Today I’m playing Elites in the Diamond queue. Elites is an interesting deck to me because it’s typically quite good, but the higher tier players don’t like to respect it. With no relevant cards coming out of the 4.5 patch, there’s not as much excitement and hype around Elites as there should be. That’s why I’m playing it today – to see if it’s resilient enough to handle the control decks of the format or if it’s just not that good right now.
Elites is all built on Virtual Card Advantage. If you’re not familiar with the idea, it’s when you play one card and it shuts down two of your opponent’s cards. For example, if your opponent has two 3/3s on the board and you play a 4/4, they can’t attack with their 3/3s or they’ll just die. That’s virtual card advantage. Stopping two cards with one without actually removing any of the opposing cards. Elites is exceptionally good at this because it has lots of ways to put tons and tons of stats onto the board.
The main courses of action with the deck are to get six units on the board and then play a Champion’s Strength, Garen, or some kind of unit boosting card to increase the stats of everyone instead of just one or two units. This way, you can attack with more stats than your opponent can handle.
The wild card I like to call out with this deck is Rite of Negation. It’s a great strategy for Elites because it can stop a big board clear spell like Ruination or Buried in Ice. Having access to the Rite of Negation gives us the opportunity to win the game anytime an opponent wants to play a big spell. The tempo gain from that mana difference tends to be enough to just close out the game.
So that’s it! I’m excited to see how Elites performs in the Diamond queue and if it’s resilient enough to handle the control decks of the format. Wish me luck!