In the upcoming Riot Open event, it’s clear that Samira will be a popular card choice among players. In fact, it’s likely that she will be in 80-90% of the deck lists. As a result, players will have to decide whether to ban Samira or play something strong against her. Personally, I plan to ban Karma Sett and leave Samira up.
The most popular deck is expected to be the Samira Leona deck, which is similar to the previous format’s Sunburn deck. However, Leona Katarina decks were easily defeated by other Leona decks in the past. Therefore, I plan to slow down my deck and add in something like Aurelon Sol or Demacia to have a better matchup against Samira Leona.
Instead of playing Samira Fizz, which would result in a lot of mirror matches, I’m considering Varys Samira. This is an OTK (one-turn-kill) deck that aims to kill the opponent with one big strike from Varys. The key is to find an equipment early, which can be done by hard mulliganing or using Forsaken Baccai to dig for them.
Samira can be used to stall out the early game and control the board, while Varys is saved for the late game to deal the crushing blows. Overall, Varys Samira is an interesting deck choice for the upcoming event.