Riftbound: Deck Tech - Jumpscare Rengar

Today, let's go through Jumpscare Rengar (Ambush), a pretty strong deck that centers around "jumpscaring" the opponent by playing units from your hand at reaction speed to attack or defend your battlefields.

Before we begin, however, let me introduce myself. My name is Total, and I used to cast Legends of Runeterra tournaments professionally. I covered all the official tournaments, including Worlds, and I am known for creating deck guides for LoR as well. Now, I am a part of the Riftbound community!

Deck Code:

CMAAAAAAAAAQCAAAPYAACAIAAADQAAYDAAAAZBABQ4AQEAYACYMQKBAAAIMHA4VYAEBQCAAAQAAQEAYAA5QQCBAACUBAEAYAZ4A5SAIEAQAHQ6FXAHLQCAIBAAAJYAIBAIAAAFQ2AEAQAAEAAEAQIADY

Deck Link

The main idea behind this list is to disrupt your opponent early on, attacking the battlefields they control with giant units they can't deal with. If you're successful, you'll buy a lot of time, get ahead in tempo, and never stay behind.

This deck includes extremely strong strategies that can destroy your opponent's tempo straight away, in the first few turns. For instance, Irresistible Faefolk can indirectly remove an enemy unit as soon as turn 2 if you play it with some Ambush card.

Like so, the main combo in this deck is: start playing first and play Irresistible Faefolk on turn 1. On turn 2, you'll move it to a battlefield, pull an enemy unit, and play any Ambush card from your hand to complete this attack. Your opponent will probably not have enough resources to answer you, so they'll lose a unit and practically an entire turn.

This deck does run out of cards fast, but your opponent will have to spend just as many cards to get back into the game after they go through your aggressive early game.

Like so, you won't stay behind at any moment and will be able to end the game on turn 8 or 9.

Rengar - Pridestalker was considered one of the weakest legends when it first came out. However, as we tried it out online, we realized that, in fact, it might be one of the best cards in Set 3.

Its effect is so powerful mainly because you can pick which unit gets +1 Might when you play a unit. This means you can stack Might on a specific unit and use it to attack, gank, block, etc.

Not to mention your legend will let you put in the champion zone the (most likely) best orange card in Set 3, Rengar - Trophy Hunter. Let's go through it.

This is the new orange staple.

This card is incredible with Irresistible Faefolk, as well as one of the reasons why this deck is absurdly strong early on.

You can play it as soon as turn 2 if you're second to play and start a showdown immediately with an enemy unit in play.

Keep in mind it will enter play with 7 Might because of your legend's effect.

This card, by itself, is already a great reason to be second to play because the main idea is to play it on a battlefield that is already under a player's control.

Star Spring - This battlefield is a bit difficult to understand. How is it useful in this list, you might ask yourself. But, once you understand what it does, you'll see it is actually your main battlefield.

Basically, whenever you play a unit on this battlefield directly, you can return another allied unit that is in it to your base.

So, you can play it with cards like First Mate + any unit to return a unit to your base, ready so that you can attack the other battlefield straight away. Or, for instance, you can reveal Pakaa Cub to return another unit on your battlefield to your base and save it from an attack.

Seat of Power - This battlefield fixes one of the issues this deck has, drawing cards. As this list can actively attack and conquer both battlefields quite early on, you can always use Seat of Power's effect, and rather easily.

Emperor's Dais - This powerful battlefield lets you save your units by returning them to your hand. Like so, you won't lose control of it either. As your units have Ambush, you won't lose any time or tempo if you do this because they don't need any setup.

Use Thrill of the Hunt to turn showdowns to your favor and make yourself the attacker by activating your units' Assault. With this card, you can also start showdowns by surprise, with units that don't have Ambush or Accelerate if you desperately need to deal with an enemy battlefield.

With Thrill of the Hunt, you can also just save one of your units and play it on another free battlefield to score a point on the opponent's turn. It is probably the strongest card in this list.

Usually, all the combos in this deck, in the mid-game, center around Rengar, Unseen. That's because it has Ganking, which lets you score two points in a single turn more easily with First Mate.

Other than your battlefield, Nidalee - Cat Form is the only way this deck has to draw cards. However, as it isn't as powerful as other Ambush units and your Rengars, you don't need to make it your priority unless your hand is terrible (which rarely happens).

Don't save your resources: you need to take advantage of your legend. Oftentimes, playing 1 or 2 units every turn is enough to create a lot of value and give your units Might. Ideally, you should make the strongest play every turn and score an extra point or more or remove an enemy unit through combat.

Keep in mind that this list can play with just a few cards in hand, and it is very active even without any units in play. So, don't worry about passing your turn without active runes or investing too many resources early on.

Bad matchups:

With Set 3 in mind, your worst matchups are Vex, Ivern, and any green or purple list with Vex Apathetic.

Vex - Apathetic completely disables this list, and there's not much you can do about it except put lots of units on the board to try to attack them.

Until you can get enough Might to attack Vex, they'll have drawn a lot of cards and set up a strong board that will answer your attacks very easily, either by stunning your units or preventing them from dealing damage with Vilemaw.

As for Ivern, it can also set up strong battlefields that can answer your attacks. It uses nearly the same tools as Vex, that is, it stuns your units with Back Off or Thwonk.

Good matchups:

Any deck that can't get enough Might to protect their units from your attacks will struggle against this list. So: Pyke, Diana, LeBlanc, and Kha'Zix.

Pyke centers around discarding enemy cards and removing units with spells. However, Rengar won't struggle at all if it needs to play with just a few cards in hand. This, added to the fact that you can kill all their units quite easily, makes this one of the best matchups.

Diana can nerf enemy units and lower their Might, but she struggles with drawing cards and playing combos every turn. This Rengar list might lose a bit of time against Diana, but it can keep up the aggressive pace. It will force Diana to always have a spell in hand to resolve the board. Eventually, they won't have resources anymore, and you'll be able to turn the game back around quite easily.

LeBlanc, in turn, will struggle to answer your Rengar - Trophy Hunter and Thrill of the Hunt, which let you attack the battlefield they're trying to dominate. You'll also win any showdown against their units, and you won't struggle too much against yellow removals in general.

Kha'Zix is the slow version of this list, and it leans more towards control. As a result, you'll always be ahead in Might and be able to resolve their board all the time with your Ambush cards.

Mirror match:

These games are complicated. Whoever finds bigger units first wins. Whoever starts out playing will be behind.

If you read this far, thank you! I hope you had fun and enjoyed reading this article.

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See you next time!