Runeterra Deck: Light and Darkness Patch 6.4

The deck builds up to play Veigar, Senna or Lux in the midgame. The theme is about mages and about light and darkness, because Senna needs Lucian/Demacia-Support cards anyway. And so it’s only logical to play Veigar for Darkness and Lux for Demacia-spell-dmg too. Everything else is just shadow isle unit spam, demacia-buffs that work with unit spam, and support cards to always be able to play a mage in the midgame as the main-dmg-source. Lore-wise I think it’s only logical that Lux has to learn about darkness to master the light, and who could be a better teacher than Veigar, the Lord of darkness, there seems to be a light/darkness-theme anyway in the Runeterra world.
Tags: Mid-game, Mages, Build-up, Combo


Early-game unit-spam cards:
-Barkbeast (1): It’s not good to draw 2, but in this deck 2 are good, because of the intentionally high numbers of units. A good trick is to let one unit die in battle, and place Barkbeast to the right of it, it evolves to 3/3 then in battle and can kill most early-game units.

-The Wings and The Wave (1): Best earlygame-unit, you can also use it to kill “The Undying” for example, and get a 3/3 for 1 Mana with it.

-Fading Icon (2): simple unit spam, the deck needs as much as possible, for the combo effects, and for stalling/deffing in the earlygame.

-Minion (2): The deck is about deffing in earlygame, the “Minion” can be very cost effective when you know the units will die anyway, but 2 would be too much.

-Blighted Caretaker (3): 3 units in one card, you normally use it to do 2*2 dmg with the Saplings with "Challenger" to destroy the enemy units. Two would reduce the unit spam too much, because the deck has too much kill cards.


Unit-Spam support cards:
-Dawnspeakers (3): Gives a buff every round, very cost effective when exactly one unit is dying every round. You can also save 3 mana, wait if someone dies, and then place it, the buff still triggers at the end of the round.

-Inspiring Light (2): strongest unit-spam-support card, if you have 3+ units it’s very cost-effective.


Draw cards:
-Glimpse Beyond (2): Used in every Shadow Isles deck. When the enemy attacks, it’s best to block with a cheap unit, and kill it in battle to have the block and the spell-effect at the same time. It is also always used to counter dmg-spells of the enemy, you can kill it if it dies anyway. You can also kill “The Undying” in the enemy round if possible for efficiency.

-Grave Companion (4): Good draw card, but only playable with stall-decks that def for mid/late-game, so in this deck it works really good, because you have to wait for the mages anyway. It’s 1/5, so with a +1/1 buff, or +2/2 it’s also really usable in fights. It’s also more efficient than "Spirit leech” (4), Spirit leech has the same effect as "Glimpse Beyond", but as a 4-mana-unit that is hard to play and dies fast with 4/2, so “Glimpse Beyond” is used 3 times instead of Spirit leech.


Lucian Support Cards:
Lucian with Shadow Isles means that you can fast evolve him, because it’s very easy to let 4 units die. Lucian with Demacia is about buffing Lucian as fast as possible, which is really strong, but you can’t evolve him so fast then. He is a 2/1 unit, so sometimes he just dies, it’s not that bad if this happens, it’s also always about pulling aggro for 1 mana and make the enemy use spells, he is also not the key card of the deck, he just makes the early game as strong as possible with low-lvl cards. He is good with any buff, and with challenger-cards, challenger-units can allow him to attack, because they challenge the stronger units. Once evolved it is very easy to attack two times every round with shadow isle cards, because you only have to kill one unit, or let one die in battle. If he doesn’t get blocked he does double dmg then, which can be 2*5 fast if he is buffed.
Best Lucian-Synergy-cards:
-The Darkin Halberd (1): It’s so good it has to be 2 times in the deck, you get a Lucian-stack and 2/2 which is perfect for Lucian, it only works with a lot of unit spam. It’s better than “Malefic Spear” in this deck, because it can also trigger the die-effects of “Grave Companion” “Dawnspeakers”, besides leveling Lucian. On "Barkbeast" you get a 5/5-unit, evolved from a 1/1 with only 1 card which is also a good move for example.
-Blighted Caretaker (3): guaranteed death of 3 units with the 2 saplings, but you can’t play two of them in the deck, other kill-cards are more important.
-Inspiring Light (2) / Dawnspeakers (3): Once buffed, Lucian becomes really dangerous really fast, often you have to decide to either let him die as a 1-mana card for others, or to buff him and play around him to snowball.


Strong Support units:
-Blinding Assault (2): Valor has “challenger” and “scout” and only needs spell mana, good for Lucian and in general to protect other units. Sometimes you shouldn’t use the “scout attack”, sometimes you have to attack with all immediately, so the enemy can not react/spawn more units, or to evolve Lucian as fast as possible and then attack anyway again with all units, if possible.

-Swiftwing Flight (4): Good Challenger card, that gives you Blinding Assault/Valor (2) , the other 2 options are normally not as good as Valor. It also makes Valor, and maybe the Saplings stronger while attacking.


Senna/Lux/Veigar:
These are the most important dmg-cards, the enemy has to kill them immediately in midgame because they are very dangerous then. Lux is simple, she has a barrier for 1 round that you can use efficiently to free-attack/block and then you can either play 6 mana for spells or not, if she survives, the 4 free dmg-effect is the most powerful mage-support, when you play spells anyway. With Senna it also becomes a fast-spell that you can use in battle, if you have both.

