Runeterra is out of beta, and the new cards make it worth playing again
Scrub the deck
Me and Legends Of Runeterra had been drifting away from each other, like lovers on flotsam tugged apart by cruel ocean currents. We'd ran out of surprises. The spark, as far as there was one, had gone. But now Riot have released Runeterra for realises, and the 120 new cards included in patch 1.0 have spiced things right up. It's free-to-play, and now is a very good time to check it out.
The new faction is neat. I'm a pirate now! A pirate who is terrible at Expedition mode.
That new faction is called Bilgewater, who are mostly pirates, with some eldritch sea monster summoners thrown in for good measure. They don't seem great in Expedition mode, which is my favourite, where you draft decks from a limited series of choices. That's because lots of their cards seem to depend on each other, unlike the standalone beefcakes that can be found in other decks. Bilgewaterers are all about summoning cheat, aggressive units while blasting directly at the nexus with magical cannons.
Here's what they look like in surprisingly-good cartoon form.
I'm determined to make them work, despite my Expedition difficulties. The game feels like an unsolved puzzle again, with overpowered combos waiting to be discovered. Reddit already has a few, of course, including this infinite mushroom loop.
This has been going on for 20 minutes - Infinite Loop from r/LegendsOfRuneterra
I had to check the comments to realise what was happening. They've got three Cloud Drinkers reducing the mana cost of Vault Breaker, a new card, down to three. Vault Breaker creates copies of itself, so they can play that infinitely to buff their mushroom man. That lets them infinitely increase mushman's attack, BUT that's irrelevant because the real threat is mushman's mushrooms. He pops a bunch of poisonous shrooms into your opponent's deck every time you cast a spell, so next turn the poor sod on the other side is going to draw a card loaded with hundreds of fatal fungi.
What a beautiful sight to see. This is the magic period, where everyone is still working out what's possible and Riot haven't worked out what they need to nerf, so I'd get in quick. Just think, you could be the one pulling nonsense like this.
If you're after specifics, I already ran through most of the new stuff on Monday. The full path notes are here.
You can download Runeterra, for free, here.