Deck Guide: Katarina Akshan OTK
Katarinas, Katarinas all the way down!!
Hello, my name is INEEDATTENTION!
I’m a meme deck builder who’s hit Masters a couple of times, but perhaps most well-known for one-tricking Katarina in LoR and going for one Million mastery points (as I wrte this, I'm at 985k!)
Today, I’m here to teach you how to play Kat/Akshan Infinite OTK.
The Deck
This is an intensive combo deck with a high skill floor and ceiling, planning to garner at least four Founts of Power – generated by Sentinel's Hoard, itself created by Akshan's Warlord's Hoard – in order to discount Katarina to 0 mana, who we can then play an infinite(*) amount of times!
While inherently a meme concept, the deck is as strong as it’s ever been – in the hands of a skilled pilot willing to learn the deck (and believe in the heart of cards a bit … that card being Katarina =), they can achieve at least a Tier 3 performance while giga-styling on their foes!
(*)A word about “infinte”: Some time ago , Riot put a hard cap — 15 — on the amount of same-named cards you can play in a single round (to prevent hostage griefing). So, technically, this is not an infinite deck since you do have to win within 15 Katarinas before the game locks you out from playing any more. However, this is not something you usually have to worry about since, as long as you are playing seriously, you should win the game 99.9999% of the time after playing 15 Katarinas (she alone threatens at least 60 damage on the board, and 15 targeted damage from daggers). It’s never happened to me yet, but I suppose it technically is possible to not be able to win the game after playing Katarina fifteen times – due to a weird Deep or Catastrophe boardstate or against another “Infinite ____” deck such as SI Maduli/Bard Revive or some Karma shenanigans. However, outside of thinking about these funny and theoretical cases, it’s not really something we have to concern ourselves with in practice. But yes, it is acknowledged that the hard cap might matter like once every 115 games 🤷♀️ .
Brief Deck History and Origin
To the best of my knowledge, Kat/Akshan (Infinite OTK) as a concept has been around as long as it could possibly exist – it was theorycrafted way back during Akshan’s reveal.
After the novelty and hilarity of the Reddit hype wore off, the deck was ushered back into think tank obsolescence (without much serious experimentation or consideration) where it remains to this day as a fringe combo deck at best.
This should be no surprise considering how wonky and janky the deck idea was during its initial conception, as Akshan Noxus required a rather substantial deck-building cost in order to consistently trigger the Warlord’s Hoard and treat them as a stable win-condition. There was simply not much of a reason to pursue the combo when you had to run many of the same cards as Riven/Akshan/(Draven) anyway – inevitably begging the question of why not just play that deck instead.
The archetype does get brought back every now and then as a gimmick, with its most sensational reappearance at LoR Masters Europe by meming Russian madlads and most recently covered on Maijinbae’s Youtube. However, without Reforge, the deck would spend a majority of its lifespan facing issues like not only getting all its combo pieces online and on time, but also consistently triggering the Warlord’s Hoard and obtaining its treasures in the first place.
Two major changes in back-to-back patches – 3.6 and 3.7 – would massively buff its viability by subtly and indirectly addressing its consistency issues: a Katarina buff and the Play/Cast merge.
Katarina/Akshan often requires somewhat unintuitive plays in order to be played optimally, like utilizing Katarina’s generated Blade’s Edge in order to self-ping a unit and speed up the Warlord’s Palace or Hoard. Before 3.6, you could only do this once or twice per game since Katarina would generate the dagger in ONLY her level 1 form. And rallying at any point before your combo turn wouldn’t yield much (at most a strike from Akshan) since most of the time, against most decks, pushing any damage beforehand is almost meaningless as you still need to go infinite (or at least close to infinite) in order to win.
After 3.6, playing Katarina can yield up to two countdown triggers (if Akshan is on board and can safely strike) by also pinging your own unit – preferably Katarina since her stats reset when recalled, but again I can’t stress enough to use your best judgment, like don’t do this willy-nilly against P&Z with access to Mystic Shot for example.
Of course, the ping is still conventionally useful to, say, pick off units against aggro or apply more damage and pressure in certain matchups.
