6 Fiery Off-Meta Decks to Surprise the Runeterra Ladder

Hail Champions! What a weekend -- we had enormous qualifying events for Duels of Runeterra in both NA and EU, another Giant Slayer Fight Night, and of course the usual ranked ladder shenanigans. As a result, we saw a lot of competitive games...and where there's competition, there's innovation! Here are 6 strong off-meta decks that caught our eyes.

Earlmeister's Braum + Trundle Hodor & the North

Let's start things off with the spiciest find from this weekend: a constructed deck that actually runs Alpha Wildclaw! Don't let the numerous obscure cards mislead you, however. This is actually a finely tuned deck with a super-focused gameplan: survive until Round 4, then stabilize and start smacking your opponent with big overwhelm units until dead. Decisive Maneuver will often deliver a surprise lethal: not only does it give all your attacking overwhelm units +2/+0, but it will also take a blocker out of combat meaning 100% of overwhelm damage goes to nexus. This wacky deck helped Earlmeister tie 5th place in last weekend's Giant Slayer tournament.

FakeHero3's Leona + Heimer Daybreaking Turrets

This clever partnership between Leona and Heimerdinger brought FakeHero3 to top 10 on the NA ladder. In hindsight, it's such a natural combination: Daybreak provides awesome board presence turns 1-> 5 and Heimer provides it turns 5+. Make sure to watch your handsize -- the value generation on this deck is insane and you'll burn cards if you're not careful.

Hana's Braum + Anivia Rekindler

Anivia might be the least popular champion in the game right now, but that didn't deter Hana from bringing this Rekindler deck to the Duels of Runeterra qualifiers this weekend. In case you haven't seen this archetype before: the game plan is to have Anivia die and then bring back multiple copies -- greedier versions will run Mist's Call and Chronicler of Ruin, but Hana's deck is much leaner and relies solely on The RekinderBADCARDNAME and The Harrowing for this function.

FiVE's Lee + Heimer Combo

We spent a lot of time last week researching good Lee Sin decks and Heimerdinger decks in preparation of Patch 1.10, but FiVE might have been the only madman who foresaw the potential of combining both buffed champs into a single deck. By his own account this is still an unrefined list, but given FiVE is the man behind Demacia Dragons we're willing to be bullish in our expectations.

Ghosterdriver's Zombie Ashe

Zombie Ashe will always have a special spot in our hearts as the "other" original combo deck (i.e., not Ezreal). If you haven't seen it before, the gameplan goes something like this:

1. Stall out the game while getting multiple copies of Ashe into your rez pool
2. Play The Harrowing to create ephemeral copies of said Ashe
3. Attack with them: each will frostbite a potential blocker while simultaneously leveling up, resulting in most if not all enemy units being unable to block

Alternatively, you can also level up Ashe before casting prior and then play Crystal Arrow to frostbite all their chump blockers to maximize the amount of damage your ephemeral squad deals. It plays out like a high-stakes game of poker, where you're all-in on a single massive attack which will either win you the game on the spot or leave you completely defenseless for your opponent's next turn. Ghosterdriver used this particular decklist to qualify at the Duels of Runeterra this past weekend.

RDee's Lucian + Draven Bannerman

Finally, we have a bannerman deck that looks unlike any that we've ever seen. RDee cooked up this combination of Lucian and Draven and then used it to hit masters on SEA. Note the potential of applying Kato The Arm to either leveled Lucian or Senna, Sentinel of Light.

That will be it for now. Have you found any interesting decks lately? Let us know below!