Weekly Path Adventure: Mercy, Single Combats and Pranksters
Path Database writer Conansson walks you through this week's Path adventure.
Hello, my name is Conansson, you might know me from the Path Database, the Path Ratings or the unofficial Legends of Runeterra Rulebook. I’m going to walk you through this week’s Path adventure featuring Viktor, Caitlyn and Swain.
Since last article, I noticed that the non - boss fights are randomized. That’s why we’ll be focusing on the Special Rules and the bosses.
Starlight Portal: 1,5 Star Viktor
The first Special Rule is another Ethereal Remitter Power and quite an interesting one in that. Note that Round End: - effects go off before Regeneration happens which makes Champions like Garen a worse choice that you might think. In general, the strategy of value - trading and winning through card advantage doesn’t work as well since both units involved in combat usually die. However, you can also use the power to your advantage if you can damage the enemy units.
The obvious choice is Jinx, which damages every unit by just playing a card, but let’s be honest, you can easily beat every weekly adventure with her without a problem. Another powerful strategy is Quick Attack + Challenger because you take down the enemy without getting damaged.
I don’t like fighting a 1,5 star adventure with a 3 - Star champion, so I went with my Kayn at 2 Stars and Level 20. Rhaast always full heals when killing a unit and the Star Power also heals units by 2. Other options are Annie, Jhin, Yasuo and Gwen, but basically any Quick Attack Champion should be able to win.
The map is the Jinx 2 Star Noxus Map. You get a choice between three nodes after the second fight, but if you go for the outer side, you’ll be forced to take on that side again. There should always be at least one Shop in the last three nodes.
After the miniboss Taliyah, you just get the choice of two paths with a Shop in between.
I picked up Trifarian Might as starting power to stay on theme. Note that Noxkraya Arena is a Round End - effect as well, Mercy Killings won’t see the unit being damaged so you won’t lose your unit if you survive the first Noxkraya Challenge. Simple Mana advantage made this fight easy.
For my support champion, Tahm Kench showed up, which would have been a terrible Choice. I decided to have a bit of fun and picked up Norra.
Next I avoided the elusive Shadow Assassin and went vs Fearsomes in the Trifarian Shieldbreaker. Rhaast + random units from Mysterious Portals outtraded the Noxian Soldier and no unit was lost to the Special Rule.
The next choice was a classic: Monkey Idol vs Legion Marauders. I’ve always been on the side that the Marauders are easier since you will always take some chip damage from the Monkeys. Even if the Marauders were to scale, you can just damage them to kill them with Mercy Killings. In my fight, they didn’t even draw a Marauder and just died to a midrange curve.
Miniboss: Taliyah
Taliyah is the miniboss from Yasuo’s two Star adventure and a bit of a tricky one with that. The free landmarks on Round Start really add up and will guarantee that Taliyah comes down leveled up.
This is however the only fight in all of Path of Champions where the opponent doesn’t start with their Champion in hand, so there is a chance they just don’t have Taliyah. Even if they have her, one single point of damage can get rid of her. It definetly helps that you can now generate a Buried Sun Disc which Taliyah loves to copy. Her Skills fizzle if you kill her so saving a removal spell will be helpful.
The battle rewards gave my Norra a Quickstrike Blade for ultimate Portal action.
Between Reckless Trifarian and Desert Naturalist, both are slamming big guys. It’s funny that the power “Damaged units can’t block” is quite useless with Mercy Killings. The encounter has a bunch of ways to damage your units like Chempunk Shredder. Both have 5/4s with Overwhelm, so in the end, there isn’t that big of a difference.
Similarily, Trifarian Gloryseeker and Battlesmith are simply trying to play units on curve without any real interaction. Best to choose the fight depending on what node is behind it.
Final Boss: Viktor
This fight is the normal 2,5 Viktor encounter. Mercy Killings is quite a big upside here since you can stop the enemy units from outgrowing you by just damaging them.
Be a bit wary of the damage - based removal coming at you, however the AI isn’t smart enough to use it on big units. It was enough to ruin my Turbolevel Norra screenshot, which means we just had to beat Viktor up the normal way.
Overall, the spcial rule works more to your advantage if you know how to play around it and don’t take too many random trades. Easier than I thought at first.
Shadow Portal: 2 Star Caitlyn
The special rules for this one are quite scary: Not only does every enemy have the Viego power, but they get a free Single Combat to use on the Ephemeral unit. The best strategy is to go really tall and not lose any units in the first place.
Kayn comes to mind again as he can profit a lot from Single Combat. Illaoi is strong because even if you lose your Tentacle, the opponent only gets a 1/1.
I decided to try out my 2 Star Level 8 Garen since he profits from units striking and we get a second Single Combat from our Star Power.
The map is Ezreal 1,5 Star. which means you get a Vicious Enemy (turns out it’s just a normal fight here) if you go for the bottom side, which then gets rewarded by an extra power. Later on, you can choose whichever lane has the better nodes.
My first option for starting Power was Hold It!, but the Stun didn’t seem as valuable if the enemy can still play Single Combat. Instead, I went for Mana cheating with Quick Draw.