Overall, I want to say that this change alone made the deck 15% more playable.
And now 3.7 comes along – with the controversial Play/Cast merge. For our intents and purposes, this was a godsend, as having a Whirling Death or Akshan’s Grappling Hook fizzling was often game losing. Getting at least one guaranteed trigger was a major safety net that the deck massively needed.
In conjunction with both these changes, what was once the best-case scenario (going off on rounds 7 or 8) was now… somewhat pretty consistent (not to mention, it feels a lot better and more forgiving)!
Now, to the present day of the deck’s trajectory.
The buff to Quicksand massively improved our survivability, and it turned out that Sands of Time is generally good in decks that rely on getting off a big cooldown (most notably Thralls), which includes Kat/Akshan!
While a little bit expensive, completing 4 countdowns is awesome – a great addition that helps trigger the Hoard in a timely fashion even more consistently, or complete another Hoard. I’d say that the deck’s winrate probably increased by up to ~5% and is in its best (so far) modern day iteration from the initial prototype.
General Gameplan/Matchups
There are three phases to our gameplan: early game, mid, and late.
Early Game
I define the early game as finding (via Predicts) and setting up the Warlord’s Palace ASAP, while also setting up our board and blockers, ideally something like Akshan on round two and Vagabond on round three: we are only worried if we can’t get up the Palace by rounds four or five (and we are, say, racing a She Who Wanders).
The early game plays out as any conventional Akshan gameplan, but since we really need Akshan to strike, we will be hard-bluffing most of the time and opening on every token in order for him to attack safely.
I’ll mention again that, since we are ideally OTK’ing our foe on a later turn, early damage is not relevant except against aggro, where we often forgo the combo entirely (although, I have pulled it off against them before…)
Any attack modifiers or buffs are solely used in order to progress the Palace and protect Akshan before he flips. Unless there is a reason to, or you have no other plays, Katarina is more often than not too expensive to play early.
However, sometimes an opportune board-state will allow you to play her as early as round three, but you often don’t want to commit your mana and it's better to keep any potential options available. Her ping is sometimes relevant to, say, slow down a Shrooms player and kill Teemo, or hold onto the dagger until Akshan strikes in order to allow him to attack into any three-health blockers.
Midgame
I define midgame as the point in the game where the Warlord’s Palace has flipped and now we try to complete the Warlord’s Hoard. This is the timeframe when we set up our Preservariums and use our remaining Predicts to search for our pieces – Promising Future and Mimics – obviously prioritizing Akshan first if we don’t have him yet.
On our end, not much is happening during this time as we’re simply waiting for the Hoard to flip and enter the late game, so we can use these midgame rounds to assess our situation and make calculations, asking ourselves the following questions:
What do I actually need in order to win (and how many combo pieces can I reasonably expect to have gathered by then)?
By what turn can/do I need to go off by?
The Late Game
Late game is the point of the game where the Hoard has or is about to flip and we are ready to go off and try to end the game; we take whatever answers we formulated to the earlier questions and put them in praxis.
Do notice that the combo is honestly pretty overkill most of the time: we win the game not because a 0-cost Katarina is particularly insane or anything, but because we just drew 8 cards and reduced our entire hand to cost 0 so we can do whatever we want while our opponent is Poppy emoting.
Basically, don’t always tunnel-vision on going infinite – sure, it might not be as sexy when we win the game normally, but sometimes that might be necessary against faster decks such as aggro. Most of the time, getting Katarina down to one or even two mana is sufficient to rally 3 or so times with a mega-buffed unit and smash your opponent’s nexus in.
Three is the Charm
The deck plays a lot like Miracle Rogue. Every game will be unique, and while yes, if we get the nuts we don’t have to think too much – once we get 4 Founts, we just win right there – our opponent will probably also be playing the game and pressuring us throughout the match, so we will be thrown and pressed into situations where we have to make do with what we have and somehow figure the path to victory when we only have two, three or god forbid, only one Fount.
I can really only cover so many scenarios, as the knowledge and intuition (such as regarding how many Founts are needed to win the game against certain decks) is best developed from simply playing the deck!
