LoR new players guide

Deck Finders:
https://lor.mobalytics.gg/decks (general netdeck library)
https://lor.mobalytics.gg/meta-tier-list (list of top meta decks as chosen by some e-celeb faggots)
https://decksofruneterra.com/ (alternative netdeck library)




Getting started:
Play the fucking tutorial.




Turn Flow:
Remember that only one player gets to attack each turn, alternating. Plan around your attacking turns.

When you submit an action, your opponent gets to act in response. This back and forth continues until you both pass, and the turn ends.
Playing a unit lets your opponent play a unit in response. Attacking lets your opponent defend. Units cannot be played during combat.

The player who is attacking in a given round gets to attack first, so the flow of a round looks like this:
Player A gets to play a unit, cast a spell or attack.
>If they attack, Player B gets to declare blockers, combat resolves and then it’s player B’s turn to play a unit or a spell.
>If they play a unit or a spell or even pass, it’s Player B’s turn to play a unit or a spell.
>When Player B commits or passes, Player A gets to play a unit or a spell.
>When player A commits or passes, Player B gets to play a unit or cast again and so on.
>When they both pass, the turn ends. If you do ANYTHING during your action, your opponent gets another actio
>Next turn, Player B gets to act first and has the ability to attack now.

During combat, Player A declares attackers and then initiative passes to Player B. Player B gets to pass (and combat resolves instantly) or declare blockers.
>If they declare blockers, initiative passes back to Player A.
>At this point, Player A can only confirm and let combat resolve, or cast spells to influence the outcome of combat.
>If A casts something, initiative passes to Player B, who may also cast something or just confirm and let combat resolve.
>If B casts then something, initiative passes again. Combat only resolves when one player finally confirms without acting.

Remember: Performing ANY action and submitting always means initiative passes back to your opponent. Combat/spellcasting/turns only end when both players pass without doing anything.

You may only attack once per attacking turn, but your attack can happen at any point where you have the action. You can summon first, let your opponent summon, then attack, or simply attack immediately. Both have strengths and weaknesses and are punished by different tools.





Spells:
Spells come in 3 speeds: Slow, Fast, and Burst.
Burst spells resolve instantly without needing to hit submit and don’t consume your action. You can play a burst spell AND summon a unit in the same action and can play them any time you’re able to act, like during combat or in response to enemy spells. However, if you only play a burst spell and pass, your opponent gets their turn to act.

Fast spells can be played any time and multiple can be played at once, but count as an action once submitted. Your opponent can respond to your fast spell with their own fast or Burst spells before it resolves, and after it resolves, your opponent gets their turn to act.

Slow spells cannot be played during combat or in response to enemy spells. A single slow spell consumes your action, like playing a unit. Your opponent can respond to slow spells with their own Fast or Burst spells before it resolves, and after it resolves, your opponent gets their turn to act.

Slow and Fast spells both begin a spell stack and can be responded to with Burst spells, which resolve instantly, or Fast spells, which get added to the stack. The stack resolves from the last spell added to the first, so you can counter enemy spells by responding with something that will play out first. The order matters.

The spell stack caps at 9 spells, at which point only Burst spells may be added before resolving the stack. This is only relevant for Karma, who tends to flood the spell stack easily.

Some units have special skills that resolve as Burst or Slow spells and will have an icon indicating that in their card text. Like spells, Slow skills will create a stack and allow you to respond with spells while Burst ones just resolve instantly.

Some spells have interactable conditions to trigger their effect, eg. "Kill an Ally *to* Draw 2". If a spell as a condition, you can cause the spell's effect to fizzle by denying its condition. For example, if you kill the target of the "kill an ally" with a spell in response to their spell being cast, they no longer have an ally to kill, and the draw effect fizzles.





Some general tips:
You can click on keywords or any highlighted card text to bring up a tooltip explaining what they do in greater detail
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Always check the eyeball on the left to see how effects from combat or spellcasting will resolve before committing.

You can check the match record to the left of the eyeball (little page button) to review previous actions. This game has no graveyard, so this record is the only way to check what died and can be revived, or to check what cards your opponent discarded for whatever reason.

