For Flockxus!
A brief guide to friendlynihilist's Worldwalker Seasonal Lineup
Hi, I’m Nihilist, I’m a semi-competitive player with a rather major addiction to playing Noxus. I reached the top 32 of the Curious Journey Seasonal Tournament with a triple Ravenous Flock lineup. Today I’m here to talk about how that concept has evolved into the current meta, what that means I’m taking to Seasonals this time around, and how this all relates to a certain Pile of Trash.
The Lineup
Teemo Katarina Ziggs Gnar
Annie Elise
Gangplank Miss Fortune Twisted Fate Noxus
Seeing Triple
I suppose the first question to answer here is the most obvious: why triple Ravenous Flock?
Well, triple “X” lineups are nothing new to competitive LoR, from triple Demacian rally lineups to triple Bandle Tree.
The major advantage of these types of lineups is how they allow you to bring three decks with incredibly similar matchup tables, which in turn lets you very effectively target certain parts of the meta. All three decks share a core set of cards that are particularly strong against certain decks, making it very hard for any opponent bringing one of your targets to manage to squeeze a victory through.
So now that we’ve worked out why we’re running three slow Noxus decks, why are we running these three slow Noxus decks in particular?
Ever since the release of patch 3.10, Bilgewater has shown itself to be the premier accompaniment to the Tybaulk/Ravenbloom Conservatory package, with Annie TF being by far the most popular on ladder. And this for very good reason: Riptide Rex, thanks to his buff, is again a pretty devastating finisher, and the Bilgewater tools take great advantage of the Tybaulk damage boost.
Specifically for this lineup, the big selling point is the plentiful access to AoE damage, which is fairly essential for dealing with the very wide boards of Winding Light decks (aided further by some extra techs).
Now, this does of course raise the question, “If Annie TF is the premier Tybaulk deck, why are we running TF MF GP instead?”
We’ll dive into this in more depth later on, but the issue that we have here is that all three decks want to run Annie, something that unfortunately isn’t possible by Riot’s lineup rules. Consequently, concessions needed to be made somewhere and the Bilgewater shell was in the best position to make those.
Annie Elise was then the other of the Tybaulk decks with a reasonable popularity on ladder, for lots of similar reasons to the Bilgewater list. Plentiful pings to take advantage of Tybaulk, and some AoE damage to try and keep the swarmy decks in check. And those exact same reasons are why this is the perfect second deck to run alongside Bilgewater, with access to Withering Wail as solid AoE edging it ahead of a PnZ list (ie Caitlyn Ezreal Tribeam).
And finally we come to deck number three, the Pile of Trash.
Unlike the other two decks in the lineup this is not at all popular or prevalent on ladder, but rather this choice is the perfect picture of a comfort pick. While we retain some similar strengths in the synergy between our pings, Ravenous Flock and Tybaulk, there are some differences between this deck and the other two, primarily the lack of AoE that I valued so highly in those other decks.
Instead, we are able to replace that loss with a more solid and tempo-oriented board presence that is both better at clogging up our board and forcing the opponent to trade down theirs.
Target Acquired
So, what are the targets in the current meta?
Well, the primary deck that we are looking to prey upon is Ahri Bard, with it being vulnerable to our combination of early pressure and efficient interaction that allows us to clear up their units even when buffed by Chimes.
In a similar vein, Azir Irelia is another deck that we are looking to exploit.
The anti-aggro capabilities of our decks also stand us in good stead against potential aggressive lineups (particularly those using Annie Jhin).
Winding Light PnZ is the other archetype of note that we target with our lineup. Despite Winding Light traditionally being slightly favoured into slow Noxus decks, all three of our decks are teched quite hard for this matchup, which should swing it in our favour.
On the flip side, our ban strategy is pretty straightforward. SI Freljord control decks (primarily FTR but on the off chance Anivia as well) and Thralls are priority one and two when it comes to bans – if we see either, they get banned on sight. Beyond that, just generally any form of slow SI (Nami TF or Jayce Heimerdinger) or landmark decks (Ziggs Taliyah or Mono Shurima) would ideally be banned.
Tools for the Job
As I’ve mentioned, these lists are not the standard versions which people run on ladder – they are teched specifically for this Seasonal with the expectation of having to beat Winding Light PnZ. That deck is, at least according to statistics, a bad matchup across the board for our lineup, but these tech choices should significantly reduce how bad of a matchup it is.
So what are these techs?
Well, the biggest and most relevant of them is the inclusion of Death Lotus in all three lists.
In our Bandle City deck, it gives an actual source of AoE to clear up early boards – both letting our units hit the nexus with less obstructions, but also minimising the opponent’s board size going into Winding Light rounds. Stopping the early chip damage coming in also helps mitigate our lack of healing, keeping early health high so the Winding Light rounds have to do just that more work to kill us.
