Legends of Runeterra is my Favorite Card Game and Here is Why (Part 2)
Championing Creative Deck Building
You don’t need to play League of Legends to get into the Champions of Legends of Runeterra and the simple-yet-effective way these fantastic fictional figures inform the art of deck building. There are as of this writing 80 different Champions in Runeterra, supporting a huge variety of play styles from aggressive to controlling and everything in between. These Champions act as focal points, easing new players into building fun and creative decks of their own with strong aesthetic themes and well-defined mechanics. I’ll start with an example any new player will be familiar with: Jinx, the Loose Cannon.
The central concept driving the entire Legends of Runeterra card game is that each Champion such as Jinx is tuned to be stronger than other cards in the game at their mana cost, or will be once they’ve met their “level up” condition. This is balanced by only allowing you to use 6 total Champion cards per deck, then filling out the other 34 cards with ways to support the game plan your Champions are guiding you towards. Jinx has a simple to understand, but not always simple to achieve goal of emptying your hand. The most obvious way to meet her condition would be by playing more than 1 card per turn, spending your hand faster than you add new cards to it. The best way to do that would be to fill your deck with lots of inexpensive cards, right? Well, that could be effective, but thankfully the designers of Runeterra have created a large number of support cards around each Champion. So, you can add a card like Augmented Experimenter to your deck and gain access to an alterative method of leveling up Jinx:
That seems strong, being able to level up Jinx with only 1 other card played, right? However, you can’t play Augmented Experimenter until turn 6 at the earliest, and it has a very weak stat line (3 power and 3 health) for the 6 mana cost. You are paying a heavy price for the advantage you’re trying to gain by leveling up Jinx easily, so maybe you can find safer ways to go about doing that, or you can compensate for the drawbacks of playing this card in other ways using the remaining slots in your deck. This is where the magic happens, when a player goes into the library of 1,000+ cards and attempts to solve the puzzle of how to best execute a game plan given the constraints of 40 total cards, 6 of those Champions, with an initial “main decked” maximum of 3 copies of any individual card.
I love deck building in Runeterra more than in any other game I have played, even though Runeterra was not the first game to center their decks around individual characters. Magic: The Gathering began referencing famous Planeswalkers in flavour text long before they were playable characters you could add to your decks. Hearthstone based every “region” or “color” around a Class such as Hunter or Mage, and an entire set of cards were built to match thematically. While it is fair to say Hearthstone had a stronger focus on individual Classes driving each deck, it didn’t have the flexibility Runeterra offers in letting you create any pairing of Champions from any 2 different regions (or within the same region) you want to try playing with. This is why I love building decks in Runeterra more than in any other game, it sticks the landing of balancing guided structure, aesthetic themes, and freedom to experiment perfectly. Also, I’m happy to announce for those who have read this far that I’m beginning a series of deck guide articles showcasing some of my favorite original decks soon, and another series focused on the decision making process that goes into creating effective decks to help you become a better deck builder. That series will begin after this is published, so make sure to subscribe to my Substack and be among the first to see these fun and creative ideas as they’re released!
If you’re new to my Substack and want to read part 1, check it out below: