An honest (albeit very long) response. I am not interested in anyone signing up via a referral code to make me money. I just wanted to share my experience, in far too many words... (if you make it to the end you deserve a medal and a stiff drink for your troubles/effort).
I have no agenda except sharing my experience with Whales, so that you can make an informed decision before applying. Also I must emphasise that it seems others on here have vastly differing experiences of working for WE and have full timetables etc. I am glad they love it and have a positive experience. I have no axe to grind with the company and wish them and everyone who works for them well.
So, with this in mind, I hereby share MY personal experience of teaching for Whales English for a month.
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PROS
The kids (mostly adorable), and enthusiastic to learn. It's good that they have two students per lesson, as this enables peer discussion and interaction, as well as developing cooperation and listening skills.
The parents: on the whole, almost all of the parents are lovely and helpful, and I really like that they are there as an encouraging presence.
Content is made for you, although I feel that the Trial A lesson needs more interactive aspects (see below for this point made in detail). Trial B is good, and Trial C is also good as far as content goes. It is a plus to have content supplied, as this can be difficult to 'come up with' if you haven't been teaching for a very long time, or perhaps aren't necessarily a creative type. For those starting out in teaching, having content made is definitely a positive.
Long term bookings….though I have to say I have not had many regular class bookings yet, and that will be due to the time of year, so that could well improve. People do rave about the long term stability of the 30 week bookings, and I also think this is a great thing about the company, and does seem unique to Whales.
Training was provided before starting, with a lot of material (a lot), exemplars and courseware information to read though. This was provided on Google Drive, and emailed instead of being on the platform or the WE Class portal, so it was a bit confusing to have to look for things in another place, BUT, it was helpful. Helpful as it was, though, it must be noted that it was unpaid, and took around 16 hours in total (that includes all the resources, ppts, marking criteria on Google Drive, the live sessions too), just so you guys know you'll need to clear a substantial amount of time across a week or a couple of weeks to undertake it.
Those delivering the live training were so lovely, and it was great that there were several prospective teachers taking part, and not just one on one.
Ding Talk (the third platform) allows you to talk to your Teacher Consultant about bookings and issues. My TC is lovely, though we have a comedic exchange every time I ask her if I can get any more bookings, whereby she exclaims she wasn't aware I wanted more (despite having 20 slots open and asking for more since my first week), and that I need to tell her my availability again (though I do this again and again and she has access to it), and have I thought about opening weekend slots (I do this on top of the 20 hours open as a given since week 1). So bless her, she is lovely, but I feel there isn't really much she can do if there just aren't bookings for me. I do enjoy talking with her though, and I know the TCs work damn hard, so I really do appreciate her help.
There is a bonus system: Trial class conversions, Full Attendance Bonuses (though these are not as high as they used to be, it is still a positive that they exist).
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CONS
I have only had 5 classes a week, despite opening 20 slots, so I am making less than $100 a week; not enough to pay my bills. I have asked for more classes and been told to be patient. But it has been a month. I need to be able to pay bills, so I am not sure how much longer I can wait and hope I will get enough bookings.
Trial classes have been cancelled a few times now, meaning I get 50% pay ($9) and have to stay in the lesson doing nothing (I see this as a waste of my time, which could be spent doing productive things).
The lessons are too long. Really too long. For both myself and the poor kids.
Lesson materials are not interactive enough and need to be overhauled in some instances, particularly for Trial A and some aimed at younger learners as there also often isn't enough content. I add games (Baamboozle) and my own google slides to pad these lessons out, adding more prep time than expected. Kids need Cloze procedure exercises, games where they can touch the screen, odd one out rounds etc….not just repetition of the same sentences and words, as is the case in some trials and lessons (not all). I wish I could re-plan some of their lessons (I was a teacher for years in B&M classrooms, so some of the resources really make me sad, because I know how much better they could be). As it is, I just try to make additional resources. But I shouldn’t need to, and the parents shouldn’t pay for lessons which are just not engaging enough. They should and could be better in about 25-30 % of lessons, especially those aimed at the younger age range. I must stress, I am not saying ALL lessons.
The levelling and feedback needs to be simpler. I have to find the correct levels to go with the descriptors to give feedback on the WE platform, by going through the training files in another completely different section of the platform, otherwise I wouldn’t know how to level the students on their feedback section. There is nowhere on the feedback section that tells you the corresponding level based upon the particular descriptors and their numerical amount you have selected that best fits them. This should automatically come up. It’s really strange to then have to go outside of the feedback section to retrieve the correct level from a training slide. Should be aligned/streamlined.
900-1000 words need to be written by you on average after 3 trial classes in a row.
EDIT: apparently you CAN copy and paste the feedback for trial classes, which is a godsend at saving time. I found this out below thanks to a lovely Redditor, so that at least helps with getting the feedback for the trials submitted on time.
As soon as you have finished 3 Trail classes in a row, you have one ONE HOUR to write feedback on 6 different areas, for 6 children (there are 2 per class). And you have to write over 25 words per section, for 6 sections, for 6 kids…..that is a minimum of 150 words for 6 kids. So...That is 900 words minimum in feedback. I write an average of 1,200 words in that hour, rushing against the clock. If I don’t, I am penalised. This could be streamlined too. I believe for Trial classes, Whales should have level descriptors that correspond to the actual levels that are automatically selected. Trying to write 6 original things for 6 different kids, in less than an hour after my classes is really making unnecessary work, in my opinion.
The homework marking system is very cumbersome and every piece needs to be marked. This is also unpaid and done in your time. You have to download the homework, save to word, then add comments or stickers (again by going through files to find the sticker section, because Whales haven’t integrated this into the hwk section), then add, then save, then upload…..this takes so much time and again isn’t paid.
Mismatched kids in the lessons- sometimes wildly different capabilities.
Oh, and, I typed this out during a Trial class in which yet again, no kids turned up. So, I have made $9, but at least I used the time productively and was able to write this honest account.
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To reiterate: this is just my personal experience.
I hope others are having a better experience, and I don’t doubt for some, teaching with Whales English is their dream job.
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Feel free to disregard this information and to disagree: I have no agenda and am just sharing my experience.
NO REFERRAL CODE HERE.
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This bag is a relatively new style for Chanel and therefore is rather new to the rep scene. I believe this is the first review for it on RL. To be honest, I was expecting to be disappointed...how wrong I was! I nearly bought this bag at the boutique and I'm glad I didn't, because it's a fantastic rep.
🔥Chanel Mini Wallet on Chain (aka the Mini WOC) ~ from CD Factory🔥
Disclosure - Sadly I am not influential enough to warrant any special discounts or incentives.
Purchased from TS Anna
Price of item(s): Based on my Paypal history, this cost $197USD, plus a $4.99 Paypal fee, for a total of $201.99. This price might be slightly different now due to fluctuations of exchange rates. I paid via Paypal Friends & Family.
Price of shipping and carrier: I’m unsure of the exact cost but I imagine that it was around $20-30. The total price is listed above. Shipping carrier was DHL.
Order timeline: Unfortunately I cannot give an exact order timeline because I changed phones recently and oddly only half of my Wechat messages backed up. The overall timeline was about three weeks, though.

Photos

My photos, after two weeks of everyday wear - with bonus cat tax 🐱
PSP
Unfortunately my phone ate the factory photo I sent to Anna. It was a standard CD Factory pic I found in her Moments.
Authentic
A few bonus auth vs rep comparison pics. Please keep in mind the angles aren’t quite exact and the photos I took of the auth bag are angled and cropped.

Quality - 10/10

Before this bag I thought I was a diehard 187/GF/OF Factory stan. I want my reps to be as 1:1 as possible. Color me surprised...this is my first bag from CD and it’s excellent. Rep Chanel caviar leather usually disappoints me – it is much too dry and lacks plushness and squishiness. This bag isn’t like that at all; the leather is lustrous, very soft, and has the right amount of squish. Besides the leather, the bag appears to be well made and feels like a luxury item. Shockingly there is no fufu smell. The stitches are tight and the weight feels right. The card slots are neatly sewn and the chain feels good between my fingers. If someone had told me that this bag was crafted by 60 year old veteran Chanel seamstresses living in some remote manufacturing village in France I wouldn’t have blinked twice.

Accuracy - 10/10

I’d been to four different Chanel boutiques to check out this bag and probably would have bought it on the spot if the sales lady at Bergdorfs wasn’t so fucking snooty. Your loss, girl. I did a search on Wechat after I got home and discovered that it was showing up widely in lots of seller’s Moments (buyer beware – there are lots of fantasy colors being made). Redden is usually my go-to seller but sometimes her order process can take a few days. I wanted this bag asap so I contacted my next favorite seller, TS Anna. I asked her which factory she recommended and she said CD, so I went with it.
I was expecting this to be a high mid-tier rep at best. The interior appears to be accurate, along with the brand tag, placement of the serial code, and engravings on the hardware. The alignment is good. One thing I noticed after feeling this bag up multiple times, in multiple different colors at different boutiques is that the caviar leather specific to this bag had a sort of slick feeling. It’s hard to describe in words and not really visible in photos. I didn’t think the rep would get this texture right, so when I first opened the package and discovered that CD Factory had actually nailed it, I was thrilled. Personally leather quality is most important to me when buying a bag or SLG. The leather on this bag feels very smooth and has a luster to it that I have not seen or felt on any other caviar Chanel reps. I’m not sure if I got lucky but after this bag I am encouraged to try CD Factory again.

Satisfaction - 10/10

I am stoked! I thought I would just sell this bag on BST if it arrived and wasn’t at least 9/10 accurate. I’m pleasantly surprised that it ended up being so good. Despite being so tiny it’s been incredibly practical for my needs and I’ve used it multiple times a day since I received it. While I like the regular Chanel WOC, this feels like a cuter, smaller version that is more my own personal style. It fits over my bulkiest of coats and leather jackets and is equally at home going to the gym or on my way to a date. The sides expand and it fits a surprising amount of stuff – a small packable nylon bag I carry around for groceries, a cardholder, a few makeup items, earpods – and still is so compact. I love the style and am very happy I found a (seemingly) perfect rep.

Seller Communication and Service - 10/10

Anna is always dependable, kind, and fast for me. She makes buying easy (almost too easy!). Her prices aren't as low as Redden but I feel like her prices are more than fair for the service I get. I've used her many times before and would use her again.

Edit, 7pm ET 1/18: Returning readers, please see below for corrected numbers of Elemental Boost impact. They are better than the first version of this post suggested. Thanks!
When the Magia system debuted, a few points of conventional wisdom solidified pretty quickly: 100 in your attack stat is really good, 500 HP might help you survive Zantetsuken, going crazy on the others isn't necessary -- etc. Time hasn't quite invalidated any of these points, but it has changed the relative value of each Magia bonus -- and also the opportunity cost for grinding them out. It's time to take stock, again, of what we can get from Magia.
If you just want the math, scroll down.
 

How Things Have Changed + Will Change

1. Magia grinding is more accessible.
   Auto-Run w/ free Overdrive for D180 Dreams
   
2. Magia grinding is not necessary for the basic 100 points.
   Record board 400 Magia XP
   
3. There is more reason to compare Magia versus Crystals, as grinding options.
   The "have your cake and eat it too" raid option is going away - D220's this week, and raids entirely within months
   
4. Crystals become slightly easier to acquire.
   Daily revamp feat. 5 crystals on single-flavor dailies; random crystal drops in Labyrinth; ~6 months out
   
5. Your uses for Crystals will increase a bit.
   Inevitable increase in # of relevant HAs; multiple copies available for certain crucible 6* abilities
   
6. HP, DEF, RES, and elemental boost have also become easier to acquire.
   HP more available from record boards, non-finite crystal waters, new accessories, and higher magicite deck stats; DEF and RES more available from artifact armor and UEs; elemental boost more available due to HC entry, plus increased access to chains, and to syncs and empowered infusion in general
   
7. Non-piercing attacks are much more relevant in endgame content than they were.
   Compare, in particular, to when Dark Odin was the endgame.
   

 

Magia versus Crystals: Now versus Later

The need for Crystals is going to be an individual question. It bears repeating that HAs require significantly fewer Crystals to level than 6* abilities do -- 155/300 total for R4/R5, compared to 238/548. HAs also have a different balance of crystal types than abilities do, with Dark Crystals, in particular, being popular. (I used a spreadsheet to do some quick math on my crystal desires; I came out needing nearly 2000 more Dark Crystals than most of the others.)
 
This is relevant, for people at the point where they truly don't need all flavors of Crystals, due to the daily refresh that recently hit JP. Single-flavor dailies become much more efficient, by a factor of 2.5. Because Crystal grinding rates will increase, but Magia grinding rates will not (and may never), this could be a reason to put off Crystal grinding in favor of Magia.
 
Crystals do have a more blatant impact: honing a HA from R4 to R5 for 155 crystals will increase damage under AASB by roughly 8.3% (plus offer extra hones). Currently, it'd take about 2590 stamina to get 155 crystals from Orb Meadows++. For the same stamina, you can take Magia from 100 to 200, or 200 to 300, on roughly fifteen different PCs. And this ignores the portion of crystals that will be overstock (cough Summoning cough). Honing to R5 is obviously still worthwhile and important, but that doesn't necessarily make crystal dailies the best use for all excess stamina.
 