In our Bilgewater deck, Death Lotus lets us greed our Red Cards a lot more. Normally, while Red Card would be a great answer to the opponent’s boards (since the majority of units in the Winding Light deck have only one health), once TF has been played they can redevelop and Winding Light anyway. Death Lotus lets us wait until the Winding Light has been played to then use the Red Card – the combination of the two wiping away large swathes of their board and denying their big attack turn.
In Annie Elise the card’s benefit is more basic, but nonetheless still useful. Withering Wail, while effective AoE, is a rather expensive card at five mana and that leaves us in positions where we cannot do as much as we'd like to stop incoming attacks (especially not going for double Wail plays). Death Lotus is not only a cheaper AoE option, but also increases the density of AoE damage spells that we run.
Death Lotus isn’t the only tech we’ve made however.
Miss Fortune, while not exclusively here as a tech card (as I’ll go into later), is a wonderfully potent tool against Winding Light. With so much of their board having one health, MF allows us to make very favourable attacks which either result in us being very ahead on board, or us being in a good position to race the opponent down. Both of these outcomes put us in solid positions to keep up a constant assault on our opponent, something we’re very happy to see.
MF also has the added benefit of being a very solid tempo tool (she’s not at the core of Pirate Aggro for nothing), which aids us in other matchups where speed is key like Akshan Renekton.
Aloof Travelers is yet another card included to hose Winding Light, but this time specifically targeting the card itself. As the most expensive card in their deck, using Aloof the turn before the opponent plans to drop their giant space monster gives us very good odds of getting rid of one.
And even if we don’t manage to put their Lights out, that’s still good news for us since we now know we don’t have to play around it as much, so there are upsides all around.
Even better for us, Winding Light isn’t the only matchup where Aloof can do serious damage – Papercraft Dragon decks are other archetype that tops their curve with their eponymous unit, and are left quite vulnerable if Aloof discards their win condition.
The Annie Conundrum
Now, tech choices aren’t the only reason why these lists don’t look standard – and our Bilgewater entry especially so – and this is down to a problem I have dubbed “The Annie Conundrum”.
Three Teams, One MVP
With her ability to give early, proactive sources of Ravenbloom Conservatory progress, Annie is a staple of all decks that rely on Tybaulk as a win condition. As such, Annie would ideally feature in all three decks here, but unfortunately that isn’t possible – so we’ve got to get creative.
This isn’t the first time that a champion has featured in multiple decks that people want to run together, most notably Twisted Fate in the TF Fizz/TF Aphelios days, and Zoe being torn between Zoe Nami and Zoe Lee Sin during the Beyond the Bandlewood season. In both cases, alternative champions were found for one of the decks, and then tweaks came in to accommodate the impact of that change.
That is exactly what we’ve done here.
Since Annie’s job is to be an early source of skill triggers, we first look at potential cards that can replace her in that role. Legion Saboteur is the most obvious fit, being a one-drop with an attack skill, but there are some differences.
Saboteur is very easy to kill in combat and is a much faster card than Annie, lending herself therefore to the faster decks in the lineup and less so to the somewhat grindy play of Annie Elise. As slightly less perfect comparisons, both Ziggs and Miss Fortune also provide on-attack skills that are a tad more repeatable.
This therefore cements Annie Elise as the deck without a viable replacement to Annie and therefore the deck which will continue to run her in the lineup.
Don't Put all your Eggs in one Ban
Another factor worth considering here is the spread of power in the lineup.
Annie TF is the strongest of the options that we have available, and so many might say that we should play that as the best individual deck we can. However, doing so causes some major issues with the spread of power within the lineup, which because of the opponent’s ban has problematic implications.
If we were to play Annie TF as our one full-power Annie deck, we end up with the maximum difference in our deck’s power level (since we’re playing the best shell at full power and the weaker shells at a further reduced power level). In this scenario Annie TF would almost certainly be banned by most opponents as that very identifiable strongest deck, and we’ve loaded all our power into a deck we never get to use, effectively wasting it.
If we instead run Annie in the SI shell, the difference in power levels are smaller — since our “strongest shell” and “full-power shell” are now two different decks, it means that after the ban we will still always have one of these options open and that the ban doesn’t take as much power away from us.
Final Tweaks
Now that we know what deck is going to run Annie, we can turn our attention to accommodating her loss in the other two lists.
As well as needing to replace her directly, some cards were relying on her for slightly less essential synergies – for example, Fortune Croaker being able to use Annie's two health to effectively cycle cards in a way that it can no longer do with Legion Saboteur. In addition, the loss of Annie also means no more double-drawing Annie to get extra copies of Disintegrate, and this combined with the new inclusion of Death Lotus has forced the number of Disintegrates to go back up.
Closing Remarks
And there you are, everything you need to know about the triple Noxus lineup in the Worldwalker Seasonal Tournament.
Hope to see you all there – as long as you’re not playing Thralls.
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