Eight Bo3 Lineups
Lineups that pilots with varied Seasonal experience (from "Never done it", to "Made Top 32 ") brought to the LCG last Saturday
Below, eight Bo3 lineups that pilots with varied Seasonal experience (from "Never done it", to "Made the Top 32 cut last Seasonal") brought to the Last Chance Gauntlet last Saturday – six of these qualified, one didn't, one is currently waitlisted.
It's widely acknowledged by pilots of all stripes that Gauntlet is a less competitive field than either the Master Ladder or Tournaments in general (let alone Seasonals), so performance in the LCG is hardly a solid endorsement of a lineup's strength.
That being said, if you are looking for ideas we hope that the lineups below – along with their pilots' trains of thought – may serve as inspiration.
jott – Low Masters – No previous Seasonal experience
These are all comfort choices I have a high WR with; in general, all decks that go for the "wide board then burn" gameplan:
Sejuani Pandemonium, about which we wrote in this Test Piloting article
I didn't go with any particular strategy past that – Gauntlet lineups tend to be an unpredictable mess in my experience. I don't think this lineup would do well against Deep, so I banned it every time I ran into it… which was a total of four times if memory serves correct.
If a deck with higher WR shows up between now and Seasonals, I'll probably consider including it.
Yondy – Platinum – Participated in Open Rounds once
I originally wanted to bring Aphelios Lux, because it's one of my favorite decks and it's the only one that I've won a tournament with and that is still playable – sadly, after tinkering a bit, I realized the nerfs to Petricite Broadwing and Brightsteel Protector hit that deck really hard.
So, I settled for Aphelios Viktor Vi and Jayce Lux, which was a good idea considering how well positioned they are in the current meta and how similar their match-up tables are.
And when looking for a third deck, Taric Poppy felt like it fit right in, because it has a very good spread against all decks in the current meta.
Since it was a very last-minute lineup, I wanted a lineup that was:
Somewhat familiar to me,
Favored or even against the most popular decks in the meta (I prefer to play decks with even matchups, more than I like to play decks with polarized matchups),
This lineup has a nightmare counter, though: we lose hard to a triple control lineup, AND two of our three decks lose to Thralls.Â
I was therefore pretty sure I was going to ban Thralls and Heimer Jayce SI pretty much on sight – Dark Donger is the only deck that beats all three decks, and Thralls beats both AVV and Jayce Lux pretty handily, even if my version of Jayce Lux has access to 4x Aftershocks (in case I ended up fighting Azirelia or Sun Disc, which ended up being the case). Barring those two decks, my general ban strategy would have been banning the most value-oriented control deck I'd find in the opponents lineup.
I expected to find either lineups built around TF, Azirelia, or Ahri Bard – which my lineup beats pretty handily – or lineups built around Thralls, which once Thralls have been banned aren't as concerning.
As it happened, I did run into Thralls as the Gauntlet's "Final Boss", as part of a lineup with Sun Disc and Ahri Bard. I banned Thralls, and they banned Taric Poppy as expected, since it crushes their entire lineup. I handily beat Sun Disc with AVV (it's a very one-sided matchup), I misplayed the second game badly with Lux Jayce against Sun Disc, and won the third game with Lux Jayce against Ahri Bard.
I will probably change this lineup for Seasonals, as this was a very last-minute build – but I think it's a very solid foundation to start from.
Ana– Platinum (Top 500 in past Seasons) – Participated in several Seasonals
This is a triple Absolver lineup, and are all comfort choices for me – all homebrews with potential, but that the public refuses to acknowledge. =)
Ziggs Taliyah Demacia, aka Landmark Rally
The lineup doesn't have a specific strategy other than banning Burn or Combo decks that go under me, and is what I'll bring to Seasonals; I went 5-0 in the Gauntlet.
Leer – Diamond (Top 100 in past Seasons) – Four 7-2 finishes in Open Rounds
This lineup is solid against the most popular decks in the meta, and we ban the rest:
We're very happy to run into Irelia Azir, Ahri Bard, and Annie Jhin; we ban Bard Demacia decks, and control decks like Heimer Jayce SI. Thralls is also a possible ban.
We crumble against a triple control lineup, but that luckily didn't happen to me. I had no Prime Glories and I went 5-0; I was expecting a lot of homebrews, since that's the Gauntlet's meta, but I ran into roughly 50% of top meta decks.
I think this will likely be my Seasonals lineup. I'm not happy with my slight weakness against Nami TF SI due to Viktor Aphelios Vi, but I don't have the time to learn Nami TF SI to bring it myself and beat the mirror, and I have a better third deck in my repertoire.
Cat – Diamond (Low Masters in past Seasons) – Played once in Open Rounds
I only had to win one match to qualify (I already had four Prime Glories) – the last game was a win against aggro on one health, which felt somewhat unsafe, but we take those!Â
I brought:
Miss Fortune Quinn, aka Scouts
We are Demacia, and we do Demacian things – unexciting, but reliable.