Magia Options

One thing that hasn't changed since Magia were released: those first 100 points into ATK/MAG/MND make more of a difference than anything else. Since record boards also come with 400 'free' Magia XP, we can ignore those first 100 points and focus on the other options: HP, DEF and RES, and elemental boost.

Hybrid Roles

But first, a quick nod to the polymaths of FFRK, who -- if you're using them for multiple roles -- likely want points in two different stats. This primarily affects healer hybrids like Yuna, Eiko, Alphinaud, and Y'shtola; but if you use a hybrid attacker like Edge or Exdeath too frequently, with different attack stats, to just reset Magia as needed, they could be worth double-statting, too.

HP

Once upon a time, 500 HP could truly matter. Today, there are just more ways to buff HP. With 2k-3k HP on RBs, Crystal Waters more plentiful, Wodin (and UE) accessories, and better HP bonuses from decks/HC, most fully augmented characters will have between 12,500 and 17,000 HP before Magia. The extra 500 HP will increase your final HP by somewhere between 3.0% (Knight archetypes w/HC) and 3.8% (Magic hybrids w/deck). This is still OK, but it's a pretty modest boost.

DEF and RES

The nail in the coffin for HP, though, is that most endgame content these days does have relevant non-piercing attacks. Even though DEF and RES won't help against all attacks, and even though artifact armor gives them a serious boost, the incoming damage formula is gentle enough (exponent of 0.84) that 100 points can still make a real difference. An extra 100 points will reduce your non-piercing damage taken by somewhere between 10% (Knights, DEF, Bahamut armor w/HC) and 19% (Healers, DEF, UE bracer w/deck). For more numbers, see below.
(Obviously, in fights that are all piercing, DEF and RES are not going to be a better value, even if they generally are. Don't be afraid to respec; it's always worth considering the specific content you're working on, if you get stuck.)

Elemental Boost

Since the advent of SASBs and just general easier access to multiple levels of infusion, the conventional wisdom has turned against investing in elemental boosts. This may have been a little exaggerated. With one or two levels of infusion, you'll generally see a 3.0% to 5.0% damage increase from Magia. With three and an in-party CSB (or other source of boost levels), you'll get a damage increase between 0.0% and 1.6%. So -- not the most exciting boost with a sync, but possibly worthwhile even for double-infused PCs, and depending on the battle conditions (e.g. diffusion), this could make a big difference, too.
 

Math: HP, DEF, and RES

The following table shows the average percent gains in HP, and average percent of damage reduction, given realm or elemental content, respectively, that each of the 8 record board archetypes will get from investing 100 Magia into HP/DEF/RES.
 
Reduction is given as a range encompassing possible values for equipment options -- Bahamut/Wodin armor and UEs. These numbers also account for realm synergy, HC/deck stats, and Wall reducing the relative impact of HC/deck stats. (Assumptions: lv 99 HC; standard deck with Wodin, 2x 6*, 2x Madeen, 2x Health Boon; max links/inheritance lvs)
 

Average Gains with 100 Magia into HP, DEF, or RES

Archetype	HP [HC]	Phys [HC]	Mag [HC]	HP [Mag]	Phys [Mag]	Mag [Mag]
Knight	3.0%	10%-11%	11%-13%	3.1%	12%-14%	13%-16%
Physical	3.2%	11%-13%	12%-13%	3.3%	13%-16%	14%-17%
Support	3.4%	11%-13%	12%-13%	3.5%	13%-16%	14%-16%
Speed	3.4%	12%-13%	12%-13%	3.5%	14%-16%	14%-17%
Hybrid	3.6%	12%-14%	12%-13%	3.7%	14%-17%	14%-17%
Magical	3.6%	12%-14%	11%-12%	3.7%	15%-18%	13%-15%
Mag/Mind	3.7%	13%-14%	11%-12%	3.8%	15%-18%	13%-16%
Healer	3.6%	13%-15%	11%-13%	3.7%	16%-19%	14%-16%​

 
Wait! Bahamut armor and UEs aren't out yet! This is true, but Wodin bracers are pretty good everywhere! 6* and 7* armor are notably less generous with DEF and RES; wearing those armors, you can expect Magia to help more, by roughly 5% additive (e.g., 20% reduction with Magia + old armor, versus 15% with Magia + new armor).
 

Math: Elemental Boost

The next, possibly more interesting table shows the damage boost you'll get from 100 Magia points into elemental boost (which adds 0.1 to the multiplier before softcap), given an infusion level, a chain type, and a HC/6* entry effect (or neither). If you have other sources of elemental boost (e.g. WoL AASB or Emperor AASB2), each level adds 0.1, so just move one or more columns to the right. (Note: 1.0 elemental CSBs go in the Fabula Sorceror column, while all realm chains go in the 2.x Chain column.)
Each column assumes weapon and armor boosts are present (total of 0.4). With the new armor artifacts, this is easy even for armor. I've highlighted the two columns that are likely most often relevant.
 

Average Gains with 100 Magia into Elemental Boost

Infusion Level	Fabula Sorceror (0.2)	Bonds of Historia (0.3)	Fabula + 6* (0.4)	2.x Chain (0.5)	Bonds + HC (0.6)	2.x + 6* (0.7)	2.x + HC (0.8)
None	6.3%	5.9%	5.6%	5.3%	5.0%	4.8%	4.5%
1 (0.5)	4.8%	4.5%	4.3%	4.2%	4.0%	3.8%	3.5%
2 (0.8)	4.2%	4.0%	3.8%	3.5%	3.0%	2.5%	2.0%
3 (1.2)	3.0%	2.5%	2.0%	1.6%	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%​

 
(If casting an SB, the infusion mult is instead 0.8/1.0/1.2, so move a few columns to the right if necessary.)
 
Note: The table has been corrected with accurate values. (Thanks again to u/ffrkthrowawaykeeper for noticing this error, and sorry for misleading early readers! Moral of the story, there are some incorrect formulae floating around out there, and you should just go to u/Kittymahri for those.)
Whether the better 3.0+ increases will apply to you is going to be situational, and really depends on what soul breaks your DPS characters have -- and how the flow of the fight will affect that. If there's diffusion, or if a battle is going to last a full minute, even a triple-infusion sync won't keep you from having a 3.0% or higher bonus for much of the battle.
 
Additionally, u/eelmonger makes some excellent points in this comment -- I too would urge you to remember that FFRK, by its nature and coding, often creates individual situations where more general rules don't hold up. The question is always: what will actually make a difference for you?
 

Who First?

The big question, thanks to the corrected elemental boost analysis, is which sort of boost is more important to you. Elemental boost on key DPS characters, especially those without triple-infusion, is obvious; but what about defense?
My suggestion there is to start with characters who are likely to be more frail than the majority of a particular party. We've probably all had the experience where everyone barely survives a nasty MT hit -- except for one or two people. Slot placement won't help, but this is where a moderate boost, making up for lower base stats, can really shine. Some examples:

• Vivi, who has low HP even for a mage.
• Aerith, a healer who you're likely to use with physical teams.
• Meia, who might lead off an otherwise physical realm team.

Beyond that, healers (and offensive white mages) are generally the most frail, but of course the ultimate question remains: will this buff truly make a difference, or is it a nice-to-have?
 

How Much Magia?

Let's take a quick look at the Magia XP required for each 100 points.
 

Magia XP Requirements

Progression	Add'l XP
0 to 100	399
100 to 200	800
200 to 300	900
300 to 400	1125
400 to 500	1200
500 to 600	1300
600 to 700	1400

It rises more gently from there, but for most of us, there's not much reason to look beyond 400 or 500.
 
As the biggest jump in requirements is between 300 and 400 Magia, I suggest stopping at 300. This offers options for offense, defense, or both, and plenty of flexibility if it would ever be useful to respec for a specific fight.
 
If you want, you could take into account the second free 400 Magia XP that is unlocked, realm by realm, when you defeat Bahamut, and stop 400 XP early. At least for me, that's far enough away (and difficult enough, for a lot of my realms!) that I'm not planning around it.
 
Welp, thanks for making it through. Please leave feedback if you see something I overlooked or just disagree in general! Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger, at least if it happens 800 times in a row...

If you could wear up to 5 pieces of Exotic gear what pieces would you use for the ultimate build?
Ive been thinking about this for a while and have a couple of builds that I think would be super fun and would have great synergy here they are:

• Titan; Code of the Missile
  
• Helmet: An Insurmountable Skullfort(with double ashes to assets) - Melee Kills recharge melee and give bonus super energy.
  
• Arms: Synthoceps - increased melee and super damage when surrounded.
  
• Chest: Armamentarium - extra grenade slot.
  
• Legs: Dunemarchers: chain melee damage after sprinting.
  

I think this build would be great for having a constant super with skullfort and grenades just constantly giving you huge boost with things like dunemarchers and synthoceps really being overkill in add clearing but also being able to put out massive damage with your super
Weapons you could run anything really but I think maybe a Witherhoard for extra AOE damage or even a Bad Juju for overkill on super building if you miss a melee or something
Another build I think would be fun

• Hunter; top tree nightstalker (gamblers dodge)
  
• Helmet: Wormhusk Crown - small health boost upon dodging.
  
• Arms: Khepris sting - punching with full melee casts smoke bomb, smoke bomb does extra damage.
  
• Chest: Sixth Coyote - Second dodge charge.
  
• Legs: Gemini Jester - Dodging misdirects nearby enemies.
  

I feel like this would be a nightmare in PVP with being constantly invis, having smoke bomb upon full melee hits, misdirecting enemies with Jesters and being almost impossible to see or hit with multiple dodges, put this with max mobility and it could be a super sweaty but fun build to play with
I haven’t thought of many Warlock builds as I don’t really play but maybe a middle tree Stormcaller with Crown of Tempests, Getaway Artists, and Geomags plus a riskrunner or something could be fun
What are some of your all exotic builds
Thank you!

Firstly...

This isn't a post to knock Larian or BG3. I love both. Been a fan since Divinity 2.

Now that's said...

There's some weird UI choices in BG3 that makes me (as a humble software engineer who's DM'd 5e since it was released, and 3.5 before that) kinda confused.

Actions VS Bonus actions

In BG3...

Your actions are one color, your bonus actions are another... except for skills that come from your class (such as sneak attack and spells). Those aren't color coded. When you use your action, the action-skills "fade" and the bonus action ones remain highlighted, et vice versa... but it's up to you to sort them at all meaningfully on your hotkey bar.

In Solasta:

Your actions are sorted into "main actions" and "bonus actions" right from the start. Example. If you click something that sub-menus, it will expand above it. For example, when you pick "shove", it shows you the options to push back or knock prone.

Solasta does it better.

• It automatically sorts things for you into these categories rather than relying on the player to do it
• It doesn't rely on inconsistent color coding to show the information
• It's much more compact, showing options only when they're available to you. For example, if you have no bonus actions you can take, or have already taken your bonus action this round, it will hide that menu from you, freeing up real-estate.

How you cast your spells in BG3:

Each spell (at each level) has their own slot in your hotkey bar. It's clearly inspired by MMOs, which usually don't have things like spell-levels and instead, each ability scales with your level, like cantrips do. That means that if you want to quickly cast a given spell at any of 9 levels-- well, that's going to take up 9 different spots on your hotkey bar.

Why this is bad:

1. It took me late into Act 1 and well after I had gotten second level spell slots to even realize I could cast spells at a higher level. I know you can in 5e, I just kind of assumed that they hadn't released that yet. As a rule, the UI should teach the player what they can do, not obscure things.
2. It takes up so much hot key space, and now you have to memorize what each tiny icon means or go hunting every time for not only which spell, but what level you want to cast it at. This is a lot of UI management for casual (non-mmo) players.

How Solasta does it

So here's the ui for my wizard during their turn. The workflow to cast a spell is:

1. Click "Cast a spell" in either the action section or bonus action section, depending on what action type you want to use.
2. This reveals all the spells, sorted automatically by level. So if you know you want to cast fireball, you only have to look at the level 3 spells for something firey, and you've found it fast!
3. If you want to up-cast it (cast it at a higher level), you click the plus sign, which will reveal roman numerals above that. You can then choose the spell slot level to use.

Why this is better:

1. Automatic sorting means never having to do hotkey management. It's just always there, exactly where you'd expect it.
2. The ui entices you to click that plus button, which teaches the players that they can up-cast.
3. If I want to cast specifically a bonus action spell, I can immediately filter my spell options by clicking cast spell under bonus action. And by the way, that button doesn't appear unless you actually have something you could cast as a bonus action. This game doesn't show you things you don't need to click.

Reactions

in BG3

1. You decide, well before the situation arises, whether or not you want to take a reaction (if possible).
2. When the trigger occurs, you do it. No second thoughts, it happens immediately.

Solasta, meanwhile...

