Runeterra Deck: Noxus General Heimerdinger Patch 6.4

A Noxus deck about Draven and Legion Marauders together with Heimerdinger and Zaun draw cards. It has high combo-potential in midgame and can therefore overrun any lategame deck that stays too passive. Marauders are the main army, but in the same time “Ballistic Bots” get stronger with every Draven-Axe and using spells will double your army size once you have Heimerdinger. “Strength inNumbers” (8) is one of the possible finishers because it will give you a 8/8 “T-Hex”-Dinosaur for free with Heimerdinger.
Tags: build-up, midgame-explosive, combo

Lore:
The Lore is Heimerdinger being a Noxus General, probably in a parallel timeline. It basically makes sense from a philosophical perspective. The one who commands the biggest armies and decides about life and death also has to be the smartest person, and when you realize that you are of course the smartest person, then you might decide to do this job even if you didn’t plan to do it in the first place.


“Legion Marauder”-Support Cards:
They are the strongest part of the army, but you don’t have to play with them every round. Triggering the “everywhere”-buff is the fastest way to snowball, but there are a lot of combos that could be stronger in the current situation.

-2 * Iterative Improvement (2): You can copy the Marauder for 2 mana, and play them with a +1/+1-buff again. 2 Mana is not so cheap normally, but with the everywhere buff, it normally stacks really efficiently. It’s also good on “Ballistic bot”, to have a 2/4, and both bots get the +1-buff then at the same time when you have 2.

-3 * Legion Marauder (3): Attacks are nearly always worth it for the everywhere-buff, you can protect them with “Quick Attack”-buffs, with spells like “Whirling Death” or copy them with “Iterative Improvement”, or make them elusive with the “Scavenges CamoCloaker” draw card.

-2 * Strength in Numbers (8): It’s a 8 mana card and so it has good Synergy with Heimerdinger to get a 8/8-”T-Hex”. You could also play it with 5 Mana and 3 spell mana early, because if you plan the mana accordingly, it can snowball hard to have 2 "everywhere"-buffs at the same time.


Discard-Support cards:
Zaun has naturally good Discard-Support, and you need to discard for every Draven-Axe, so a big part of the deck is about the Draven-Synergy with Zaunite Discard-support.

-2 * Zaunite Urchin (1): Draw card with discard, since you have to discard anyway and need cards for it. You can also discard the free “Ignition”-spells of “Ballistic bot”s, so you normally have enough cards to discard.
-3 * Ballistic Bots (2): Good 1/3 stats, tanky in beginning, easy to buff, especially when you have two, and it gives you the free-”ignition” spell, which you will normally use to discard for Dravens axes, but you can also buff 1 or 2 “Ballistic bot”s with playing it for 1 mana.
-2 * Boom Baboon (2): Important Discard-support card. To get the 0/2 “Flame Chompers!” with a 0-mana Draven axe is really nice, but the strength of “Flame Chompers!” is the “challenger”-abilty to protect your “Quick attack”-units, and you can also give them +2/0 and “Quick attack” with “the Darkin Harp” to freekill low-life-units if possible.
-1 * Yeti Handler (4): It’s easy to pay the additional-discard-cost with Zaun cards or with a Draven-Axe, which makes the unit more efficient than it normally is, but you can only put 1 in the deck.


Draven:
It’s normally always best to play Draven as the first unit if possible and get the axes. Even if he dies, you still have the axe.
Tips:
-To level him you have to strike twice with 1 axe, or two times with 2 axes. You can equip two axes when you have 4 axes because you have to discard two cards, but with Zaun cards, you can sometimes speed this up and discard a “Ballistic bot”-Ignite. You can do a strike with “Whirling Death”, and you can also do this when the enemy attacks. So 1 axe, "Whirling Death, and a normal attack will evolve him in one round because he does two strikes then in battle. You could also evolve him with 1 axe and two “Whirling Death”, when the enemy is attacking, but it’s expensive.
-Try to have a “Whirling Axe” (3) and 3 mana when the enemy is attacking, it’s the best defense because you can “block” with your atk, and you can easily buff the atk with axes.
-You can discard other cards than axes to play an axe, but you normally want to discard free-cards. To discard other cards can also be a strong all-in-move to level him up fast in 1 round, but it’s not efficient to do this.


Heimerdinger:
He is a midgame unit, you can play him only when you have 5+ mana, and then the snowball slowly starts, so you have to time it right when you play him. When you play him, you want to have 2+ mana left for a spell, to make use of him immediately. It’s always good to play him in midgame, but sometimes you must wait until the time is right to safely play him.The spells in the deck are picked to be good with Himerdinger. The best bots are the 2, 3 and 5 mana bots. 0 mana gives “challenger”, and 8 mana gives the 8/8-”T-Hex”-Dinsoaur in lategame.

0-mana: Dravens axe, you get a 0/1 with Challenger for free, which is much stronger than getting the 1/1-unit.
1-Mana: Ignite from “Ballistic bot”, but 1/1 is the worst bot, only usable for deffing.
2-Mana: “Mystic shot” (2), this bot has “Tough” and is often what you want to have in early/midgame.
3-mana: “Whirling Death” (3), you play this card anyway all the time, it’s Dravens Champion spell, so you can get up to 5. The bot has "Fearsome" which is also nice, because the opponent has to block it with his stronger units. “Scavenged Camocloaker” (3) is also a 3 mana spell.

4-mana: no spell, “overwhelm” is also not as good as the 2-mana-”Tough” and the 3-mana-”Fearsome”

5-mana: “Shunpo” (5), the 5-mana-bot has “Quick attack” and is one of the strongest bots, so Shunpo has a good synergy.

6/7-mana: Elusive/Barrier, there are also no spells, and the 5-mana-Quick attack is still stronger/more worth it.

8-mana: "Strengths in Numbers”, and also Heimerdingers Champion spell to draw 3 cards. Heimerdingers 8-mana-draw card is only good when you have Heimerdinger, but since it’s his Champion spell it is good to get a free 8/8 Dinosaur, but you shouldn't put the draw card extra in the deck. There is a focus on 8 mana because it gives you the 8/8-”T-Hex”, which is much stronger than the other bots, it’s a good finisher in lategame.


Other strong units:
I think it’s not necessary to explain every combo for every additional support-card. The main strategy is to attack often, because of Dravens “Quick Attack” and Marauders "everywhere"-buff, and for deffing you build the low-lvl-units or you kill the opponent units with "Whirling death" or "Mystic shot". If you are able to get Heimerdinger, you can often double the army-size, which immediately ensures free-deffing, but sometimes you can just end with the Draven- or Marauder-Snowball. In lategame you have also 3 “Darkin”-Equipments that you can play as 8 mana-units to finalize the army-strength.