“Play” effects only trigger when you pay a unit’s mana cost and play it to the board from hand and not by any other means of summoning.

“Summon” effects trigger when a unit is played, cloned, copied or revived. Any means of putting a unit on the board triggers summon effects.

“Revive” creates a new copy of a dead card rather than bringing the dead one back. It’s possible to clone multiple copies of a single dead card by ‘reviving’ it repeatedly and several deck concepts revolve around this interaction.

If a blocker dies after being committed, it still blocks and the attacker it was blocking doesn’t strike. Order your removal spell/skills and attack steps properly to avoid giving your opponent free blocks. This can also be abused to deny an attacker’s Strike effects or Lifesteal; however, Overwhelm allows the attacker to still strike past the removed blocker (and deal full damage to nexus) and removing an overwhelm unit’s blocker is a good way to push more damage that turn.

Barriers block Lifesteal and Drain but do not prevent Overwhelm from hitting your nexus and do not prevent Strike effects from triggering.

You can pop barriers with targeted damage spells. Because all Barriers are burst speed and don't stack, they can't be queued behind Fast speed damage spells. The spell stack will resolve, pop the barrier and combat will resolve immediately after without presenting an oppourtunity to re-apply barrier.

Drain and Lifesteal will heal your nexus for their full value even if they overkill their target, but Toughness reduces that heal by 1.

If a unit has 0 attack power, it won’t strike at all during combat and can’t trigger Strike effects. This is one of the uses of Freeze spells.

Some champions must be on the board when an action resolves in order to count it towards their level up. Other champions count it no matter what and can level up even when not on the field. Pay attention to the wording of their level up condition. If it needs to be on the board, then killing it or recalling it will reset the level progress. If it can level up from the deck, then that progress cannot be reset. Once one champion copy levels up, all copies of that champion will always be leveled up even if the first one dies.

Rally only gives you an attack action if you don’t already have one. This means you can play it when it’s not your turn to attack and get a chance to attack anyways, or play it AFTER attacking to attack a second time. If you play it before attacking on your attack turn, it does nothing.

Try to save enough mana for the important spells in your deck whenever possible. This forces your opponent to play around the risk that you may have an answer to their gimmick, even if you don’t actually. This is especially true for Ionia's Deny and Will of Ionia spells, which counter most things at Fast speed for only 4 mana. Shadow Isles can threaten Vengeance or Ruination for 7 or 9 mana respectively. Demacia can threaten Single Combat for only 2 mana.

If your opponent passes with a lot of mana stocked, like they’re trying to bait you to play into one of their big cards, you can always pass without playing anything to simply end the turn right there. Forcing your opponent to waste mana to keep the threat of an expensive card up can put them very far behind. It’s not always the answer, but it’s an option. Remember: passing in response to a pass always ends the turn. Passing in response to an action does not.





Card economy:
This game is made for f2ps. Put your wallet away.

Advance your region rewards to level 4 in a single region, then swap to a new one. Do this until every region is at 4 to quickly balloon your pool of common and rare cards for basic deckbuilding.

When every region is at 4, advance them each to 8 for the champion capsules. Champs are the rarest card type and the lynchpin cards of most decks, so take full advantage of all free or guaranteed sources

After each region is 8, advance whichever region you prefer in whatever order you like. There’s no penalty for switching regions at any point. The xp cost to level a region increases with each successive level, so keep that in mind.

Try to level your weekly vault at least to 10 each week for a free champion wildcard. You can go beyond that if you want, but 10 is the minimum you should at least aim for.

You get 1 daily mission a day but can hold up to 3 at a time, so there’s no rush to complete them. Missions come in 1000xp and 1500xp varieties entirely at random. You can reroll ones you don’t like to fish for better ones.

Daily missions can be completed in AI games.

You can surrender normal games for 50xp a pop. There’s a daily cap for this, but it’s still free xp.

Daily win xp diminishes until it plateaus at 200, so there’s no cap for winning.

This game’s economy is very generous in general and it’s easy to unlock every card without spending money just by playing a couple of times a week.