1. If you would be entitled to a reaction, or an on-hit effect such as smite, a pop up appears. In this moment, you get to make the call.
2. If 2 creatures can react at the same time, have to choose both at once. (here, 2 characters got an AoO at the same time)

Why Solasta does it better:

1. In the case of smite, do you really want to set your paladin to always smite on hit? Because you're going to run out of Spell Slots immediately. Or worse-- you have an opponent at 1 hp flee from your paladin. As a reaction, he takes an attack of opportunity, and then smites as well without ever asking you. That spell slot did nothing for you and it wont come back until a Long rest. And for the people who think Larian isn't about to do Smites as a reaction-- Repelling blast (which is not a reaction) is already programmed as a reaction in-game (though it does not eat up your actual reaction-- the UI just treats them the same).
2. In the case of a spellcaster: Suppose you can cast both Shield and Hellish Rebuke. You only get 1 reaction a turn though. Which does it use if you have both set to go off? Will that Sheild still trigger even if the attack roll was 6 above your AC (and thus wouldnt make the attack miss then?)
3. That's just how it is RAW 5e anyways! You get to choose whether you react or not, given the current circumstances.

Grain of salt:

These are just the thoughts of one guy who loves two games and is just finished his whiskey so no more typing. I hope this post at least stirs discussion.

Something that I thought would be kinda cool if it existed in game. Don't know if it's even remotely possible to code, I have no idea how the game is programmed and therefore its limitations).
Custom Weapons and Ships.

This is simple. Take a weapon, slap two modifiers, one making one stat better, the other making another stat worse.

For example, Tachion Lance, you want less EMP damage and less recharge rate, or more damage and less turret turn rate. Could be percent based or absolute value.
Or Heavy Needler, more bullets in burst, but more refire delay (or the other way around).
Or Antimatter Blasters, with more charges but less damage per charge.
Or weapons like Plasma Cannons, more (or less) number of maximum charges, but slower (or faster) recharge rate.
The bonuses could be bound to one specific penalty or players could choose which penalty they want, I don't know if that would make it more or less difficult to balance...
​
Probably a nightmare to code and to balance, but how cool would it be to take a bunch of weapons and tailoring them exactly for the role you want them?
One could go one step farther and say, produce a completely new weapon with a limited number of "weapon points (WP)" (so you can't make a weapon with incredibly good stats that costs one OP), where the better a stat is, the more points it's going to cost (balanced around already existing weapons for that category). Think about OP, not for ships, but for weapons. Like an hard cap for how much you can put on that weapon!
​

• The stats that could be changed would be all the base stats of weapons, so OP cost, Range, Damage (per burst, for energy weapons that'd be half dps I think?), Flux per burst, burst size, Max Charges, Recharge of charges, Refire Delay, Turret Turn Rate, Accuracy, Beam (is beam or not? Only for Laser Weapons), EMP damage, Tracking (for missiles), Ammo size (and this could be everywhere, there's laser weapons with minimum charges as well as a missile mount with infinite charges in vanilla!), weapon type (ballistic, laser, missile), damage type (Kinetic, High Explosive, Fragmentation, Energy) and size (small, medium, large).
• Ballistic is kinetic damage by default and costs weapon points to make another damage type. Same for Missile/High Explosive and LaseEnergy.
• If you improve (or worsen) one stat you spend (or gain) more WP for that weapon. So you could make, for example, something extremely flux efficient that costs 1 flux and deals 2000 dmg (two really good stats), that you can only fire once every 5 minutes and has extremely bad turn rate or projectile speed (I'm taking numbers out of my a## here, so don't think I'm balancing things because I'm not. And it would be a terrible weapon probably :D). Conversely, you could make an all round weapon, or an OP cheap weapon that's flux inefficient and has bad rate of fire but deals massive damage, and so on!
• WP cost wouldn't be costant for each stat. If you spend one WP to get +10 damage, the next +10 improvement would be 2, and the next could be 3. Or maybe 10, 12,15, 20 or something like that. Again, taking number out my a@@ here. I got number diarrhea today apparently :D. That way there's an even harder limit on how good one single stat on a weapon is going to be.
• Conversely, the worst you're going to make one single stat, the LESS WP you'll get for each progressive penalty. Like in the previous example, -10 damage once is +10 WP, and the next consecutive would be -9 WP, then +8 and so on. This one maybe linearly worse instead, otherwise there could be balance issues. No idea, seriously.

​

Custom Fighters

Mostly what I said about weapons and what I'm going to say about custom weapons. Stats changing, or from scratch. Probably better only the stats changing tough. Less or more armospeed/flux/shield efficiency/weapon slots, plus that same weapon modifiable. Engagement range should probably stay the same for all, there's a reason, probably, if all fighters have 4000 range.
​

Custom Ships

This could be something similar. Take a ship, reduce/increase OP, Max Speed, Max/Vented Flux, Armor and Hull, add and remove Fighter Bays, maybe even add extra slots or modify the arc of existing one? There's so many different kinds of ways one could modify a ship. There's way too many stats. And this looks kinda lore friendly, as pirates and luddic path do exactly that with ships. Maybe it should be some kind of "custom" custom production, so not exactly early game... but not end game too.
This one is kind of already there in the form of Hull Mods, but I feel like customization could go a long way yet. Sacrifice one stat for another without spending OP, because when you're already using OP to make your ship thougher, why would you also want to lose mobility?
It kinda didn't sit right with me :P
There's Star Legend that kinda does this already, but what I had in mind was more control, more a form of optimizing your ship exactly the way you want to optimize it.
​
Making custom ships from scratch like with the weapon idea wouldn't probably be possible, but even if, I would say there's enough mods out there that offer exactly the ship you want. I'm kinda happy with the choices we have in vanilla tbh! But hey, if it's possible, maybe even that could be a cool feature, right? There's everything you need though...
...Beside a capital sized Civilian Transporter and a cruiser sizer Tanker. I feel those two are missing. That always bothered me... we have freighters all sizes from Frigates up to Capital, and for civilian transportation we get only up to Starliner? And for Tanker there's Dram Frigate, Phaeton Destroyer, Nothing Cruiser and Prometheus Capital... Now a Tanker cruiser can miss, I don't really care there. Capital size civilian transporter thoguh? That'd be nice :/
​
Since I'm already here and on a roll, One more suggestion for base game or possibly mod idea plus two questions:
Suggestion: I'd say it would be nice, when in custom production mode (the vanilla one, not this obscenity I've written right now), if we were able to decide what new ships are going to be fitted with, instead of getting random weapons/fighters/hullmods. Maybe take one from our saved Refit options, that includes only blueprints we own of course. I'm getting lots of useless weapons I need to sell whenever I produce ships... If the cost goes up, it's ok.
1) Whats the Order tab in the Command window for (Hotkey D, Hotkey 2)? Future feature?
2) Producing ships or weapons should be theoretically profitable, right? Why it isn't?

There might not have been a MAME release for November, but I’ve continued to upload videos to my YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/mamehaze I’d appreciate it if people could subscribe to the channel and enable notifications, as it really helps spread the word with regards to what we’ve been doing.
The videos uploaded recently are a mix of current progress, and things from earlier in the year that didn’t really get much attention. I’ll highlight a few recent ones and talk here a little about them
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Quartet / Quartet 2 protection fix - https://youtu.be/jVnMmx4FNqQ
This Sega 80s classic has been emulated incorrectly for the entire history of the MAME project. From level 15 onwards the game makes use of the protection MCU to animate some doors and platforms in the levels. The old protection simulation didn’t handle these, and the MCU hookup, once the MCU had been dumped, was left incomplete and not being allowed to access the TileRAM in order to render the platforms. This has been fixed in the next MAME release, previously the only set that rendered these at all was a single unprotected set of the cost-reduced Quartet 2.
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Black Touch II (Korean game created from 'Shanghai II' code) - https://youtu.be/BQv8-kmmsmg
Korean ‘original’ games were often created by hacking other games. Black Touch II is no exception, and is a hack of Shanghai II. This is the 3rd Black Touch game to be supported in MAME, with the original Black Touch being a hack of one of the Dynax Tile Matching games, and Black Touch ‘96 being a terrible (but original) Beat ‘em Up title. While getting this supported isn’t too interesting from a gameplay perspective, it is important in documenting and preserving the history of Korean arcades, many of which were exported to European markets (which is where this one was found)
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Break Ball (Arcade Pinball) - https://youtu.be/XQKCpOoZq8A
This was added some releases back by an anonymous contributor. It’s an arcade Pinball game running on Bellfruit’s “Cobra” hardware. It was developed by Attention To Detail, and published by Bellfruit. Unlike most games running on Bellfruit hardware this is a pure video game with no gambling elements. There are multiple tables accessible via the exit on the starting one with a variety of things to do in each table. The novelty here is you can also move the flippers left and right.
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Merry Circus (Video Slots) - https://youtu.be/mJxCpOBn3eg
I did the emulation of the Amcoe video slot platform around a decade ago now, but some games were not fully dumped at the time. Merry Circus was one of those, with a dump finally showing up earlier in the year, when it was added to little fanfare. It’s a 25-line video slot game, so you get what you see really. There are still a few of these with incomplete dumps, or known missing revisions, and while they’re not too exciting on their own, it’s another step towards them all being properly represented
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Sudoku Games TV Games
https://youtu.be/Rh104jmfXFs - New York Times Sudoku
https://youtu.be/jJEdEIl0jZo - 6-in-1 Sudoku
https://youtu.be/XkkgGxBDLd8 - Sudoku Plug & Play
https://youtu.be/UH5Qt7lhxsQ - Zudo-go / 2udo-go
One thing I have noticed while doing these Plug and Play TV Games is just how many Sudoku ones there were. It seems like the popularity of Plug and Plays coincided with the popularity of Sudoku, so it often ended up being the primary selling point, even in units with many more bonus games. Seeing how there were both dedicated units with controls specifically designed for Sudoku, and multi-game units where the Sudoku game was played with a regular pad is interesting.
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JungleTac’s SunPlus games – Lexibook units
https://youtu.be/dkKAyehyJsE Lexibook JG7410 100-in-1
https://youtu.be/KI0-jTHB9zo Lexibook JG7415 120-in-1
The 120 in 1 version of this, which is the most complete collection of these has been emulated for a while, the 100 in 1 version, which is just the same but with 20 fewer games was recently dumped. I noticed that at no point had I done a video covering all the games from these units, so that’s what these videos are about. The 100-in-1 video is long, while the 120-in-1 video just covers the additional 20 games found on that unit. Together this is almost 4 hours of footage so recording it was a considerable time investment.
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Code Lyoko 25-in-1 Handheld - https://youtu.be/fxbDi7Dedsk
This is an unusual one, it takes the 25 of games found in the Family Sport Plug and Play / Handheld units that were developed by Senca, and rethemes 5 of them with Code Lyoko skins. While it’s common to see the Jungletac games from the previous unit rethemed, this is the first time we’ve seen the Family Sport ones with a new coat of paint.
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Plug 'n' Play Rockstar Guitar (alt songs) - https://youtu.be/hhSBhxRaUHA
These Plug ‘n’ Play guitars came with a variety of presentation styles and song selections. This is the version that contains Manic Street Preachers “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough” and uses the 2D style presentation rather the ‘into the screen’ highway more associated with Guitar Hero. This is my preferred song selection, and preferred presentation style, so I’m happy this one was dumped, even if I’m terrible at all of these things.
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Arcade 10-in-1 handheld - https://youtu.be/Tr_4D1Npe4c
These low-resolution handhelds have been sold in different forms as stocking fillers for the past decade, and appear to be based on a variety of different technologies. I showed some footage of these a few months back, but the code to allow them to run in MAME was merged so this will be supported in the next release. There’s no sound, and it still has a NOT WORKING tag, but it should be playable. This specific 10-in-1 unit seems illogical from a sales point of view, as it’s a cut down version of the 150-in-1 units. With the 150-in-1 units you were getting quantity over quality, so could usually find something to keep you busy for half an hour. With the 10-in-1 units you’re getting neither quantity nor quality and many of the more interesting games are missing. The video covers all of them, and also an amusing ‘out of bounds’ glitch you can perform in the snake game.
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ABL Pinball Plug and Play - https://youtu.be/skngmM9GJ34
This is another NES VT derived Plug and Play that I forgot to give any coverage to when I emulated it earlier in the year, and like Break Ball it seemed to slip completely under the radar. It actually seems to be an elaborate hack of the Famicom “Family Pinball” game, but with a new menu system and all references to Pac-Man / Namco removed. Cheeky.
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Tele Story (unfinished work-in-progress)
https://youtu.be/gZljMqa2Fts Winnie the Pooh Tele Story
https://youtu.be/MjE9UhR1m0E Dora The Explorer Tele Story
https://youtu.be/CJ5RU79mXSs Dora The Explorer Tele Story (Spanish version)
This is progress from earlier in the year, that was never finished, because I got stuck trying to figure out the audio decoding on the speech. These require a debug hack to boot in MAME, but I wanted to make videos of them so that people can see the state of them as we leave 2020. I’m tempted to upload more of these.
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GPL16250 progress (unfinished work in progress)
https://youtu.be/Z2ieRKa9LD0 (compilation video of many JAKKS Pacific Plug and Plays using the tech)
https://youtu.be/b9HJ3PZ7Z6o (Beijue 16-bit handheld 220 in 1)
The GPL16250 is the step after the tech used by most of the emulated SunPlus games; it offered higher resolution, more layers, better blending, and sprite zooming / distortion. Sometimes things running on the older tech got ported to this too, as was the case for some of these handhelds. Progress stalled on these as a combination of CPU bugs and video hardware not being fully understood combined to halt any meaningful progress with many games not booting. Also a lot of games using this tech use custom motion controls and the like, or have complex NAND detection and loading routines to further complicate things. Much like the Telestory, I felt it would be a good idea to make this video to show where we are as we leave 2020.
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Chess Computers - Mini Sensory Chess Challenger (1982 version)
https://youtu.be/AWqPCY5Lhng
MAME has done a lot for the emulation of Electronic Chess Computers over the year, mainly from developer ‘hap’ These are non-video units, but MAME simulates the physical boards using the artwork system and some scripts. Emulating things that don’t have a traditional video output is a big part of what MAME does these days, and seeing these done really is up there with things like the Game & Watch emulation.
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I’ve also been using my website as a ‘screenshot dump’ for newly emulated systems, see https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2020-fully-embracing-the-new-vision/ although at this point in time I consider the website to be a secondary way of reporting progress; most of what I do is going to end up on YouTube or Twitter first, so as I mentioned at the start, if you want to have a steady flow of videos from things we’re doing, or have done (and maybe some extra MAME / emulation related content) then please hit subscribe on YouTube.

