powerful Legends of Runeterra Decks
Updated:
03 Feb 2023

Are you ready to dominate the Fields of Justice in Legends of Runterra? Or maybe at least climb the ladder like a madman on a Friday night? Look no further! I’ve searched far and wide and high and low to bring you the top five decks in the current metagame.

Whether you're a seasonal competitor or an iron ballista taking your first steps, these decks will give you all the tools you need to crush your opponents and emerge victorious. Without further ado, let's dive into the top five decks in Legends of Runterra!

5. Vayne - Rumble

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Vayne - Rumble Deck Breakdown

Deck Code:

CQDQCAIDBMAQGAYDAECAAAYBAUFFQAIFAMGQCBQACUCAMAYWC4NCIAYBAEACKAIDAMAQEBADAILAEAIBAANACBAAAI

Deck Overview: Vayne - Rumble is an Aggressive Beatdown deck. Your goal when playing this is to steal your opponent’s LP with just 3-4 powerful slaps. It relies heavily on using Vayne’s Tumble to take advantage of Rumble’s Spellshield and big stats. In short, Tumble that Rumble!

Rumble is the most important card of your deck. If you see him in your opening hand, you hold on to him like Bitcoin. If you still don’t have Rumble in your hand after the mulligan, you can use Legionary Charge to Tutor him out. Otherwise, you can hope and pray.

Deck Analysis:

In the first three rounds, your goal is to have enough discard fodder for when it’s time for your Rumble to come down. You can do this by using Units that generate Blade Fragments, like the Blade Squire, or Discardable Units like the Fallen Rider.

By round 4 or 5 (depending on when you have the Attack Token), you want to play Rumble, ideally with Field Promotion to give him Scout for a quick level-up. Make sure you have AT LEAST 3 cards you are willing to discard so that your Rumble can gain Spellshield. Leaving your Rumble without Spellshield makes him much easier to remove and if that happens, your chances of winning drop to almost 0.

From there, if you managed to get down a Rumble with Scout and Spellshield, you are smooth sailing towards victory. Just attack over and over again. And then attack some more.

If they’re not dead yet, utilize free attacks from Cataclysm and Vayne’s Tumble to keep attacking and change that. Also use cards like Whirling Death and Riposte to sneak in a blowout trade that will make them surrender faster than your pack of gum gets emptied in class.

And if all that is not enough, fear not! Rumble will call his homies, the mecha yordles, and they will come to aid their brother in his struggle.

Vayne - Rumble strong points:

- Great Early Game

This deck has a lot of low drops that can push chip damage to make Rumble’s job easier, while still having another upside by replacing themselves in your hand or being good Discard Fodder

- Non-Stop Attacks

With Scout units, Cataclysm, and Vayne’s Tumble, this is a deck where you attack to your heart’s content

- Hard-to-Remove Win-Condition

Your Rumble not only has Spellshield and Quick Attack to make him almost impossible to lose a trade, but you also have plenty of combat tricks to ensure you come out on top

- Fast and Easy Wins

Once you manage to get your Rumble down, it’s just a matter of 2-3 turns before their nexus reaches 0, while you laugh all the way to the LP bank.

 

4. Lurk

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Lurk Deck Breakdown

Deck Code:

CMBQCBQHAUCAIBQBAMCQ6BQEA4JRMQKEJJIAEAIEA4AQCBQGFUBACBAGA4BAIBZ3IU

Deck Overview:

Lurk is one of the most unique decks in Legends of Runeterra. This uniqueness comes from the much-fitting “Lurk” keyword that most of the deck’s cards have. 

What the Lurk keyword does is grow every Lurker’s offensive stats by 1 PERMANENTLY every time you attack with a Lurker at the top of your deck. This means, if you attack four times with a lurker on top of your deck, every lurker everywhere gets +4/0 forever.

The deck’s ever-scaling offensive stats with the relatively cheap unit cost and their low defense makes the deck the epitome of a glass cannon. It hits like a truck but breaks like a… a… a broken truck I guess?

While not an Aggro deck, Lurk ends games sooner than most Mid-Range decks, so it would be appropriate to call it a Beatdown deck. A win is always lurking in the shadows.

Deck Analysis:

Lurk is all about attacking while having a Lurk card on top of your deck. It’s even better if that card is one of your champions, Pyke and Rek’ Sai, who give you such huge upsides when they “lurk.” So much so that you try to avoid having them in your opening hand. Instead, you want to draw them naturally, so you can reap their benefits.

During the early game, you want to attack as much as you can. If you think you have attacked enough, think again. Moar attacks! 

That way, you hit lurk as much as possible and strengthen your units early on while taking favorable trades since, after a turn or two, your 1-mana Hatchling will be able to trade with a 3-mana enemy unit, winning you 2 mana in tempo. Life is not always fair, is it?