We should beat aggro, azirelia, TF nami. We're not happy to see big midrange, Thralls isn't great to run into, and Heimer Jayce snacks on lineups like us.
Still, trying to predict Gauntlets is futile. It's not like a tournament - you never know what you'll find!
For Seasonals… I'm still thinking about it. I like Demacia: it provides a relatively cohesive lineup structure, and I don't think this is a *bad* lineup… but it's certainly not ideal.
I considered putting Renekton Bard in there, but the stats in Diamond kind of suck, so maybe you need to be mtucks to win with it. I'm very likely to change the lineup, I'm just not sure how yet.
By the way, if I may… I would like to talk about Jarvan. Some of you might know him, great guy, puts a lot of work in for Demacia. Leads the nation with wisdom and strength and stuff. However, I would like to open-attack without him jumping out of my hand straight into a Homecoming! I forgot he would do that and I lost a 60% matchup. You absolute BUFFOON, Jarvan. Read the room! This is absolutely his fault, and not mine!
On a serious note, my main counter is timezones: I live in Oceania, which is something of a debuff for Seasonals. I got up at 4am for the last one, couldn't think through brain fog and lost every game that wasn't a bye. Fun times…
Friendlynihilist – Low Masters – Competed in six Seasonals, reached Top 32 in the last one
I got to the Last Chance Gauntlet with four Prime Glories…
… and, sadly, suffered a narrow 1-2 defeat to a fairly nightmare lineup.
Twisted Fate Miss Fortune GangplankÂ
Teemo Ziggs Katarina Gnar, affectionately nicknamed Pile of Trash, as described in this Test-Piloting article.
We’re essentially bringing the same deck three times, which leads to us having fairly polarized matchups across the lineup: If we beat something, then all our three decks are beating it; if we lose to something then all our decks lose to it.
The general strategy is, therefore, to very much prey on our targets: we expect (or hope) that enough people bring at least one of those decks that we’re targeting, so that we can 2-0 it.
Said targets would be Ahri Bard, Azir Irelia, Scouts and Annie Jhin, with all three of our decks also teched to do quite well against the Winding Light piles. On the contrary, we’re looking to ban the heavy control decks like Feel the Rush or Jayce Heimerdinger as first priority, then the landmark-based decks like Thralls and Sun Disc
As said above, Scouts and Winding Light piles were the main two decks that I was expecting (or perhaps hoping) to run into… we unfortunately ran into three of the worst possible matchups for us: Thralls, Feel the Rush and Nami Twisted Fate SI.
Provided I qualify for Seasonals (I'm focusing on the ladder cut-off as I write these lines) then I will still be bringing this lineup. Even if it lost, it is reassuring how well it performed against a very bad matchup, and the lineup works well into its intended targets (which, again, I do still expect to see).
Last but not least, this is a comfort pick for me, an aspect I think is really important for Open Rounds.
Conansson– Top 500 Masters – Competed in two Seasonals, one 7-2 finish
Scouts and Winding Light follow a similar strategy of developing a board early and then pushing lethal by rounds six or seven, and I'm quite familiar with these decks. To round things up, I chose another Demacia midrange deck with strong finishers in Akshan Sivir.
Akshan/Sivir Demacia
Our lineup doesn't have too specific targets or bans, it rather follows the idea of "Play 3 decks that have the same gameplan so that you have similar matchups across the board" – our most common bans are Flock decks (Annie TF, Ezreal Caitlyn), midrange counters (Timelines) or bigger midrange decks (Bard Demacia/Pantheon).
Gauntlet is pretty random, though, so I didn't really count on running into anything specifically.
I'm still not sure if I'll bring these decks to Seasonal – I'm considering a combo-based lineup with Akshan/Renekton, Fizz/Riven and Jayce/Shen focusing on Double Attack, or a midrange-slayer lineup (Timelines, Thralls, Azirelia). Still, all these decks can lose to themselves, while on Ladder I got better results with consistent decks such as Winding Light.
Astrofeesh – Platinum – No Seasonals experience
I chose three combo-y midrange decks, because I usually try to give all my decks a similar matchup spread in tournaments so it's easier to choose bans.
Our decks are in general pretty good against midrange and removal-based control, so those were the archetypes I was hoping to run into. On the other hand we're weak to aggro, so I just banned out every aggro matchup I could. And if there was no aggro, I just banned whichever deck I didn't like playing against without overthinking it too much. =)
Luckily, nobody brought more than one aggro deck, so my decks were able to do exactly what they wanted to, and I finished 5-0. I played a bit too late, though, so I'm just on the waitlist, and not yet qualified.
If I do get a ticket to Seasonals, though, I'll probably swap out both Sej/GP and Xerath/Zilean for other decks – they just felt like a clear step down from Nasus/Thresh in power level.
In Closing
As noted, both the context and the sample sizes in these write-ups are hardly rock-solid proof of performance…
… but we hope either the lineups themselves, and/ore the line of reasoning, proves helpful if you don't yet have your lineup locked up.
And good luck out there! =)
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