Sorry this one’s probably coming out a little later in the day than usual. Unexpected plans came up with my old Pathfinder group. Anyway for day 22, we have Teemo, the bane of many a league of legends player’s existence.

• Basic Champion Information
  • Image
    • Teemo
  • Lore
    • Undeterred by even the most dangerous and threatening of obstacles, Teemo scouts the world with boundless enthusiasm and a cheerful spirit. A yordle with an unwavering sense of morality, he takes pride in following the Bandle Scout's Code, sometimes with such eagerness that he is unaware of the broader consequences of his actions. Though some say the existence of the Scouts is questionable, one thing is for certain: Teemo's conviction is nothing to be trifled with. (Teemo Champion Page)
    • ''Teemo rides a thin line between chipper compatriot and unrepentant killer, but there's no one else I'd rather have as a friend.'' ~ Tristana
    • Teemo’s biography can be found here also, he is featured in the recent LoR cinematic, Don’t Mess with Yordles. (It’s super cute with really really good character animation. Idk if you watch TBSkyen, but if you’re into art/animation stuff, it’s really fun listening to him talk about this stuff.)
• Goals/Gameplay Mechanics we want to emulate
  • Sneaky
    • Really good at stealth/camouflage
    • Also gets the Invisibility spell
  • Slight Traps
    • We gotta find a way to emulate Teemo’s mushroom nukes
    • With our little investment, the most we’re getting for this is probably stinking cloud from Lv 5 Bard
  • Blinding if possible
    • Blindness/Deafness from Lv 3 Bard
  • Schmoovin
    • Boi run fast
  • Poison
    • Poisoners feat gives us access to affordable poison with a kinda shitty non scaling save, but it also gets us access to proficiency with the poisoner’s kit to let you craft/collect poisons at the discretion of your DM. You also ignore Poison Resist.
• Background/Race/Stats/Class
  • Faceless (You got a split personality)
    • Proficiency: Deception, Intimidation, Disguise Kit, Language of your choice
    • Feature: Dual Personalities: Most of your fellow adventurers and the world know you as your persona. Those who seek to learn more about you—your weakness, your origins, your purpose—find themselves stymied by your disguise. Upon donning a disguise and behaving as your persona, you are unidentifiable as your true self. By removing your disguise and revealing your true face, you are no longer identifiable as your persona. This allows you to change appearances between your two personalities as often as you wish, using one to hide the other or serve as convenient camouflage. However, should someone realize the connection between your persona and your true self, your deception might lose its effectiveness.
  • Lightfoot Halfling
    • +2 Dex +1 Cha
    • Natural Stealthy
    • Halfling Luck
    • Brave
    • Nimble
    • Languages: Common, Halfling
  • Stats: 15/14/13/12/10/8
    • 8 Str
    • 16 Dex
    • 10 Con
    • 12 Int
    • 13 Wis
    • 16 Cha
  • 5 Whispers Bard/15 Scout Rogue (25% Chipper Companion 75% Unrepentant Killer)
    • Starting HP: 8
    • HP/Lv: 1d8+Con Mod
    • Hit Die: 1d8/Lv
    • Proficiency: Light Armor, Simple Weapons, Hand Crossbows, Longswords, Rapiers, Crossbows (Use darts if you wanna stick closer to Flavor. A Hand Crossbow will also be fine once we get Crossbow Expert), 3 Instruments of your choice, Stealth, Perception, Acrobatics
• Lv 1 Bard
  • Spellcasting
    • Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier
    • Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier
  • Bardic Inspiration 1d6
  • Cantrips
    • Friends
    • Vicious Mockery
  • 4 Lv 1 Spells
    • Longstrider
    • Tasha’s Hideous Laughter
    • Charm Person
    • Identify
• Lv 2 Bard
  • Jack of All Trades
  • Song of Rest (1d6)
  • Lv 1 Spell
    • Heroism
• Lv 3 Bard
  • College of Whispers
    • Psychic Blades (affordable on hit damage if you dont mind using your inspiration die)
    • Words of Terror (Never underestimate the power of the Scout’s Code)
  • Expertise
    • Stealth, Intimidation
  • Lv 2 Spell
    • Blindness/Deafness
• Lv 4 Bard
  • Feat: Poisoner
  • Lv 2 Spell
    • Invisibility
• Lv 5 Bard
  • Bardic Inspiration D8
  • Lv 2 Spell
    • Stinking Cloud
• Lv 1 Rogue
  • Expertise: Acrobatics, Perception
  • Sneak Attack 1d6
  • Thieves’ Cant
• Lv 2 Rogue
  • Cunning Action
• Lv 3 Rogue
  • Sneak Attack 2d6
  • Scout
    • Skirmisher
    • Proficiency: Nature, Survival
• Lv 4 Rogue
  • Feat: Crossbow Expert
• Lv 5 Rogue
  • Sneak Attack 3d6
  • Uncanny Dodge
• Lv 6 Rogue
  • Expertise: Nature
• Lv 7 Rogue
  • Sneak Attack 4d6
  • Evasion
• Lv 8 Rogue
  • ASI: +2 Dex (18 total)
• Lv 9 Rogue
  • Sneak Attack 5d6
  • Superior Mobility (We schmoovin)
• Lv 10 Rogue
  • ASI +2 Dex (20 Total)
• Lv 11 Rogue
  • Sneak Attack 6d6
  • Reliable Talent
• Lv 12 Rogue
  • ASI +2 Cha (18 total)
• Lv 13 Rogue
  • Ambush Master
  • Sneak Attack 7d6
• Lv 14 Rogue
  • Blindsense
• Lv 15 Rogue
  • Slippery Mind
  • Sneak Attack 8d6
• Pros
  • Very stealthy
  • 8d6 Sneak Attacks, plus access to poisons and a few small psychic damage options
  • Skill monkey. Teemo’s got Merit badges man
  • Mobile
• Cons
  • Poison is very boom or bust
  • Low Con. You are very very squishy
  • Low Strength
  • Limited spells and spell slots and inspiration

As we all know, CWII was a bust, but I believe my 3-day format would fix most, if not all the issues that people have with CWII.
Below is a summary of a Google doc linked below, for more details and explanations on everything click the link.
My reasoning is all on the Google doc. If you have questions there is a fair chance it's on the doc
Note: I have ran simulations of 10,000 clans using Python, if you are interested in looking at my (extremely hacky) code that link is also below.
Ok. Now on to the meat of the post.

Overview:

CWIII is a three day war system, featuring up to 100 clans in a single war.
Day 1:

• This is the collection day (Think CWI collection day on steroids)
• Each war a random collection of 60 cards plus some staple cards (log, fireball, etc.) would be available to each clan
• To collect these cards, every player in the clan battles using one of three methods:
  • Own Deck
    • Press battle
    • You will be matched up against a random player
    • Each player votes on a game mode (e.g. 7x elixir, spawn-behind-tower, normal)
    • Random choice between the two votes
    • Choose a deck from your deck slots (after the gamemode has been chosen)
    • Battle
  • 2v2
    • Same as own deck except it’s 2v2
  • Provided Deck
    • Press battle
    • You will be matched up against a random player
    • Each player votes on a game mode (e.g. classic decks, mirror)
    • Random choice between the two votes
    • Battle
• Each player can battle as much as they want, but the amount of cards from a single win would start off massive but then decrease over time

Day 2: (Think CWI war day on steroids and crack)

• Battle day!
• Each clan gets a total of 60 matches to divide amongst its members
  • However, no player can battle more than twice
• Hard level caps based on league (Bronze:9 to Legendary:13)
• Use the cards from day 1 at the levels from day 1, but not higher than your own levels
• Every war battle is a Duel (bo3)
  • Can't use the same deck in multiple matches
    • However each deck can share up to three cards
  • If a player is doing two Duels, they can use the same 3 decks

Trophy system:

• Each Duel win = 1 clan trophy
• Based on your place among the 100 clans, there are bonus trophies
  • E.g. +25 bonus trophies for first
  • -25 trophies for last
• Total trophies earned per war = (# of wins + bonus trophies)

Day 3:

• Cooldown day
• Collect rewards
• Award trophies to each clan
• Minigames or special challenges

Also Included:

• Clan Wars global leaderboard
  • Top few clans each season get free Pass Royale
• Challenge tokens

Benefits of this structure:

• Each day has structure and a purpose
• Lots of gamemodes for the casual
• Competitive structure for the competitive
• Lots of rewards for everyone

​
Link to code (Python3): Here
Link to Google Doc with further details and explanations and reasoning: Here

Hey everyone! Mulligan here & today I wanted to share the deck I used from Platinum 4 to get to Masters this season. For those new, I’ve been playing Legends of Runeterra since the Preview Patch days late last year & have been doing content creation on Youtube for the game & streaming it on Twitch off & on since January of this year. A few might remember me from videos like “How Good is Legends of Runeterra?” & the beginner guide I did later on.
I’ll be taking some inspiration from u/ImpetuousPandaa’s deck analysis format for this guide. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do this guide was because of this deck’s solid matchup against TF Go Hard, one of the most popular & strongest decks in the current meta while having solid game against most of the rest of the field.
​

History

This deck is not a new concept. It’s a deck that many players & content creators have experimented with throughout Legends of Runeterra's history. As far as my own history with the archetype, I’ve been personally building & playing some variant of Demacia Shadow Isles off and on since Open Beta started, choosing to stick with Lucian for the vast majority of it. However, I didn’t start utilizing Kalista and the Last Breath unit package until the Rising Tides meta because I was heavily inspired by the success of Endure decks. Up until that point, I was largely just pairing Lucian with Ephemerals and/or Hecarim (Kalista was one of the worst champions in the game back then). The deck had legs but for most of Rising Tides, it felt like a worse version of Endure mainly because they played so similarly, but The Harrowing hadn’t been buffed yet. I was using Cithria at the time but ultimately ended up cutting her due to being too slow for the Endure/Tempo Sejuani meta back then before putting the deck down. Fast forward to Harrowing’s cost reduction, I started testing the deck again with Harrowing in it and trying a lot of different cards. Soon after, Swim popularized his own take on the list which included Cithria, the card I had previously cut. Our lists looked nearly identical with the same Kalista unit package, but we never shared tech with each other. Our lists just happened to end up being very close despite building them independently of each other. Anyway, I did end up adding Cithria back in and the deck has pretty much looked the same ever since. I say all this because some will undoubtedly be familiar with this particular version of the deck. However, this guide will be geared towards newer players or players that aren’t familiar with this deck. Also, hitting Masters with this deck is a little extra special for me because this deck has been a labor of love. It feels good to get to the top rank with your own creation, even if it is just a personal take on an archetype that plenty of others have built their own versions of at the end of the day.
If you were an Endure player who enjoyed the playstyle of that deck and you miss that playstyle, then this guide is for you. The gameplan of this deck is very similar to Endure.
​

Basic Variables

• Region: NA
• Decklist & Code: here CECAEAQFAQDAKAIFAMNB4MBRAQAQAFQ2EEZQCAYABYBACAIFBMAQEBIBAA
• Starting Rank: Platinum 4
• Final Rank: Masters
• Final Winrate: 67.96% totaling 103 games

​

Gameplan

As I stated before, the gameplan of this deck is very similar to the Endure decks we saw in previous metas and still see from time to time. You have a highly synergistic group of Last Breath units and units that proactively sacrifice your Last Breath units to help your champions Lucian and Kalista level up. However, instead of sacrificing and trading off units to build towards a giant They Who Endure, you are instead building towards a very powerful Harrowing that involves reviving Ephemeral versions of Cithria, a leveled up Kalista and whatever the next strongest units that died during that game were. Similar to other decks that play The Harrowing such as Hecarim, each Harrowing you play is more powerful than the last one. This deck, in my opinion, is slightly faster than Endure because it looks to end the game anywhere between rounds 6 and 9, although the deck is capable of ending games even faster with the right start.
​

The Decklist

0-1 mana

• 2x Ravenous Butcher: synergy with some of our other early threats like Cursed Keeper & Warden’s Prey. Can allow for very explosive starts such as round 1 Barkbeast, round 2 Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher and attack for 10 damage when going second. You don’t actively want to look for those 3 cards in your opening hand. We’re only running 2 because this card can sit dead in your hand at times.
• 3x Barkbeast: Part of the Last Breath package with Kalista. As mentioned with Butcher, can facilitate very explosive starts though, again, you don’t actively look for the 3 card combo involving this card. A 1 mana 3/3 that can go a long way once activated, which this deck does easily enough.
• 3x Warden’s Prey: This is the 1 drop of choice because you’re fine with getting practically any Last Breath follower that comes out of it. There are 12 possible followers as of right now. Only 2 of them are actually bad: Caustic Cask and Thorny Toad. And Caustic Cask can help you level up your champions, is a good target for Caretaker or Butcher and can even represent lethal in certain scenarios; something that has happened for me twice now since playing this deck, which is pretty hilarious. I think Warden’s Prey is better than Hapless Aristocrat because you don’t want random 1/1’s sitting around on your board when preparing for a big Harrowing later on and it’s even better than Fleetfeather Tracker because it has synergy with Caretaker and Butcher, unlike Tracker.

