1.8 Patch: Call Of The Mountain – Part 1 – The Meta Shift

Hello! Kairux here once again for another Legends Of Runeterra post. I’m super excited about this one. After months of waiting, 1.8 Patch: Call of the Mountain is now upon us! A new region – Targon –  is finally arriving along with a whole lot of cards in Legends Of Runeterra’s latest expansion. Specifically, we have 7 Champions and 82 non-Champions coming in tomorrow once the patch hits the live servers. Yay!

In this series of posts, I’ll be sharing my thoughts regarding the new keywords and champions, as well as my favorite cards in this set. For this particular post, I will be talking about the 6 new keywords that come with the 1.8 patch.

Let’s get right to it.

Behold

Bonus if you have a type of card in play or hand. This keyword only appears in both Freljord and Targon cards for now. For Freljord, Behold requires an 8+ cost card to be on your board or hand. This cost can prove to be tricky to trigger, especially in the early game. Triggering Behold effects in the early stages of the game requires you to have an 8+ cost unit or spell card on your starting hand to get the bonus. This can prove to be a detriment for you, especially on Aggro and Midrange matchups. On the other hand, Targon’s Behold cards require Celestial cards. This requirement is much easier to accomplish since the set comes with options to Invoke Celestials in all stages of the game.

Daybreak

Bonus if this is the first card you play in a round. Daybreak is probably my most favorite new keyword in the 1.8 patch for two reasons. First, I loved playing Leona in League of Legends and she’s one of my favorite support Champions. And second, I love how straightforward and decisive this keyword is. Daybreak’s effect means that you can only activate it once per turn normally and to me, it feels like a ‘make-or-break’ sort of thing where you only get to play a single Daybreak effect each turn. I like such situations where you either do or don’t. Some people might say that Daybreak seems restrictive. While that may be true in most cases, we have Rahvun to remedy that, don’t we?

It also helps that I really appreciate Solari’s aesthetics. That red and gold combination looks so regal!

Fury

When I kill a unit, grant me +1 | +1. Fury is a keyword made to dominate. The only units that currently have this keyword are Dragons, which is quite fitting. Fury is especially potent against decks that swarm the board with smaller units. Units with Fury can keep the offense up while increasing the pressure every time they get rid of an opposing unit and they do not go down easily because of the bonus stats.

Invoke

Pick a Celestial card from among 3 to create in hand. Legends of Runeterra’s take on Hearthstone’s Discover mechanic. Whenever you Invoke, you get to choose a Celestial card between 3 options. There are 22 Celestial cards in total; a spell and a unit for each mana cost from 0 to 10. Consequently, the variety of options present gives more playstyle diversity. I’m also really happy that Aurelion Sol is incorporated as an absolutely overwhelming card, given his nature as an ancient creature capable of creating a sun.

Nightfall

Bonus if this is not the first card you play in a round. The polar opposite of the Daybreak keyword. Nightfall can be activated multiple times in one turn, as opposed to Daybreak which can only activate once per turn. The cards that currently have the Nightfall keyword are mostly geared towards aggression – getting damage in and reducing the combat effectiveness of your opponent’s units. This keyword has the potential to bring Aggro back in the meta.

SpellShield

Nullifies the next enemy spell or skill that would affect this unit. Arguably the strongest keyword to arrive in this patch. SpellShield grants so much value to any unit that has it. It makes it twice as difficult for your opponent to get rid of your unit that has it since they have to burn an additional spell or skill to get rid of the said unit. Another factor that makes SpellShield so strong is that it is perpetual unless a spell or skill gets rid of it. With these in mind, I think I can safely say that SpellShield will be one of the major factors in defining the upcoming meta.

If I were to point out a weakness of SpellShield, I would say that it lies in how atrocious the word looks. It’s like they forced it to be a single word even though it is meant to be split in two, standing by how keywords should only be a single word every time. Either that or Riot should just uncapitalize the ‘S’ on ‘Shield. ‘Spellshield’ looks quite decent anyway.

There you have part 1 of my personal rundown of the 1.8 patch. Part 2 will be about the new Champions and part 3 will be about notable cards and my personal favorites in the upcoming set.

Many thanks for indulging me in this post. I hope you enjoyed and learned something from this. If you want to read about my previous deck reviews, you can find them here at Captain.

Until the next post. Ciao!