Hi guys! Another post to share some light on one of the things I like most about LoR and hopefully further even just a little bit your knowledge of the game.
I really really enjoy the predict mechanic. You get choices to make often, probabilities to consider and a few key tricks that make the whole mechanic feel super engaging and rewarding. There certainly could be entire blog posts written about why it feels so good (a little bit of the "opening booster" factor when the choice of 3 appears on your screen, the maths that can go in weighing the right option or just the deckbuilding choices that come with it) but this is not one such blog post.
I like the predict mechanic. And as such its 2 champions are very high on my list of favourite in the game:
Zilean has a lot for himself... well... he has his timebombs. And he has 4 health. Believe me it's more than it what it looks like at first. But here I would like to explore Ekko a bit further.
The Swag... *swag*... *swag*... *swag*...
Ekko feels like a high-speed champion to me. He is about the win-win-win kind of motion. He will most of the time hit the table when he has already fulfilled his level-up condition and will start generating value straight away if not dealt with by the opponent.
His Chronobreak nearly guarantees a win on its own. An opponent's board wipe, an open attack to reduce the enemy board, anything bad happening really and it's the punish. Nearly immediate. Everything your opponent used, all the vallue they created: reverted for 3 mana and a rally for good measure.
But Chronobreak is not what I would like to emphasise here:
Ekko's signature spell: Called Shot. It seems a bit underwhelming at first. Draw 1 for 2 Mana. Basically "just spend 2 to have any other card in hand". Pretty much the inverse of value. Then or course, there is the second kiss cool effect of creating something in the deck:
Ooooooh yup. We're getting places here. Parallel Convergence is a spell that allows for an added attack, with all your board, as ephemeral. This immediately synergises with a few things:
Summon effects: any ally with a summon effect will see it triggered again when their ephemeral copy appears. Classics are Fallen Feline, Aloof Travellers or Rock Hopper when paired with the obvious other predict region but the pool is actually much wider than that. Want another stance? Vulpine Wanderer. Want to speed up your Warlord's Palace or Hoard? Akshan or Vekauran Vagabond. Want to summon new followers? Marai Warden. Want to go big with an oompf? Sion Returned. Really the only limit is your imagination.
Attack abilities: Anything that triggers on attack, triggers again! Woop woop! Crackshot Corsair, Hothead, Vladimir, you name it!
Ephemeral mechanics: bring on the sharks, their lovely friends and all the "ally dying" synergies
And that's not even mentioning the Scout keyword of course.
So many swag moves to dream of. But, because yes, there is a but, each of Ekko's spell only creates 1 copy of Paralell Convergence to be shuffled in your deck. The chances of you seeing it organically are super low and therefore quite random.
The Hope... *hope*... *hope*... *hope*...
Now, that's where things become interesting. We have a cool champ, some cool spells he can create, we just need to find:
What we want to synergise it with
How to bring some consistency in finding the spells.
The Ekko kit is all in all small, which is nice as it lets it fit alongside more card-demanding ones, and just a bit too limited to be self-sufficient, which means whatever other region we pair Ekko with we'll have to find ways to draw these spells at some point.
Here I have added Fallen Feline as it is a generic good 1-cost in any Ekko build but it is certainly less necessary than the 12 other cards in the module.
There is one more card, not necessarily made for Ekko's module to start with but that fits so well with it it has be considered everytime:
The Station Archivist will basically give you more chance to add to your hand the spells you've created, whilst basically adding a free copy of them. You need to plan the mana for it, so it can be an expensive play, but as a 2-of it could/would be a great fit.
What to do now? I could leave this blog here and let you maybe experiment with what pleases you but I thought it might be good to share a few examples of decks that work well with Ekko, for the spells he generates, outside of the Shurima combination.
MegaMogwai's "Ekko's treasure hunt"
Deck code: CICQCAQGDIAQIBQIAECQIDACAECACNAEAQCACAQHBQBQCBIGBIBAIB
I like this deck a lot as it basically takes the problem and flips it on its head.
"There is 1 hyper-value card in the deck that we really want to find and we don't have enough tools to reliably find it"
X
"Let's generate so many hyper-value cards to shuffle in the deck that we will inevitably find one of them even with the few tools at our disposal"
:D ! Love the creative thinking! What Mogwai did here is pair Ekko with Bilgewater and more specifically with Marai Greatmother...
and Lost Riches.
Easily shuffling 4-6 hyper-value spells in the deck per game and delivering:
Great late game power
Some nice renewing gameplay as some of these spells are randomly generated (but often just as game-winning) and offering a new experience every game
I have a real soft spot for this deck. You can find the video he shared about it here. The first 5min or so are a more in-depth presentation of the deck, the rest are a few games to showcase the gameplay.
My own silly take on it
To be honest I have tried many, many things around Ekko's spells. It's one of the exercise I often come back to when I have some spare time and the latest releases are starting to fade away a little bit as sources of inspiration.
One such exercise, one that maybe delivered the best results, was to pair Ekko with Tristana
Tristana has a summon effect based on multi-region allies hitting the board. That summon effect gives said multi-region ally and Tristana impact. Stacking the keyword nicely on Tristana as you summon more and more multi-region allies.
When playing Paralell convergence both your Tristana and its ephemeral copy will gain impact 4-5 times creating monster impact units without even considering that all the multi-region allies you have created with the spell are getting impact 2 (1 for each of the copies of Tristana) :D !
This is making Parallel Convergence proper devastating. At the time I had built the deck to have the minimum Ekko package and added as many multi-region allies/module in as possible. Relying on Bandle City's versatility to give some draw power and combat tricks.
The list below is roughly what I had arrived at the time:
Deck code: CQBAKBAEAEBAOCYMAUCQU4EFAGMADIABUYAQEAIFAQGAIBIKDIYXPLYBAA
Now the truth is there are new ways to go about it. The Fae module has a lot of multi-region units, just like Mecha-Yordle, which can synergise with some of Ptz's mechanics.
In a few words: there is a lot to play with there and quite a few alleys to explore :).
This got a lot longer than what I initially set out for. I hope this will have given you either some new perspective on Ekko's potential or that it will have tickled your will to play him. Let me know if you have any questions!
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