2 mana

• 3x Cursed Keeper: one of the most important followers in this deck. Amazing synergy with Ravenous Butcher and Blighted Caretaker because you get a bigger threat from its Last Breath ability without giving up board position.
• 3x Glimpse Beyond: still a solid card, especially in this deck. It has synergy with our Last Breath units, helps our champions to level up and gives us some card draw so we don’t run out of gas as quickly. You’ll still ideally use this defensively in response to an opponent targeting one of your units or to prevent an opposing unit from getting Lifesteal like Radiant Guardian. You can use this proactively but often your target is going to be Cursed Keeper in that scenario and you really want to only do that if you need more cards or need to find a specific card like The Harrowing very soon.
• 3x Lucian: he kind of acts as a second Kalista given he has similar level up requirements, but thanks to his recent quality of life buff in the last balance patch, his Rally ability goes off much more consistently once you level him up. This deck can set up situations where Lucian will Rally even on the same turn he levels up, giving you additional attacks to push more damage and end games. This deck is capable of ending games as early as round 4 with Lucian if you have the right start. That said, he is still difficult to level up, even in a deck like this. Not running Senna only makes this harder. Senna isn’t in here mainly because we’re already playing Kalista as a 3 drop, but there are other reasons why which I’ll get to later. Lucian also has amazing synergy with Kalista if you can level up both of them and keep them in play since the Ephemeral that Kalista summons will trigger Lucian’s Rally ability to attack again. Add Cithria into the mix and it only gets more disgusting since anything that attacks with Cithria twice gets +2/+2 and Fearsome. Though be careful when attacking with Kalista a second time in the same round. She won’t make another Ephemeral.
• 3x Sharpsight: it’s in here just because it’s a good card. I used to run Mark of the Isles in my early builds of Lucian Shadow Isles back in Open Beta and I always wished Mark didn’t kill my own unit, so Sharpsight is a dream come true. It doesn’t really have specific synergies with the deck. This just helps you keep your champions alive or helps you win a combat scenario just like any other pump spell in the game. Allowing your units to block opposing Elusives is just icing on the cake. It comes up sometimes, but not often in this meta. This also helps when blocking against Fearsome decks.
• 3x Single Combat: some might think Single Combat in this type of deck is weird since you usually see it in Demacia decks running bigger units that can take better advantage of it. I can assure you it works quite well in this deck despite your smaller units since you don’t mind your units dying anyway. This can also help you level up your champions. Without this card, there would be matchups where this deck would simply struggle since this provides cheap removal. It can combo with Sharpsight if absolutely necessary.

3 mana

• 3x Blighted Caretaker: one of the most powerful cards in this deck. This is the glue that holds the entire Last Breath package together in my opinion. It has synergy with nearly all of our early game followers, will level Kalista up just on its own, can almost level Lucian up on its own and helps to control the board in the early game by removing smaller threats. The Challenger tokens can also help you push early damage even if they can’t actually kill opposing blockers. Playing Caretaker and challenging the only two units on your opponent’s board while your other 3 units push for 8+ damage as early as round 4 is a fairly common scenario for this deck. This card is almost single handedly responsible for crushing Go Hard decks the way we do and helps us have game against other matchups like Scouts. This card is extremely good even if you’re going second and you play this on round 4. In fact, it’s arguably even better in that scenario since that allows you to play Kalista first. You’ll be extremely hard pressed to cut this card, though there is one new card from Cosmic Creations I’m willing to cut this card for if necessary and experiment with - that being The Grand Plaza.
• 3x Kalista: the champion that you run this particular Last Breath package with and further supports the aggressive gameplan this deck has. She is reason number 1 why your Harrowing turns are so powerful. Kalista is fairly easy to level up for this deck and when she does, she is extremely hard to get rid of with just combat damage from other units. In nearly every scenario, your opponent needs to spend a card on the Ephemeral unit she generates to actually remove Kalista - and even then she might still take her blocker down with her. She combos very well with Cithria but will snowball in general as your bigger units die since she always brings back the one with the highest Power. In most combat scenarios, you’ll need to make sure Kalista is to the left of Cithria if you have both of them in play. So unit positioning does matter somewhat.

5-6 mana

• 2x Neverglade Collector: the flex slot in this deck. Collector is a bit slow and sometimes a weak play hence why I only run 2 copies, but if you can set Collector up, this can help you push for the final points of damage that you need in case even your Fearsome units from Cithria and/or Harrowing can’t get through. Speaking of Harrowing, Collector has excellent synergy with it, letting you drain your opponent’s Nexus for up to 5 damage once the Ephemerals end up dying. It’s a bit slow against aggro decks, but it can provide crucial healing over time against them, especially since you usually just want to trade 1 for 1 against aggro and simply stay alive and stabilize instead of trying to get extra value. A card I am definitely willing to cut to experiment with other cards once the next expansion drops, but it has done just enough to stay in the deck.
• 3x Cithria the Bold: reason number 2 why your Harrowing turns are so powerful. Absolutely ridiculous card if you have a leveled up Kalista in play, though, again make sure Cithria is to the right of Kalista if you swing in with both of them. Anyway, Cithria goes hand in hand with The Harrowing. Neither card is very good in this deck without the other, though Cithria would be especially bad without Harrowing. Giving your squad Fearsome is what allows you to push damage and finish games fairly quickly before other decks come online. You’ll typically need your units to be semi-unblockable in order to win with this deck, though not always.
• 3x Remembrance: a very strong card in this deck though it’s played in a completely different way than in a deck running Lux and/or Mageseekers. You do not want to skip your first 2 turns just to play this on turn 3. Instead, you’re typically going to play this card after a bunch of your units have died in combat and this deck is capable of setting up turns where you’re able to play this for as little as 1 mana and, occasionally, even for free. This will usually happen on rounds 4 or 5 if Remembrance is in your hand. Again, you're a Harrowing deck so you don’t mind sometimes giving up part of your board to both weaken your opponent's board and play this card for cheap afterwards. You’ll be getting some of those units back later with Harrowing and hoping to finish the game at that point. It also works as defense against board wipes like The Ruination or Avalanche since you’re able to play this for cheaper if some or all of your units die at once. This card and Blighted Caretaker kind of shore up the fact that this deck doesn’t have any 4 mana units to play. It doesn’t really need to play one and this style of deck needs to save mana at some point in order to Harrowing before round 9 if necessary.

9 mana

• 3x The Harrowing: the card that makes this whole deck function. This deck would lack a lot of finishing power if not for this card, something I can personally attest to when playing this deck with just Cithria during Rising Tides since Harrowing wasn’t buffed yet. This card is largely what differentiates this deck from something like Endure, even though the gameplans are similar. Where Endure is heavily reliant on one unit and very weak to silence effects like Hush, this deck utilizes The Harrowing with Cithria and Kalista to create powerful board states that are more resilient to Hush and can still finish games. Also, you will not always Harrowing for 6 units or even 5 units. Sometimes, you can’t win in two rounds unless you cast Harrowing right now, so be comfortable with playing a Harrowing for 3 or 4 units, especially if you’re getting stuff like Cithria and Kalista back.

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Mulligans & Gameplay Tips

In general, you’ll be looking for your early game units that costs anywhere from 0 to 3 mana. However, there are some specific openers you want to be aware of and keeping some of your early units will depend on the other early units you already have in your hand:

• (Barkbeast) + Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher (especially when going second)
• Barkbeast + Lucian - decent since if Barkbeast dies that works towards Lucian leveling up and if Lucian dies, then Barkbeast becomes a 3/3. By extension, double Barkbeast works in a similar way.
• Any 1 drop or Cursed Keeper + Kalista + Blighted Caretaker (when going second) - if you don’t have a 1 drop, I would be very careful keeping the rest of this against aggro as it might be a bit too slow. Simply blocking with units is almost as good as Challenging with Caretaker.
• Warden’s Prey + Blighted Caretaker (especially when going first against a unit heavy deck)

Never keep Ravenous Butcher if you have no other Last Breath units to sacrifice (Keeper or Prey). Never keep any spells or any units costing 5 mana or more because you usually don’t want to play your first spell until turn 4 or later and 5+ mana units are too slow. It is possible you may want to keep Single Combat specifically against Scouts just so you have a way of dealing with Miss Fortune early, but I haven't tested this yet.
Here are some gameplay tips:

• Don’t overvalue Lucian. Leveling up Kalista takes priority over Lucian so don't go out of your way to protect him. The only time you should actively protect Lucian is if there’s a good chance he will level up during a combat and/or you think you can activate his Rally ability on the same turn. That or you are close to leveling him up in general (2+ allies have died since Lucian has hit play). Your main way of protecting Lucian is by simply leaving him out of combat which is the same way you would protect Kalista.
• Positioning matters when it comes to certain units. In most scenarios, Kalista should always be to the left of Cithria when attacking with both so Cithria can buff the Ephemeral. I tend to always put Lucian on the far right if I'm attacking with him since that gives him the best chance to level up or activate Rally. The Sapling tokens from Caretaker usually go on the far left when the opponent's Nexus is high on health and on the far right when they are low on health/we can set up lethal (habit for preventing Lifesteal).
• Sometimes for being a more aggressive deck, this deck almost wants to go second because of the damage output potential as early as round 2 with Butcher + Keeper + Barkbeast and moreso because it allows you to set up Kalista on round 3 and then play Blighted Caretaker on round 4 to level her up. Caretaker is still a powerful play even on round 4.
• Don’t be afraid to use your Barkbeast as a sacrifice target for Blighted Caretaker or even Ravenous Butcher if the Butcher allows you to immediately level Lucian or Kalista up (and, in the case of Lucian, he can Rally if you have another card that kills another one of your allies).
• Be very careful when using Cursed Keeper as your Blighted Caretaker target. In order to get maximum value out of Caretaker when targeting Keeper, you need to make sure you don’t have more than 3 units total on the board before playing Caretaker. Keeper is included in that 3 unit count. Otherwise, you will lose summoned units for each additional unit you have on board above 3, starting with losing your 4/3 from Keeper (if Keeper was your sac target), then the Challenger saplings.
• Plan your Harrowing turns ahead. At the very least, you need to make sure you keep track of how much mana you need to have left over on your current turn if you plan on playing Harrowing next turn. Try to keep track of which of your units have died so you know exactly what units you’re going to get if you do cast Harrowing.