Before you attack, make sure to Predict if possible, so you increase the chances of getting a lurker on top of your deck, or even better, find a Pyke or Rek’ Sai.

During the mid-game you want to keep taking trades like these, eventually resulting in chip damage to the enemy nexus and a wider board, taking over the enemy’s LP one trade at a time.

Pyke is one of your best cards here, as with his Quick Attack, he can get rid of the more sticky boards. He works even better if he has lurked and transformed into Death From Bellow, a great clearing tool and amazing combat trick.

Finally, in the late game, you want to utilize your finishers. Rek’ Sai, Xerxa'Reth, and Jaull-fish. You should have dealt quite a bit of chip damage by now and these three are here to clean up with their even bigger stats and their Overwhelm keyword.

Lurk strong points:

- Extreme Highroll Potential

There are games where you will hit lurk EVERY time, getting Rek’ Sai twice and finishing the game in round 4 before your opponent even has time to breathe. Drawing good like that is what makes you a champion.

- Attack Goes Brr

Lurk’s attack scales almost infinitely, so, if you let a lurk player scale long enough, you will end up facing a 1-mana unit with 11+ attack. Which is really fun if it’s your unit, but not as fun if you are the one facing it.

- Easy to Learn, Hard to Master

Many say that Lurk requires no skill. That is not true. It is indeed a deck you can learn how to play in just 1 or 2 games, but to master it and learn how to use your predicts and spells, it will surely take a few more hours.

 

3. Red Gwen

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Red Gwen Deck Breakdown

Deck Code:

CECACBIDB4AQMAZJAIAQGDBKAQDAKDAQDQTAKAIBAMXACAQDBEAQIAYWAEDAKDIDAECQGKBRAIAQCBIWAEBAGAY

Deck Overview:

Ah yes, now we are getting into the good stuff. No one would blame you if you called Red Gwen the best deck of the World Championship. I call it that.

Red Gwen is a Tempo deck. It utilizes its champions and early Hallowed units to push chip damage and unfavorable trades so it can finish you off with Fallen Reckoners, a big Harrowing, or both!

Deck Analysis:

In the early game, you disguise yourself as an aggro deck. You use your 1-drops and 2-drops to push damage and take trades that end up favorable for you in the long term thanks to the Hallowed keyword.

You see, Hallowed units, even when they die, they are never really gone. They live forever in our hearts. And they give +1/+0 to the leftmost unit every time you attack. That’s +1/+0 per Hallowed stack. It’s nuts!

Mid-game is the part of the gamewhere Red Gwen starts slowly taking over. Katarina is Rallying over and over, decimating the opponent’s board. Gwen is yoinking the life from the enemy nexus and giving it to yours. Fallen Reckoners make your enemy’s units unable to block, which allows for great open attacks.

If the late game comes and you haven’t beaten your enemy yet, fear not! There are still two ways to come out on top!

One of them is by using Eternal Dancers and bringing one of your win conditions back to life as an Ephemeral unit. There are usually 3 different units we prefer to revive.

Gwen, who helps lifesteal from the enemy nexus and has her power increased by the Hallowed stacks

Katarina who is hopefully leveled and will make you Rally so you can attack again, summon another Katarina and Rally once more.

Fallen Reckoner who will remove a blocker and will hopefully allow you to push through the final bit of damage.

Your other option is Harrowing. By casting it, you will fill your board with your strongest units that have already died, except they come back just for dinner. Aka, they are Ephemerals. 

In this case, you want again at least one of the units above, but ideally all of them. Your board is suddenly full of strong, spooky units and your opponent can’t do anything other than concede.

Red Gwen Strong Points:

- Great Early Game

There is a reason a lot of people call Red Gwen an Aggro deck. With so many amazing early-drops, you can often steamroll your opponent and win by turns 3-5 with the right mulligan.

- Insane Tempo

If you use your Katarinas, Reckoners, and Hallowed stacks correctly, your opponent will feel like you are somehow playing with 5 extra mana gems than them. Cheater!

- Can turn a game around out of nowhere

You may be losing all game long and your opponent may be one turn away from winning, but one single Harrowing could turn the whole game on its head. Nothing more rewarding than that!

 

2. Ezreal - Viktor - Seraphine

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Ezreal - Victor - Seraphine Deck Breakdown

Deck Code:

CQBACBIKGEBAMBAVFACACAIEEQAQKCVGAEAQMCQXAEDAIKYHAECAIBYBAUCBCAQDAQBQIAQGBITSQBABAQARWJZUAUDAIDQSCYQCECAFBICCQXURAG2ADRQB2EA5KAI

Deck Overview:

Seraphine decks. You either love them or hate them. Same goes for Ezreal decks. But Viktor, that’s different. Everyone loves Viktor!

