Discard Aggro – a Draven-Jinx Deck – an LOR Deck Review

Hello! Kairux here for another Legends Of Runeterra deck review. With the advent of patch 1.6, there were some interesting changes that came with it. Arena Bookie, Sump Dredger, and Zaunite Urchin all have been adjusted to be playable in the current meta. With these changes, a new deck has been born. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Discard Aggro – a Draven-Jinx deck.

Deck Overview

Discard Aggro is a Noxus-Piltover and Zaun deck that specializes in utilizing cards that use the discard mechanic to its advantage. It offsets the discard cost through the use of spells and units that activate or summon whenever they are discarded. This effectively mitigates the losses that arise from using discard-to-activate cards.  Instead of getting -2, you only get -1. This combo is especially useful for discard-to-draw cards such as Zaunite Urchin and Sump Dredger. Discard Aggro also features Draven and Jinx as the deck’s Champions. Draven provides Spinning Axes, which is a good means to activate ‘when discarded’ cards as well as a possible discard fodder. Jinx, on the other hand, greatly benefits from the discard mechanic. Having an empty hand flips her and subsequently activates her flipped ability every turn afterward.

Gameplay

Discard Aggro implements the same strategy in every matchup. It needs to deal as much damage as it can in the early stages of the game and aim for a mid-game finish. The board can easily be swarmed by dropping units that have a discard-to-draw effect and subsequently discarding units that have a ‘summon when discarded’ effect. Having 4-5 small units on the board by turn 3 is not that difficult especially if you have the right cards on-hand. This setup becomes exponentially more deadly if you can readily use Vision during the attack phase.

With this in mind, cards like Zaunite Urchin, Astute Academic, House Spider, and Draven are all good cards to have on your starting hand. Additionally, having at least 1 Jury-Rig or Flame Chompers! is necessary so you would not have any problems when you use a card that requires discarding for its activation.

Flipping Jinx as you transition to the mid-game will help you finish the game faster. You can go ham and get rid of the cards on your hand in exchange for a decent amount of damage. Jinx enjoys good synergy with Augmented Experimenter, as the latter will become your lifeline if you run out of cards too quickly as a consequence of fulfilling Jinx’s level-up condition or if you just gas-out post turn 6.

Discard Aggro will have a hard time winning if the match drags on to the late game. With this in mind, I teched in a single copy of Captain Farron as a late-game finisher. He is particularly deadly against decks without Nexus-healing capabilities.

Tech Options

> Sumpworks Map – use this to get that sweet Elusive keyword to bypass defenses and deal direct damage to your opponent’s Nexus.

> Brothers’ Bond – this card makes sense since your aim is to swarm the board with units. Adding 4 to your early game damage output is no joke. A true aggro tool.

> Chief Mechanist Zevi – if you’re don’t like Augmented Experimenter that much, then you can run this card as a substitute. Haven’t tried running this yet but it could theoretically work.

Deck Matchups

vs. Aggro

I don’t have much data on this matchup since Aggro decks in the ladder around the Diamond to low Master rank are few and far in between recently since the patch 1.6 nerfs. Most Aggro decks that I face on the ladder are against other variations of Discard Aggro decks. It would be difficult to write about using Discard Aggro against other types of Aggro decks at the moment.

vs. Midrange

Average to Difficult matchup. There are times when you can out-damage midrange decks by swarming the board with small units. Discard Aggro can also trade surprisingly well against midrange decks by using Spinning Blades and surprise usage of Vision. You need to try and finish the game as fast as possible though because if they manage to drop their big units while keeping your board in check, it will be difficult to win in the late game. Probably the most difficult midrange matchup is against the Ashe-Sejuani Frostbite deck because they have an answer against your board swarming (Reckoning) and Quick Attack Champions (Frostbite).

vs. Control

Difficult matchup. Control decks can really give you a hard time because they have lots of tools to get rid of your units on the board. The difficulty increases dramatically if your opponent has units and spells that recover their Nexus’ health. Your priority is to try and keep your units alive. Try and bait removals before dropping priority units such as Draven and Jinx. Captain Farron will be very helpful against this matchup if you are having a hard time closing the game.

Conclusion

Patch 1.6 brought us Discard Aggro and I am thankful for it. I almost always have a fun time playing Discard Aggro because I thoroughly enjoy the use of the discard mechanic to cycle through my deck and it offers something new to the table as compared to the other popular meta decks right now. While the changes brought about by the latest patch opened the gates to allow this archetype to be playable, I think there are still lots of room for improvement to make this deck meta. I think that following the buffs to the Discard archetype in the latest patch, there might be support cards for it that will be coming in the near future.

That’s it for now, guys. Many thanks for indulging me in this blog 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.

Until the next post. Ciao!