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Matchups

TF Go Hard/Back Alley Poker - 80% WR over 15 games
While this deck crushed Go Hard overall throughout Platinum and Diamond, I think part of it was surprise factor. I suspect the winrate will drop if the Go Hard players know what this deck does, so I think this matchup is closer to 60/40 but still has a solid matchup overall.
Blighted Caretaker is very important to control the board early on, so I always keep it in my opening hand even if I don’t have any targets for it initially. Going first with Caretaker is usually better but sometimes they won’t commit to the board because they’re expecting a Caretaker, so sometimes you don’t mind going second to play Caretaker on round 4 and have either Lucian or Kalista in play beforehand. That way if they do drop TF it’s not a total loss. Keep Kalista at 3 health if you can by the way but you can just spam attacks with her in most situations. Their units are overall weaker than yours. Keeper is also a...keep (lol) in the mulligan especially if you have a Butcher or Caretaker to go along with it. Even a Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher opener is backbreaking for them because they can’t trade their units 1-for-1 and have to use spells to finish ours off and sometimes they don’t have the mana for it or they didn’t find Go Hard in their opener. Don’t be too greedy with that opener if you get it: it’s usually better to slam Keeper + Butcher especially if they’re aggressively playing units early than to save the combo for Kalista value, assuming no Caretaker in your hand. Speaking of Cursed Keeper, later in the game you want to play it in a way where Keeper disrupts their Pack Your Bags forcing them to spend mana on killing Keeper first if they want a full board clear. It also makes their TF Red Cards awkward, so you don’t always want to sacrifice Cursed Keeper right away. It depends on the game state and what you think they can or will do.
The rest is typical Go Hard stuff - Cithria + Harrowing comes online usually before even the first Pack Your Bags if you plan ahead but sometimes you might need to, again, make their Pack Your Bags awkward by possibly slow playing the Harrowing turn (though sometimes you gotta just slam it down), playing Cithria to force them to have a keg, playing Cursed Keeper etc. They can’t deal with Fearsome once you’re set up though (either Cithria is going to be alive when you play Harrowing or she’ll be dead and you get her back when you play Harrowing). The health totals on both sides can get low so don’t be afraid but also try not to take too much damage too early. Overall, our cards line up pretty well against theirs.
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Wraithcaller aka Fearsome - 100% WR over 4 games
Not much of a sample size unfortunately with this including 3 games against the Targon version and 1 game against the mono SI version, but I still wanted to do this matchup because it seemed like on paper, this deck could struggle against Fearsome decks if it gets the wrong opener. I think as long as you’re conscious of the fact that you need 3 power units to block, this deck does fine. Despite having Warden’s Prey and Cursed Keeper, both units that can’t block Fearsome, I will keep them if I have a Butcher or a Caretaker in hand. Butcher gives you a Fearsome blocker and Caretaker will “take care” of their 3/2 Fearsome units (haha). And they’re forced to play to the board so they have no real way around Caretaker. Just be wary of Pale Cascade when trying to take trades if facing the Targon version. As long as you can keep up with their units by playing your own and you eventually find a Caretaker or a Single Combat or two to control the board, you’ll be fine. Since they only have Doombeast for reach, when they lose the board, they almost always lose the game.
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Various Aggro Decks (Spiders, Pirates, Discard) - 77% WR over 9 games
This winrate emcopasses three different decks mainly because the gameplan against all three of these is nearly identical. I lost one game to Pirates and one game to Spiders while winning the rest. That said, I have quite a bit to say about the aggro matchups in general.
You want to stay alive at all costs. Their gameplan is simple: to get your Nexus to zero. That’s all they care about and they will even lose board position and/or tempo if it means you’ll be dead. They don’t care about value. Your job is to stay alive and play a unit that can block every time they play a unit. Trade units off if it keeps damage off your Nexus. Don’t play for value especially since they don’t care about it. They will run out of gas and you’ll be able to take over the game if they didn’t get you low enough because you have better card quality/a better late game than they do. I stress this because people like to complain about aggro but I think some of those same people also play against aggro wrong; trying to get value when they shouldn’t be which leads to some aggro decks in the meta right now to have slightly inflated winrates in my opinion.
The aggro matchup is the only matchup where you don’t want Cursed Keeper in your opening hand unless you have a way of killing it off quickly. Playing a 1/1 for 2 mana on turn 2 that can’t block without a way of killing it the very next turn to get a blocker is a huge tempo loss. And preferably you want Butcher or Caretaker killing Keeper. Single Combat is the next best thing, but not great since you basically just kill a 1 drop (though hitting a Daring Poro can be nice). Remembrance is pretty huge here as is Neverglade Collector, though you don’t want to keep either of these since you need a specific start to even play Remembrance on round 4 and Collector is slow. This goes without saying but you absolutely want to hit Radiant Guardian with Remembrance after one of your units dies, though either Challenger unit is ok too. If you hit a Guardian with Lifesteal, the game usually ends especially if you have Single Combat to pair with it. They’re almost always forced to have Noxian Fervor if you have Guardian fully activated. Collector can keep you alive as long as you have a board left to trade off and slowly swing the game in your favor - they need burst damage to kill you if Collector is down and you have a board.
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Dragons - 83% WR over 6 games
Nearly every Dragon deck I faced had Shyvana paired with Aurelion Sol and unfortunately half of these games were against the same opponent three times in a row so it’s not a huge sample size. One had Shyvana alone. Just to clarify, none of these were ASol Control decks with Lux or Leona. I counted those as a separate matchup.
Not much to say other than look for your 1, 2 and 3 drops like normal, curve out and slam them with Cithria + Harrowing before the game goes too late. If they get to play ASol and you haven’t significantly damaged them before then, the game is likely a loss because ASol. But you shouldn’t be messing around in this matchup anyway if they’re running ASol. Be aggressive and dominate the board if you’re able to. Sadly I never faced Shyvana/Leona as I think that’s the best Dragon deck in the meta right now, so it would’ve been interesting to see how this deck measures up to that variant. You’ll sometimes need to be careful when playing around Dragonguard Lieutenant (and likely Fiora by extension) as they can make you lose board position. Remembrance on turn 4 can rock them if you hit the right unit (pretty much any of them but Guardian) and they don’t have Shyvana on curve.
Even though these didn’t include actual ASol Control decks, I’ll go ahead and say the gameplan is largely the same against them (my WR was 50% against various ASol Control decks with Lux or Leona - splitting even against both versions). Be aggressive and curve out - if they don’t have sufficient early game, you crush them with Harrowing or a Lucian Rally turn. If they do and they drop ASol with a decent board, you lose.
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Noxus Ezreal - 75% WR over 4 games
Small sample size again. Go Hard was just far more popular in Plat and Diamond ranks than Ezreal was. This includes both Swain and Draven versions since they play similarly. I think I only faced one Swain list though.
They don’t have a lot of units so you can freely play to the board. And you’ll have to in order to win the game. You can’t completely stop them from targeting your units with removal and leveling Ezreal up, but you can slow them down a little bit with Glimpse Beyond and Single Combat. Also, they don’t like targeting Cursed Keeper so sometimes you can take the risky line of targeting your own Keeper with Glimpse if you need more cards, but don’t make it a habit. It’s a risky line in general. Save Single Combat for Ezreal if you can since these days people just drop Ezreal down without leveling him first and considering the matchup - at least below Masters anyway. He can get annoying by removing your stuff with Mystic Shots. Draven is annoying to block as well but is manageable. Caretaker + Sharpsight can go a long way removing both of them if you don’t have Single Combat. I would argue you need to see either Single Combat or Blighted Caretaker to have a good chance of winning, otherwise they can run away with the game (my one loss was mainly due to not drawing either). Aside from that, they can’t stop the Cithria Harrowing so once you have that set up, they kinda just die as long as you’re not too low on health.
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Scouts - 50% WR over 8 games
I went from demolishing Scouts in Platinum to losing to nearly every single Scouts deck in Diamond. After thinking over how all the games went, I feel like this matchup comes down to a few things. I actually think this deck is either slightly unfavored or it has an even matchup at best.
This matchup feels like it leans HEAVILY on whether or not the Scout player has Miss Fortune on curve. Scouts is a little bit faster than this deck in the sense that they hit their peak a turn or two faster than this deck does. They’re ending the game on turn 6 and while we can also end the game on turn 6 and sometimes even sooner, it’s far more common for our deck to finish games between turns 7 and 9. Miss Fortune and Quinn facilitate that. If they drop MF on curve round 3, we likely lose regardless. If they hit Miss Fortune AND Quinn, we lose, even if they didn’t play MF until round 4. They’re going to flip MF, kill our board with MF triggers plus Valor and likely flip Quinn as well. If they hit neither champion or they only play Quinn, the game swings heavily in our favor because they didn’t do enough to take the board from us and we’ll crush them.
The best thing you can do is play your game, curve out and match their board and try to go blow for blow. The challenger tokens from Blighted Caretaker don’t kill either champion (or most of their other units for that matter) without Sharpsight backup - but they have Sharpsight to protect their units as well. Caretaker can still be OK since it can help you push additional Nexus damage and your damage is going to stick in this matchup. It can be tough because their units are overall slightly bigger than ours but, again, they need to hit their champions to truly beat us and they don’t always find them. Every Diamond player I faced did though :)
Again, this may be the one matchup you want to keep Single Combat if you have it just because dealing with Miss Fortune is so crucial. I haven't tested this though.
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Fiora/Shen - 40% WR over 5 games
A slightly unfavored matchup. The winrate goes up if you’re going first and you play Blighted Caretaker on curve to kill whatever units they played earlier and dominate the board. This is because their key protection spells cost 4 mana. You do need to be careful around Fiora, who is bigger than your Caretakers. Try not to give her free kills and use Glimpse Beyond and Single Combat on the units she targets (or try to kill her while playing around combat tricks in the case of Single Combat). Fiora/Shen is a dance. You can tell whether or not their hand is heavy on units or spells based on their first few turns. It’s when they get enough of a board with mana backed up to use spells to protect their units that makes them scary. Either be aggressive and punish them for having a hand light on units or take trades that benefit you and make things awkward for the Fiora/Shen player. Never let them build a board if at all possible. Shen isn’t nearly as scary if he has no units to protect. Expect to not pull off a Harrowing since they run Deny, but sometimes your hands are tied and you need to force them to have Deny. Pretty tough matchup.
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Other Matchups (Tahm Raka, FTFTM/WarmotheK-Pop Yetis/they’re all the same let’s be honest - 50% WR against all of them)
Not a lot of games against these. I went positive against the K-Pop Yetis while going overall negative against other FTWarmother lists but it evened out at the end.
Against Soraka TK, I think we are unfavored. We can’t slam Fearsome units on command and usually need to set up turns where that happens, which won’t be until round 6 at the earliest. The two most important cards in this matchup are Kalista and Cithria. You need to keep these two alive because they are how you will push damage. This matchup feels like a delicate balance between setting up a lethal turn while dancing around Tahm Kench capturing your units with Single Combat and your other cheap spells. Play Kalista ASAP though - she’ll just slam 4-5 damage down their throat and there’s little they can do about it if they’re also curving out (they only have Pale Cascade as defense). Sometimes you will get the Lucian flip into Rally highroll and kill them on turn 4, but you can’t rely on that.
Against the various Freljord Shadow Isles control decks sporting their favorite wincon, build your board but be wary of Avalanche. This deck is somewhat resilient to it, but you need some key cards: Kalista or Cursed Keeper. Preferably both. This makes their Avalanche awkward. If you don’t pick up either one early and you can’t activate your Barkbeast you might struggle. Blighted Caretaker is a double edged sword: it makes your board weaker to Avalanche but can push damage while leveling your champs at the same time since these decks usually don’t play more than 1 blocker early on. Curve out and be aggressive still. You won’t win this matchup just sitting around. Remembrance will at least keep the threats coming if they do have board wipes. You’ll need to set up a strong Harrowing by round 9 while being wary of The Ruination. Try to keep them off of Ruination mana before round 9, but you might need to bait it out if necessary by building a threatening board first which can also set up free Remembrances if you have them.
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Conclusion

I’ve had a ton of fun with this deck and will likely continue playing it as long as it remains viable. Or if Go Hard continues to be popular, either way. For all we know though, Go Hard might get nerfed in tomorrow’s patch notes. Since I’ve been more involved in the game again lately, I have been putting out content and streaming on a more frequent basis between Youtube and Twitch (though I never truly stopped), so if anyone is interested, you can find links to my Youtube channel, Twitter and my Twitch stream just below. As far as Twitch, I’ve been playing this deck a lot on stream lately and I typically stream on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the early afternoon EST. I upload LoR content on Youtube frequently (moreso than Twitch) as well where you can find guides, card reviews, gameplay and more.
I have done a video guide on this deck previously and I may do an updated one, but I’m waiting to see what tomorrow’s patch will bring first. I hope you enjoyed this read regardless especially since I have a tendency to ramble sometimes :P
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EDIT: There is now, in fact, a video guide for this deck that I recently uploaded to YouTube. The video guide is a bit more concise and also includes gameplay as well as a "bonus deck concept" that runs The Grand Plaza. Link to the YouTube channel is just below.
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YouTube | Twitch | Twitter

Hey everyone! Mulligan here & today I wanted to share the deck I used from Platinum 4 to get to Masters this season. For those new, I’ve been playing Legends of Runeterra since the Preview Patch days late last year & have been doing content creation on Youtube for the game & streaming it on Twitch off & on since January of this year. A few might remember me from videos like “How Good is Legends of Runeterra?” & the beginner guide I did later on.
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I’ll be taking some inspiration from u/ImpetuousPandaa’s deck analysis format for this guide. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do this guide was because of this deck’s solid matchup against TF Go Hard, one of the most popular & strongest decks in the current meta while having solid game against most of the rest of the field.
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History

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This deck is not a new concept. It’s a deck that many players & content creators have experimented with throughout Legends of Runeterra's history. As far as my own history with the archetype, I’ve been personally building & playing some variant of Demacia Shadow Isles off and on since Open Beta started, choosing to stick with Lucian for the vast majority of it. However, I didn’t start utilizing Kalista and the Last Breath unit package until the Rising Tides meta because I was heavily inspired by the success of Endure decks. Up until that point, I was largely just pairing Lucian with Ephemerals and/or Hecarim (Kalista was one of the worst champions in the game back then). The deck had legs but for most of Rising Tides, it felt like a worse version of Endure mainly because they played so similarly, but The Harrowing hadn’t been buffed yet. I was using Cithria at the time but ultimately ended up cutting her due to being too slow for the Endure/Tempo Sejuani meta back then before putting the deck down. Fast forward to Harrowing’s cost reduction, I started testing the deck again with Harrowing in it and trying a lot of different cards. Soon after, Swim popularized his own take on the list which included Cithria, the card I had previously cut. Our lists looked nearly identical with the same Kalista unit package, but we never shared tech with each other. Our lists just happened to end up being very close despite building them independently of each other. Anyway, I did end up adding Cithria back in and the deck has pretty much looked the same ever since. I say all this because some will undoubtedly be familiar with this particular version of the deck. However, this guide will be geared towards newer players or players that aren’t familiar with this deck. Also, hitting Masters with this deck is a little extra special for me because this deck has been a labor of love. It feels good to get to the top rank with your own creation, even if it is just a personal take on an archetype that plenty of others have built their own versions of at the end of the day.
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If you were an Endure player who enjoyed the playstyle of that deck and you miss that playstyle, then this guide is for you. The gameplan of this deck is very similar to Endure.
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Basic Variables