Two or less Founts – especially if our opponent is fairly healthy – is usually the threshold where we can’t end the game that round.
Three, if you have banked spell mana, is probably enough though you may also look to get the fourth Fount of Power by playing another Akshan or have him strike if he’s already on board. Most lethal puzzles will occur within three Fount hands – either figuring out a way to get the fourth and final one needed to go infinite, or piece together a kill with a finite number of rallies and what we have in hand.
Essentially, if you've gathered at least one or two Promising Futures and/or one or two Mimics (at least 3 in total), you're in the clear: there will be a likely chance that Fount will cycle into and hit the last Mimic you need. If not, you're still fine since the deck is built in a way where everything costs 4 or under, so get to work!
Pacing
Pacing is another important skill for this deck.
You don’t want to go so fast that you flip the Hoard before you have enough pieces, yet you can’t go too slow or you won’t go off in time before your clock ends – managing the Hoard’s countdown to flip exactly when you want it to is crucial.
What kind of deck your opponent is playing will determine how many rounds you reasonably have before you lose. As you would imagine, we have a longer clock against midrange and control and a shorter one against aggro or burn.
With a good hand and good/aggressive blocks with Akshans, you can flip the hoard on 7 or 8 (6 is also possible, but incredibly risky and lucky).
Also know when you have to “try again” or cut your losses – sometimes it is correct to Shield of the Sentinels Kat as the win-con if, say, you only have one treasure. Most of the time, though, you will be looking to Fount regardless and set up another one if you accidentally trigger the Hoard way too early (you’re probably in a good position if you’re “suffering from success”, however).
Mulligan
In every matchup, keep Akshan and Vagabond and full mull if you don’t see either – keep Predicts as the next best thing to get another shot at finding your Palace generators ASAP.
Against Control and slower decks, you can be greedy and keep Promising Futures or Mimics if you see them. You can’t really afford to do this against anything else, though: in practically every other match up you toss these away and focus on cards that help level/protect Akshan until he can level.
Keep Rite of Negation against landmark hate.
Against Aggro, keep Ancient Preparations, Aspiring Chronomancer and Merciless Hunter to keep up with early board pressure.
You mull for Midrange similarly as you would against aggro, albeit with less urgency so you can keep cards like Preservarium.
Tech Options
Arachnoid Sentry or Spell Slinger
Just another survival card that can help us survive an attack or buy us another turn. A little unnecessary since Quicksand more or less fulfills this niche while being more flexible, but the 2-for-1 action can be a lifesaver which can warrant running one copy. Use Spell Slinger if you value the one mana more than the better stats; use Arachnoid if you think having the extra health and a body capable of blocking Fearsomes is more important.
More Quicksands
Cracked and goated card so you might want to run more.
House Spider
The deck is a bit low on units, so it is a worthwhile consideration especially in an aggro-heavy meta, considering how much House Spider can single-handedly slow the game down – and even be backbreaking against frail aggro creatures.
I prefer to bite the bullet here and run synergistic cards that progress our gameplan faster instead of keeping a generic good unit (2-for-1 chump blockers will just be generally useful against everything except Control) that ameliorates bad matchups a bit. It’s close though.
Taliyah
Viable alternative that aims to copy a Promising Future’d Hoard, not only removing one combo piece requirement but doubling down as landmark removal protection.
It's an entirely different deck in my opinion, and the biggest drawback is probably that you want 3x Akshans and 3x Katarinas as both are absolutely imperative to the deck (and be consistently drawn from Rite of Calling).
Again it could work though with a much more conservative and careful playstyle; the consistency of the former allows it to play quite aggressively with its champion usage (ex: trading Akshan to play another one or using Katarina as an efficient blocker). After a lot of games with this deck (or if you play Akshan in general), you come to realize just how good and occasionally reliant you are on having access to or cycling Akshan's Grappling Hook.
Closing Words
I hope you enjoyed this write-up and are perhaps even willing to give Kat/Akshan Infinite OTK a spin: it is very hard to pull off but incredibly rewarding and enjoyable when you do!
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