With this deck, you harness the power of two things. Low-cost spells and RNG!

Your goal when playing Ezreal - Viktor - Seraphine is to stall the game long enough until you have your leveled Seraphine and Ezreal on the board. At that point, you can start going “machine gun” and burn your opponent from 20hp in a single round.

Deck Analysis:

With this deck, the early game is all about survival. Unlike every other deck in this list so far, you don’t have a strong early game with this one. 

Losing some HP early on is perfectly normal. When playing this deck, you need to learn to treat your HP as a resource; sometimes you need to sacrifice some of it.

During this phase and throughout almost the whole game, you want to be playing a lot of cheap spells to progress the level-up of Seraphine and Ezreal as soon as possible. Ideally, you want to be using these spells to protect your units or save yourself some HP from what would be a big attack.

This keeps going until you find Back Alley Bar or Viktor. Ideally both. Bar reduces the cost of all New cards by 1, allowing you to spam more spells than a car insurance company spams emails.

Viktor is good for stalling even further until you find your win conditions, especially if you roll a keyword like Lifesteal. At the same time, he can push quite a bit of damage thanks to his Augment keyword and by going under the enemy board if he rolls Elusive.

By the time the late game arrives, both your Seraphine and your Ezreal should be leveled. Now it’s only a matter of time until you draw both of them and place them on the board. 

From there, granted you have kept at least a few spells in hand, you can start casting spell after spell until Ezreal blows up the nexus nice and… ez. 

You often don’t even need to deal chip damage early on because of Seraphine’s spell duplication combined with Ezreal’s machine gun Mystic Shots to the face.

Ezreal - Viktor - Seraphine Strong Points:

- RNG is Your Friend

With Viktor, Bar, Fanclub President, and Songspinner, RNG plays a big part in your gameplan, and getting a win through a highroll always feels awesome

- OTK Potential

Due to the nature of the deck, you often need only one good turn to win the game. And it doesn’t even have to be your attacking turn! Slam Seraphine, slam Ezreal, and spam away!

- Viktor Alternate Win Condition

Sometimes, you just happen to get Viktor early on, get ALL the good keywords on him, and end up slamming the enemy nexus with a 12/5 Elusive, Tough, Regen Viktor. It’s always fun! Not for the enemy, though.

 

1. Aatrox - Vayne - Quinn

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Aatrox - Vayne - Quinn Deck Breakdown

Deck Code:

CUDQCAIADUAQEAACAECQADABAYAREAIGAQEACBQHAQDAMAALCEKRQGY5AEAQMDA2AIAQEAAGAEDAAEQ

Deck Overview:

The king of the meta could not be anyone other than the World Ender himself! Aatrox came with a bang and seems like he is here to stay!

Your goal with this deck is to build a wide board equipped with Darkin Weapons so that you cast World Ender and Assimilate your entire board into Darkins waiting to completely eradicate the enemy nexus.

Deck Analysis:

The early game with this deck is all about pushing chip damage and getting value trades. Your early drops are well-statted units, with keywords like Challenger and Tough which makes it easy to pick and choose which enemy unit you are going to say “bye-bye” to.

Slap a weapon on top of them and their stats are now looking kinda absurd. Your opponent has no choice but to trade their board or take a bunch of damage.

During the mid-game, you do more of the same, except now you attack a bijillion more times, thanks to Vayne’s Tumble and your Scout units, Quinn and Valor.

The consistent attacks with the stat boost from the weapons should allow you to keep taking good trades and eventually finish your opponent off. But if that doesn’t happen for some reason, you have strike spells like Fish Fight and Condemn to make sure that they won’t last for long.

If the late game comes and you are somehow in a not-so-great position, don’t worry, Aatrox, the World Ender is here to save the day.

With his absurd amounts of healing when played and every time he strikes, you can easily stabilize against most Aggro decks and hit them with a big counterattack

Aatrox will also generate a World Ender in your hand, one of your biggest win conditions. Grow a board as wide as you can, Equip your units with Darkin Weapons and cast World Ender to Assimilate your units into Darkins, level Aatrox, and make your enemy rethink their decisions.

From there, all you have to do is attack.

Aatrox - Vayne - Quinn Strong Points:

- Big Stats Big Smile

All your units are either well-statted or have a useful keyword, which makes the deck great at forcing favorable trades

- Attack, Attack, And Then Attack Some More

With your Scout units and Vayne’s Tumble, you will be attacking non-stop. Sometimes even attack twice during the enemy’s turn

- Big, Scary Win Condition

There are not many things in the game that are as scary for the opponent as Casting World Ender on a wide, Equipped board. Suddenly, your board is full of big units with big stats for big wins.

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