Hextech Observatory was rather easy due to our big mana advantage, but the free Single Combat each round was nice. For the support champion, I went with Evelynn, which was a bit of a bad choice since the Husks trigger Viego’s Power. However, they are also free targets for our Single Combats to level up our own units.
I chose the bottom lane for the extra power, fighting Chempunk Pickpocket over the elusive Jae Medarda. We were still one mana ahead and while they tried to build the biggest Scrap Scuttler ever, we overran the encounter.
I was surprised to see that the normal Vicious encounter was just a regular Mistwraith fight. They wasted their time with Stalking Shadows which got us an easy Victory. My Power was Sorcery, making the rest of this run very easy.
Miniboss: Swain
Swain is one of my favorite decklists in the game, bringing all the mighty war engines. Once again, he starts with one less mana though, meaning he’s unable to use the Single Combats. Watch out for the Death’s Hand and Death Lotus as well as the Suffer slowly wittling down your units.
I was so strong at this point that Swain died before even playing out his own champion.
On the next choice, I went with Battlesmith over Intrepid Mariner since I find the shuffling power very annoying. The encounter still only had one Mana at Game Start, which made the fight very easy.
Between Astute Academic and Swole Squirrel, the latter seemed appealing since it gives us a benefit for striking. We were indeed able to end the fight on our second attack with a 15/4 Vanguard Defender.
Final Boss: Caitlyn
The final boss turned out to actually be a fight we don’t have yet in the normal Path of Champions.
With one vs two starting mana, we could have won on our second attack, however, I decided to stick around and collect the decklist for you.
The deck features a few uncollectible cards, which is why it’s shown in text form. Justice Rider and Zevi can get out of control if you can’t deal with them, but the res of the deck should be easy to tackle.
Overall, this Portal was a bit disappointing since the opponents permanently stayed at a lower mana than us and never got to use their Single Combat. Also easier than I had imagined at first, should even be doable with a 1 Star champion.
Dark Star Portal: 3 Star Swain
This week’s 3 - Star adventure features two epic powers that don’t really have synergy with each other. Dying Laughing gives both players a Phantom Prankster, rewarding Death synergies for both sides, while the Beyond Mere Flesh Viktor power gives a lot of extra stats to some of the units, but usally just a flat +1/+1.
I decided to go with my 3 Star Level 11 Gwen, which has synergy with Prankster, summoning an Ephemeral each round. Miss Fortune is probably good for the same reason.
As for the map, we are on Nautilus 2 Star, which gives you a guaranteed Shop after the second fight as well as a triple choice if you go for the bottom route. On the right side, there is a Vicious Enemy rewarding an extra Power.
My Adventure started with Explosive Entrance, a power I don’t really like (Fixer Upper was probably the better choice), but I felt like going all - in on the tokens.
Fearsome proved to be a very powerful keyword and two Phantom Butlers allowed me to win on my second attack with Hallowed vs The Beast from Below.
Monkey Idol got avoided (that fight sounds awful here with all the pings) and I went against Devourer of the Depths. It’s funny how the the Prankster gets obliterated immediately. They got up to an 18/38 Solari Soldier, which just got dragged away by a Ghastly Bard.
From card rewards I got Poppy, Dawnspeakers and Production Surge. Tokens, Go!
Herald of Spring was my next destination since Shipwreck Hoarder is so awful (can we speed the animation up Riot?). They surprised me with a kinda big Young Witch, but once Poppy and Gwen hit the field, the fight was over.
Miniboss: Poppy
As a Miniboss, we face Poppy from Path 1.0 /Darius 2 - Star adventure. Her powers puts us into an interesting predicament: Kill the units and take damage or let them stay for Heroics to trigger? Also they immediately start with a Prankster to share buffs.
I’d recommend still killing the units, but having a way to directly damage the opponent is very helpful as they lack healing.
She actually won the board very quickly vs me with a 13/10 Poppy, however the Prankster and Explosive Entrance allowed me to burn them out.
My Vicious Enemy was Mageseeker Inciter, which I gladly took on over the board - flooding Abyssal Eye. 50 starting life is very rough for a damage build and they Purified my Prankster, which was just rude.
Gwen and her ridiculous damage pulled through in the end though. Make sure you’re able to win fast vs the Mageseeker fight or they will outscale you.
Between Swiftwing Flight and Jaull Hunters, I went with the birds just based on the node behind it. The early pressure from the Trackers is insane, but summoning lots of early units helps. 40 damage was done on turn 5 with all the Hallowed stacks coming together at that point and they didn’t stand a chance.
Final Boss: Swain
This version of Swain is actually a different one to the 2 - Star adventure (This one is from Vi 2 Stars). It cuts a bunch of terrible cards and makes the deck overall more efficient in dealing damage during the midgame with very beefy units.
Try to keep your Prankster safe or it will die very quickly to the Suffer - Power. Otherwise, you should have a very powerful strategy at this point which doesn’t get impressed by the chip damage.
I could have ordered this attack a bit better with Hallowed, but it literally didn’t matter as Swain died to the damage.
Overall, the Viktor power mattered maybe 2 - 3 times at most, the more impactful one was the Prankster, which was actually really fun. Definetly an adventure I might replay in the future.
And that’s it! Thank you for reading, check out my Twitter and Youtube for more content and I’ll see you next week for another Path of Champions guide!