Veigar and Senna both use Darkness. If you can play Veigar early he makes the darkness-spell stronger every round, which is really strong, even if you do not have any darkness anymore, you could draw one for 6 dmg later if you are lucky. When evolved with 12 Darkness-dmg, Veigar normally wins games, because you get a 5+ Darkness every round that is also usable then on Nexus, but Veigar gets also killed a lot because he is dangerous. If he increased the darkness dmg by 1 or 2 it is no problem, this is still a good buff.

Darkness cards:
Veigar only gives you 1 Darkness when spawned, and Senna also gives you 1 Darkness when spawned. There is no “Solari Sentinel” in the deck which gives darkness, and also no Bandle-cards which give darkness. This is because “Solari Sentinel" slows down the unit spam a lot, you would have to play only darkness cards and nothing else to make her worth it. Another problem is, that you often don’t use darkness immediately, and when you want to play “Solari Sentinel” then, you don’t get anything because you already have darkness, this causes too much problems. This means Senna is the only card that gives you darkness, when she is attacking. While attacking you get darkness before the dmg is dealt, it is often effective to play darkness on one enemy, then attack to get a new one, and play the second one then in battle, but it costs 2*3 mana or 2*2 mana when evolved.
-Dess & Ada (8): The best 6/7/8 mana card you could have, but it’s a bit luck-based if you played Veigar in the game or not. You get a 0-mana darkness that damages all enemies, it’s good with the initial 2 dmg, but with 3 or 4 dmg it is much stronger of course.


Dmg-Spells:
These 3 spells all kill 2 units, and give Senna 2/3 stacks to level her fast. You can not play more dmg-spells because of all the killcards that are already in the deck (“The Wings and the Wave” *3, “The Darkin Halberd” *2, “Blighted Caretaker” *1, “Glimpse Beyond” * 3), but it’s enough and you get "Darkness" and "Final Spark" for free later.
-Hate Spike (2): 3 dmg for killing a unit
-Death’s Grasp (3): 5 dmg for killing a unit
-Crumble (4): kills any unit for killing a unit. If you play Senna this becomes a fast-spell that can be used in battle. This and Lux’s “Final Spark” are the only spells that benefit from this effect because all other spells are already fast, and Senna’s champion-spell. Normally Crumble is not good to have 2 times because 5 dmg is enough and faster, but with Senna and the midgame focus it’s more efficient and stronger for the midgame-snowball.

-Black Spear (3): 4 dmg is good, but you can often only use it after battle, so it’s cost efficient but only in some situations, 1 in the deck is good, but not 2 because you have to wait until you can play it.


Other strong cards:
-Grizzled Ranger (4): After dying you get a new unit, it’s perfect for tanking/stalling because you can def with 2 units, and you can also freely kill it with other spells.

-The Undying (3): Normally not that good, because you can’t block with it and paid 3 mana for it. In this deck there is so much unit spam that it is good to have it. Whenever you have a kill-spell or maybe “The Darkin Halberd” or “the Wings and The Wave” you can kill him, and he gets stronger and also comes back, which is much better than sacrificing your 0/1 units if it is possible, so it would be bad to not have it with so much kill-cards. One thing to remember is, that when you have 6 units, and he would come back, maybe as 6/6, he does not come back, and gets destroyed which would be very bad, so remember to have 1 unit-space if you leveled him.

-Kharox (6): Best defensive shadow isles 6+ card with unit spam. Whenever a unit dies you get a 2/2-Tentacle-unit or a buff for it if you have one. This card alone can defend a whole army sometimes. You have to be careful where the tentacle is in the battle from left to right. when 2 units die, it gets a +4/4 buff and will win the fight, if it is the most left card, it will not get a buff in the fight, but after the fight. You can let it die, and plan the new tentacle you will get from the dying units. Kharox is strongest with “Ephemeral”-cards like Sand Soldiers, this deck is a mix of unit spam and buffs for unit-spam, so it is good, but you shouldn’t play it 2 times.

-Yordle Ranger (6): The +0/1 buff is much better than the temporary +1/+1 buff you would get from “Cithria the Bold” (6) for example. You can attack 2 times and because of the low-lvl-unit-spam it will buff nearly anyone, if they are not already buffed too much. This is especially good, because it buffs Veigar/Senna/Lux too, so it has synergy with protecting the mages and making the unit spam stronger in the same time, but 2 of it would slow down the other key cards too much.

-Remembrance (6): Good with Lux, because when you use spell mana to play units you level her at the same time, It gets cheaper when units die, so it is obviously effective with shadow isles. Two of it slow you down too much, and to have it 1 time also ensures that you can not draw it two times too. you get one of 9 possible 5-mana cards from Demacia. All have around 5/5 stats except 2, one is 3/3 (the worst of the 9), and one is 2/3 but you get a buff for all. Some have Challenger/Fury/Scout, but I wouldn’t count on anything.

-Roar of Icathia (6): Gives you 2 * 3/2 units with spell mana, which is perfect for stalling/deffing. If you played 1 ”The Darkin Halberd” in the game and have it on the hand now, it gets automatically equipped. This is good, because it ignores the cost, that you have to kill a unit to play it. The chance is relatively high that you have 1 of the two ”The Darkin Halberd” (1) before you are able to play a 6 mana card, so it is an efficient card, that also has synergy with Lux, and that is more stable than the random “Remembrance”, but you can also not play it two times, because it would be too much high-mana-cost-unit spam, it’s better to have both and then be able to decide if you draw both.