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• Region: NA
• Decklist & Code: here CECAEAQFAQDAKAIFAMNB4MBRAQAQAFQ2EEZQCAYABYBACAIFBMAQEBIBAA
• Starting Rank: Platinum 4
• Final Rank: Masters
• Final Winrate: 67.96% totaling 103 games

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Gameplan

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As I stated before, the gameplan of this deck is very similar to the Endure decks we saw in previous metas and still see from time to time. You have a highly synergistic group of Last Breath units and units that proactively sacrifice your Last Breath units to help your champions Lucian and Kalista level up. However, instead of sacrificing and trading off units to build towards a giant They Who Endure, you are instead building towards a very powerful Harrowing that involves reviving Ephemeral versions of Cithria, a leveled up Kalista and whatever the next strongest units that died during that game were. Similar to other decks that play The Harrowing such as Hecarim, each Harrowing you play is more powerful than the last one. This deck, in my opinion, is slightly faster than Endure because it looks to end the game anywhere between rounds 6 and 9, although the deck is capable of ending games even faster with the right start.
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The Decklist

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0-1 mana

• 2x Ravenous Butcher: synergy with some of our other early threats like Cursed Keeper & Warden’s Prey. Can allow for very explosive starts such as round 1 Barkbeast, round 2 Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher and attack for 10 damage when going second. You don’t actively want to look for those 3 cards in your opening hand. We’re only running 2 because this card can sit dead in your hand at times.
• 3x Barkbeast: Part of the Last Breath package with Kalista. As mentioned with Butcher, can facilitate very explosive starts though, again, you don’t actively look for the 3 card combo involving this card. A 1 mana 3/3 that can go a long way once activated, which this deck does easily enough.
• 3x Warden’s Prey: This is the 1 drop of choice because you’re fine with getting practically any Last Breath follower that comes out of it. There are 12 possible followers as of right now. Only 2 of them are actually bad: Caustic Cask and Thorny Toad. And Caustic Cask can help you level up your champions, is a good target for Caretaker or Butcher and can even represent lethal in certain scenarios; something that has happened for me twice now since playing this deck, which is pretty hilarious. I think Warden’s Prey is better than Hapless Aristocrat because you don’t want random 1/1’s sitting around on your board when preparing for a big Harrowing later on and it’s even better than Fleetfeather Tracker because it has synergy with Caretaker and Butcher, unlike Tracker.

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2 mana

• 3x Cursed Keeper: one of the most important followers in this deck. Amazing synergy with Ravenous Butcher and Blighted Caretaker because you get a bigger threat from its Last Breath ability without giving up board position.
• 3x Glimpse Beyond: still a solid card, especially in this deck. It has synergy with our Last Breath units, helps our champions to level up and gives us some card draw so we don’t run out of gas as quickly. You’ll still ideally use this defensively in response to an opponent targeting one of your units or to prevent an opposing unit from getting Lifesteal like Radiant Guardian. You can use this proactively but often your target is going to be Cursed Keeper in that scenario and you really want to only do that if you need more cards or need to find a specific card like The Harrowing very soon.
• 3x Lucian: he kind of acts as a second Kalista given he has similar level up requirements, but thanks to his recent quality of life buff in the last balance patch, his Rally ability goes off much more consistently once you level him up. This deck can set up situations where Lucian will Rally even on the same turn he levels up, giving you additional attacks to push more damage and end games. This deck is capable of ending games as early as round 4 with Lucian if you have the right start. That said, he is still difficult to level up, even in a deck like this. Not running Senna only makes this harder. Senna isn’t in here mainly because we’re already playing Kalista as a 3 drop, but there are other reasons why which I’ll get to later. Lucian also has amazing synergy with Kalista if you can level up both of them and keep them in play since the Ephemeral that Kalista summons will trigger Lucian’s Rally ability to attack again. Add Cithria into the mix and it only gets more disgusting since anything that attacks with Cithria twice gets +2/+2 and Fearsome. Though be careful when attacking with Kalista a second time in the same round. She won’t make another Ephemeral.
• 3x Sharpsight: it’s in here just because it’s a good card. I used to run Mark of the Isles in my early builds of Lucian Shadow Isles back in Open Beta and I always wished Mark didn’t kill my own unit, so Sharpsight is a dream come true. It doesn’t really have specific synergies with the deck. This just helps you keep your champions alive or helps you win a combat scenario just like any other pump spell in the game. Allowing your units to block opposing Elusives is just icing on the cake. It comes up sometimes, but not often in this meta. This also helps when blocking against Fearsome decks.
• 3x Single Combat: some might think Single Combat in this type of deck is weird since you usually see it in Demacia decks running bigger units that can take better advantage of it. I can assure you it works quite well in this deck despite your smaller units since you don’t mind your units dying anyway. This can also help you level up your champions. Without this card, there would be matchups where this deck would simply struggle since this provides cheap removal. It can combo with Sharpsight if absolutely necessary.

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3 mana

• 3x Blighted Caretaker: one of the most powerful cards in this deck. This is the glue that holds the entire Last Breath package together in my opinion. It has synergy with nearly all of our early game followers, will level Kalista up just on its own, can almost level Lucian up on its own and helps to control the board in the early game by removing smaller threats. The Challenger tokens can also help you push early damage even if they can’t actually kill opposing blockers. Playing Caretaker and challenging the only two units on your opponent’s board while your other 3 units push for 8+ damage as early as round 4 is a fairly common scenario for this deck. This card is almost single handedly responsible for crushing Go Hard decks the way we do and helps us have game against other matchups like Scouts. This card is extremely good even if you’re going second and you play this on round 4. In fact, it’s arguably even better in that scenario since that allows you to play Kalista first. You’ll be extremely hard pressed to cut this card, though there is one new card from Cosmic Creations I’m willing to cut this card for if necessary and experiment with - that being The Grand Plaza.
• 3x Kalista: the champion that you run this particular Last Breath package with and further supports the aggressive gameplan this deck has. She is reason number 1 why your Harrowing turns are so powerful. Kalista is fairly easy to level up for this deck and when she does, she is extremely hard to get rid of with just combat damage from other units. In nearly every scenario, your opponent needs to spend a card on the Ephemeral unit she generates to actually remove Kalista - and even then she might still take her blocker down with her. She combos very well with Cithria but will snowball in general as your bigger units die since she always brings back the one with the highest Power. In most combat scenarios, you’ll need to make sure Kalista is to the left of Cithria if you have both of them in play. So unit positioning does matter somewhat.

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5-6 mana

• 2x Neverglade Collector: the flex slot in this deck. Collector is a bit slow and sometimes a weak play hence why I only run 2 copies, but if you can set Collector up, this can help you push for the final points of damage that you need in case even your Fearsome units from Cithria and/or Harrowing can’t get through. Speaking of Harrowing, Collector has excellent synergy with it, letting you drain your opponent’s Nexus for up to 5 damage once the Ephemerals end up dying. It’s a bit slow against aggro decks, but it can provide crucial healing over time against them, especially since you usually just want to trade 1 for 1 against aggro and simply stay alive and stabilize instead of trying to get extra value. A card I am definitely willing to cut to experiment with other cards once the next expansion drops, but it has done just enough to stay in the deck.
• 3x Cithria the Bold: reason number 2 why your Harrowing turns are so powerful. Absolutely ridiculous card if you have a leveled up Kalista in play, though, again make sure Cithria is to the right of Kalista if you swing in with both of them. Anyway, Cithria goes hand in hand with The Harrowing. Neither card is very good in this deck without the other, though Cithria would be especially bad without Harrowing. Giving your squad Fearsome is what allows you to push damage and finish games fairly quickly before other decks come online. You’ll typically need your units to be semi-unblockable in order to win with this deck, though not always.
• 3x Remembrance: a very strong card in this deck though it’s played in a completely different way than in a deck running Lux and/or Mageseekers. You do not want to skip your first 2 turns just to play this on turn 3. Instead, you’re typically going to play this card after a bunch of your units have died in combat and this deck is capable of setting up turns where you’re able to play this for as little as 1 mana and, occasionally, even for free. This will usually happen on rounds 4 or 5 if Remembrance is in your hand. Again, you're a Harrowing deck so you don’t mind sometimes giving up part of your board to both weaken your opponent's board and play this card for cheap afterwards. You’ll be getting some of those units back later with Harrowing and hoping to finish the game at that point. It also works as defense against board wipes like The Ruination or Avalanche since you’re able to play this for cheaper if some or all of your units die at once. This card and Blighted Caretaker kind of shore up the fact that this deck doesn’t have any 4 mana units to play. It doesn’t really need to play one and this style of deck needs to save mana at some point in order to Harrowing before round 9 if necessary.

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9 mana

• 3x The Harrowing: the card that makes this whole deck function. This deck would lack a lot of finishing power if not for this card, something I can personally attest to when playing this deck with just Cithria during Rising Tides since Harrowing wasn’t buffed yet. This card is largely what differentiates this deck from something like Endure, even though the gameplans are similar. Where Endure is heavily reliant on one unit and very weak to silence effects like Hush, this deck utilizes The Harrowing with Cithria and Kalista to create powerful board states that are more resilient to Hush and can still finish games. Also, you will not always Harrowing for 6 units or even 5 units. Sometimes, you can’t win in two rounds unless you cast Harrowing right now, so be comfortable with playing a Harrowing for 3 or 4 units, especially if you’re getting stuff like Cithria and Kalista back.

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Mulligans & Gameplay Tips

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In general, you’ll be looking for your early game units that costs anywhere from 0 to 3 mana. However, there are some specific openers you want to be aware of and keeping some of your early units will depend on the other early units you already have in your hand:

• (Barkbeast) + Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher (especially when going second)
• Barkbeast + Lucian - decent since if Barkbeast dies that works towards Lucian leveling up and if Lucian dies, then Barkbeast becomes a 3/3. By extension, double Barkbeast works in a similar way.
• Any 1 drop or Cursed Keeper + Kalista + Blighted Caretaker (when going second) - if you don’t have a 1 drop, I would be very careful keeping the rest of this against aggro as it might be a bit too slow. Simply blocking with units is almost as good as Challenging with Caretaker.
• Warden’s Prey + Blighted Caretaker (especially when going first against a unit heavy deck)

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Never keep Ravenous Butcher if you have no other Last Breath units to sacrifice (Keeper or Prey). Never keep any spells or any units costing 5 mana or more because you usually don’t want to play your first spell until turn 4 or later and 5+ mana units are too slow. It is possible you may want to keep Single Combat specifically against Scouts just so you have a way of dealing with Miss Fortune early, but I haven't tested this yet.
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Here are some gameplay tips:

• Don’t overvalue Lucian. Leveling up Kalista takes priority over Lucian so don't go out of your way to protect him. The only time you should actively protect Lucian is if there’s a good chance he will level up during a combat and/or you think you can activate his Rally ability on the same turn. That or you are close to leveling him up in general (2+ allies have died since Lucian has hit play). Your main way of protecting Lucian is by simply leaving him out of combat which is the same way you would protect Kalista.
• Positioning matters when it comes to certain units. In most scenarios, Kalista should always be to the left of Cithria when attacking with both so Cithria can buff the Ephemeral. I tend to always put Lucian on the far right if I'm attacking with him since that gives him the best chance to level up or activate Rally. The Sapling tokens from Caretaker usually go on the far left when the opponent's Nexus is high on health and on the far right when they are low on health/we can set up lethal (habit for preventing Lifesteal).
• Sometimes for being a more aggressive deck, this deck almost wants to go second because of the damage output potential as early as round 2 with Butcher + Keeper + Barkbeast and moreso because it allows you to set up Kalista on round 3 and then play Blighted Caretaker on round 4 to level her up. Caretaker is still a powerful play even on round 4.
• Don’t be afraid to use your Barkbeast as a sacrifice target for Blighted Caretaker or even Ravenous Butcher if the Butcher allows you to immediately level Lucian or Kalista up (and, in the case of Lucian, he can Rally if you have another card that kills another one of your allies).
• Be very careful when using Cursed Keeper as your Blighted Caretaker target. In order to get maximum value out of Caretaker when targeting Keeper, you need to make sure you don’t have more than 3 units total on the board before playing Caretaker. Keeper is included in that 3 unit count. Otherwise, you will lose summoned units for each additional unit you have on board above 3, starting with losing your 4/3 from Keeper (if Keeper was your sac target), then the Challenger saplings.
• Plan your Harrowing turns ahead. At the very least, you need to make sure you keep track of how much mana you need to have left over on your current turn if you plan on playing Harrowing next turn. Try to keep track of which of your units have died so you know exactly what units you’re going to get if you do cast Harrowing.

