[2021] Thank you for the Expansion Riot! Truly <3

Can I just take a second here to state my appreciation for this Expansion in the midst of all the complaints about Irelia? I truly think this expansion release is the best one yet, even if I've seen 90% Azir/Irelia decks in the ladder at the moment, I'm still so happy with it.

Why? Because I think there was a solid amount of variety in this expansion in spite of the above reality, if people reach for it. One deck archetype I've so badly wanted since release is rapidly ramping into big stompies or some kind of ultimate win condition. Runeterra had Warmother and other similar builds originally, and Mono-Shurima made a splash but was quite poor as we all know, but nothing quite scratched the itch I was looking for until Lissandra came out. The problem was, Lissandra usually required some cheese to make work, rather than a really synergistic and fun deck concept. So I shelved her for a bit, hoping that one day she'd find a proper home in my deck builds, and then this expansion landed and now she has...

I managed to assemble a Lissandra countdown deck I put together

day one and have been refining since; it has actually done quite well for me. It reminds me of Countdown/Seraph Havencraft decks from Shadowverse, which I was so very fond of back when I played. Even against the current meta darling Azir/Irelia, a well timed Ice Shard can often win me games, so I get to play something I enjoy without the meta feeling super oppressive like Lee Sin did (which often felt outright unwinnable to play against). It even does well against the traditional aggro top tier decks, so I'm quite happy with its performance. Clock Hand might be one of my favourite cards in the game now and is a much more synergistic and appropriate way to proc a Watcher without Matron memes that don't fit with the rest of the deck, or retreat/return.

On top of that MF is back with Blade Dancers as an alterantive to Azir, and I always loved MF and love her still, so I'm glad she makes a return after Scouts got nerf batted into the ground, Taliyah now finds a home in a Malphite deck (Mogwai made a fun one I enjoy), Chow and some other cards previously released have made my Dragon deck actually function on an acceptable level, and there's still tons more fun stuff to experiment with like Khahiri Copies and Zilean. Nasus/Atrocity decks are still viable and fun and even do exceptionally well against Azir/Irelia, really, the only wish I still have left for this game is that Yasuo is made viable some day.

Honestly the only thing in this expansion that I think draws my ire is Chirean Sumpworker and Posse, because a 2 mana card that easily transforms into a 4-2 elusive that deals 1 to everything on attack is just... wildly over stat'd, in a region that excels at make copies of it, and it either needs to lose elusive, or have it's health stat reduced so it can die to pings. That being said, I don't think Posse is so overtuned that it is meta-defining, it just kinda feels bad to lose to.

I simply cannot express how thrilled I am with this expansion and the plethora of options it has given to me, thank you so much Riot, I appreciate the Runeterra team immensely and hope we keep getting more releases like this. Truly wonderful!

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