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Matchups

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TF Go Hard/Back Alley Poker - 80% WR over 15 games
While this deck crushed Go Hard overall throughout Platinum and Diamond, I think part of it was surprise factor. I suspect the winrate will drop if the Go Hard players know what this deck does, so I think this matchup is closer to 60/40 but still has a solid matchup overall.
Blighted Caretaker is very important to control the board early on, so I always keep it in my opening hand even if I don’t have any targets for it initially. Going first with Caretaker is usually better but sometimes they won’t commit to the board because they’re expecting a Caretaker, so sometimes you don’t mind going second to play Caretaker on round 4 and have either Lucian or Kalista in play beforehand. That way if they do drop TF it’s not a total loss. Keep Kalista at 3 health if you can by the way but you can just spam attacks with her in most situations. Their units are overall weaker than yours. Keeper is also a...keep (lol) in the mulligan especially if you have a Butcher or Caretaker to go along with it. Even a Cursed Keeper + Ravenous Butcher opener is backbreaking for them because they can’t trade their units 1-for-1 and have to use spells to finish ours off and sometimes they don’t have the mana for it or they didn’t find Go Hard in their opener. Don’t be too greedy with that opener if you get it: it’s usually better to slam Keeper + Butcher especially if they’re aggressively playing units early than to save the combo for Kalista value, assuming no Caretaker in your hand. Speaking of Cursed Keeper, later in the game you want to play it in a way where Keeper disrupts their Pack Your Bags forcing them to spend mana on killing Keeper first if they want a full board clear. It also makes their TF Red Cards awkward, so you don’t always want to sacrifice Cursed Keeper right away. It depends on the game state and what you think they can or will do.
The rest is typical Go Hard stuff - Cithria + Harrowing comes online usually before even the first Pack Your Bags if you plan ahead but sometimes you might need to, again, make their Pack Your Bags awkward by possibly slow playing the Harrowing turn (though sometimes you gotta just slam it down), playing Cithria to force them to have a keg, playing Cursed Keeper etc. They can’t deal with Fearsome once you’re set up though (either Cithria is going to be alive when you play Harrowing or she’ll be dead and you get her back when you play Harrowing). The health totals on both sides can get low so don’t be afraid but also try not to take too much damage too early. Overall, our cards line up pretty well against theirs.
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Wraithcaller aka Fearsome - 100% WR over 4 games
Not much of a sample size unfortunately with this including 3 games against the Targon version and 1 game against the mono SI version, but I still wanted to do this matchup because it seemed like on paper, this deck could struggle against Fearsome decks if it gets the wrong opener. I think as long as you’re conscious of the fact that you need 3 power units to block, this deck does fine. Despite having Warden’s Prey and Cursed Keeper, both units that can’t block Fearsome, I will keep them if I have a Butcher or a Caretaker in hand. Butcher gives you a Fearsome blocker and Caretaker will “take care” of their 3/2 Fearsome units (haha). And they’re forced to play to the board so they have no real way around Caretaker. Just be wary of Pale Cascade when trying to take trades if facing the Targon version. As long as you can keep up with their units by playing your own and you eventually find a Caretaker or a Single Combat or two to control the board, you’ll be fine. Since they only have Doombeast for reach, when they lose the board, they almost always lose the game.
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Various Aggro Decks (Spiders, Pirates, Discard) - 77% WR over 9 games
This winrate emcopasses three different decks mainly because the gameplan against all three of these is nearly identical. I lost one game to Pirates and one game to Spiders while winning the rest. That said, I have quite a bit to say about the aggro matchups in general.
You want to stay alive at all costs. Their gameplan is simple: to get your Nexus to zero. That’s all they care about and they will even lose board position and/or tempo if it means you’ll be dead. They don’t care about value. Your job is to stay alive and play a unit that can block every time they play a unit. Trade units off if it keeps damage off your Nexus. Don’t play for value especially since they don’t care about it. They will run out of gas and you’ll be able to take over the game if they didn’t get you low enough because you have better card quality/a better late game than they do. I stress this because people like to complain about aggro but I think some of those same people also play against aggro wrong; trying to get value when they shouldn’t be which leads to some aggro decks in the meta right now to have slightly inflated winrates in my opinion.
The aggro matchup is the only matchup where you don’t want Cursed Keeper in your opening hand unless you have a way of killing it off quickly. Playing a 1/1 for 2 mana on turn 2 that can’t block without a way of killing it the very next turn to get a blocker is a huge tempo loss. And preferably you want Butcher or Caretaker killing Keeper. Single Combat is the next best thing, but not great since you basically just kill a 1 drop (though hitting a Daring Poro can be nice). Remembrance is pretty huge here as is Neverglade Collector, though you don’t want to keep either of these since you need a specific start to even play Remembrance on round 4 and Collector is slow. This goes without saying but you absolutely want to hit Radiant Guardian with Remembrance after one of your units dies, though either Challenger unit is ok too. If you hit a Guardian with Lifesteal, the game usually ends especially if you have Single Combat to pair with it. They’re almost always forced to have Noxian Fervor if you have Guardian fully activated. Collector can keep you alive as long as you have a board left to trade off and slowly swing the game in your favor - they need burst damage to kill you if Collector is down and you have a board.
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Dragons - 83% WR over 6 games
Nearly every Dragon deck I faced had Shyvana paired with Aurelion Sol and unfortunately half of these games were against the same opponent three times in a row so it’s not a huge sample size. One had Shyvana alone. Just to clarify, none of these were ASol Control decks with Lux or Leona. I counted those as a separate matchup.
Not much to say other than look for your 1, 2 and 3 drops like normal, curve out and slam them with Cithria + Harrowing before the game goes too late. If they get to play ASol and you haven’t significantly damaged them before then, the game is likely a loss because ASol. But you shouldn’t be messing around in this matchup anyway if they’re running ASol. Be aggressive and dominate the board if you’re able to. Sadly I never faced Shyvana/Leona as I think that’s the best Dragon deck in the meta right now, so it would’ve been interesting to see how this deck measures up to that variant. You’ll sometimes need to be careful when playing around Dragonguard Lieutenant (and likely Fiora by extension) as they can make you lose board position. Remembrance on turn 4 can rock them if you hit the right unit (pretty much any of them but Guardian) and they don’t have Shyvana on curve.
Even though these didn’t include actual ASol Control decks, I’ll go ahead and say the gameplan is largely the same against them (my WR was 50% against various ASol Control decks with Lux or Leona - splitting even against both versions). Be aggressive and curve out - if they don’t have sufficient early game, you crush them with Harrowing or a Lucian Rally turn. If they do and they drop ASol with a decent board, you lose.
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Noxus Ezreal - 75% WR over 4 games
Small sample size again. Go Hard was just far more popular in Plat and Diamond ranks than Ezreal was. This includes both Swain and Draven versions since they play similarly. I think I only faced one Swain list though.
They don’t have a lot of units so you can freely play to the board. And you’ll have to in order to win the game. You can’t completely stop them from targeting your units with removal and leveling Ezreal up, but you can slow them down a little bit with Glimpse Beyond and Single Combat. Also, they don’t like targeting Cursed Keeper so sometimes you can take the risky line of targeting your own Keeper with Glimpse if you need more cards, but don’t make it a habit. It’s a risky line in general. Save Single Combat for Ezreal if you can since these days people just drop Ezreal down without leveling him first and considering the matchup - at least below Masters anyway. He can get annoying by removing your stuff with Mystic Shots. Draven is annoying to block as well but is manageable. Caretaker + Sharpsight can go a long way removing both of them if you don’t have Single Combat. I would argue you need to see either Single Combat or Blighted Caretaker to have a good chance of winning, otherwise they can run away with the game (my one loss was mainly due to not drawing either). Aside from that, they can’t stop the Cithria Harrowing so once you have that set up, they kinda just die as long as you’re not too low on health.
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Scouts - 50% WR over 8 games
I went from demolishing Scouts in Platinum to losing to nearly every single Scouts deck in Diamond. After thinking over how all the games went, I feel like this matchup comes down to a few things. I actually think this deck is either slightly unfavored or it has an even matchup at best.
This matchup feels like it leans HEAVILY on whether or not the Scout player has Miss Fortune on curve. Scouts is a little bit faster than this deck in the sense that they hit their peak a turn or two faster than this deck does. They’re ending the game on turn 6 and while we can also end the game on turn 6 and sometimes even sooner, it’s far more common for our deck to finish games between turns 7 and 9. Miss Fortune and Quinn facilitate that. If they drop MF on curve round 3, we likely lose regardless. If they hit Miss Fortune AND Quinn, we lose, even if they didn’t play MF until round 4. They’re going to flip MF, kill our board with MF triggers plus Valor and likely flip Quinn as well. If they hit neither champion or they only play Quinn, the game swings heavily in our favor because they didn’t do enough to take the board from us and we’ll crush them.
The best thing you can do is play your game, curve out and match their board and try to go blow for blow. The challenger tokens from Blighted Caretaker don’t kill either champion (or most of their other units for that matter) without Sharpsight backup - but they have Sharpsight to protect their units as well. Caretaker can still be OK since it can help you push additional Nexus damage and your damage is going to stick in this matchup. It can be tough because their units are overall slightly bigger than ours but, again, they need to hit their champions to truly beat us and they don’t always find them. Every Diamond player I faced did though :)
Again, this may be the one matchup you want to keep Single Combat if you have it just because dealing with Miss Fortune is so crucial. Again, I haven't tested this though.
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Fiora/Shen - 40% WR over 5 games
A slightly unfavored matchup. The winrate goes up if you’re going first and you play Blighted Caretaker on curve to kill whatever units they played earlier and dominate the board. This is because their key protection spells cost 4 mana. You do need to be careful around Fiora, who is bigger than your Caretakers. Try not to give her free kills and use Glimpse Beyond and Single Combat on the units she targets (or try to kill her while playing around combat tricks in the case of Single Combat). Fiora/Shen is a dance. You can tell whether or not their hand is heavy on units or spells based on their first few turns. It’s when they get enough of a board with mana backed up to use spells to protect their units that makes them scary. Either be aggressive and punish them for having a hand light on units or take trades that benefit you and make things awkward for the Fiora/Shen player. Never let them build a board if at all possible. Shen isn’t nearly as scary if he has no units to protect. Expect to not pull off a Harrowing since they run Deny, but sometimes your hands are tied and you need to force them to have Deny. Pretty tough matchup.
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Other Matchups (Tahm Raka, FTFTM/WarmotheK-Pop Yetis/they’re all the same let’s be honest - 50% WR against all of them)
Not a lot of games against these. I went positive against the K-Pop Yetis while going overall negative against other FTWarmother lists but it evened out at the end.
Against Soraka TK, I think we are unfavored. We can’t slam Fearsome units on command and usually need to set up turns where that happens, which won’t be until round 6 at the earliest. The two most important cards in this matchup are Kalista and Cithria. You need to keep these two alive because they are how you will push damage. This matchup feels like a delicate balance between setting up a lethal turn while dancing around Tahm Kench capturing your units with Single Combat and your other cheap spells. Play Kalista ASAP though - she’ll just slam 4-5 damage down their throat and there’s little they can do about it if they’re also curving out (they only have Pale Cascade as defense). Sometimes you will get the Lucian flip into Rally highroll and kill them on turn 4, but you can’t rely on that.
Against the various Freljord Shadow Isles control decks sporting their favorite wincon, build your board but be wary of Avalanche. This deck is somewhat resilient to it, but you need some key cards: Kalista or Cursed Keeper. Preferably both. This makes their Avalanche awkward. If you don’t pick up either one early and you can’t activate your Barkbeast you might struggle. Blighted Caretaker is a double edged sword: it makes your board weaker to Avalanche but can push damage while leveling your champs at the same time since these decks usually don’t play more than 1 blocker early on. Curve out and be aggressive still. You won’t win this matchup just sitting around. Remembrance will at least keep the threats coming if they do have board wipes. You’ll need to set up a strong Harrowing by round 9 while being wary of The Ruination. Try to keep them off of Ruination mana before round 9, but you might need to bait it out if necessary by building a threatening board first which can also set up free Remembrances if you have them.
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Conclusion

I’ve had a ton of fun with this deck and will likely continue playing it as long as it remains viable. Or if Go Hard continues to be popular, either way. For all we know though, Go Hard might get nerfed in tomorrow’s patch notes. Since I’ve been more involved in the game again lately, I have been putting out content and streaming on a more frequent basis between Youtube and Twitch (though I never truly stopped), so if anyone is interested, you can find links to my Youtube channel, Twitter and my Twitch stream just below. As far as Twitch, I’ve been playing this deck a lot on stream lately and I typically stream on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the early afternoon EST. I upload LoR content on Youtube frequently (moreso than Twitch) as well where you can find guides, card reviews, gameplay and more.
I have done a video guide on this deck previously and I may do an updated one, but I’m waiting to see what tomorrow’s patch will bring first. I hope you enjoyed this read regardless especially since I have a tendency to ramble sometimes :P
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EDIT: There is now, in fact, a video guide for this deck that I recently uploaded to YouTube. The video guide is a bit more concise and also includes gameplay as well as a "bonus deck concept" that runs The Grand Plaza. Link to the YouTube channel is just below.
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YouTube | Twitch | Twitter