💀🎣 Fishing With Friends (As Bait) - ✨ Gen Con Featured Deck 2025!

MASSIVE THANKS to Riot and The Riftbound Community Server for picking this deck to be showcased at Gen Con! This deck is hiliariously fun. Alternative names: Karthus' Fishing Trip. Play normal viktor? No. Find baited hook? YESSSS. Baited hook here is absolutely insane, since it doesn't HAVE to play a card with exactly one higher might: Here's how to use it. Tap Viktor legend for a 1 might recruit. Sacrifice it (and a power, if you have a sigil, great!) Look through the top deck, Recruits have 1 might so from here you can play any of your 1/2 energy units. If you find a Soaring Scout or Watchful Sentry, try to sacrifice these next turn (provided you have a Viktor on the board) for loads of tokens! ## Bait/ Targets The higher the might, the more valid targets there are in deck, so don't forget! The bigger the bait, the more likely for a catch! | Bait | Targets | | -------- | ------- | | 1 Might | 9 | | 2 Might | 15 | | 3 Might | 23 | | 4 Might | 23 | There are 10 1/2 Might units in the deck, if you are using one as bait, there are only 9 targets etc. This means the chances go up if you use a recruit instead! (Helpful sheet pending). ## Synergies: ### Karthus Double Deathkneel! Have Karthus on the board and trigger your deathkneels for double effectiveness. ### Viktor Lovesssss Self Destruction Early game, Viktor can generate units with just 1 energy as bait for the hook, but later when you are able to play Viktor himself each non-recruit token you kill is going to net you even more recruits! What's their fate? Bait for more hooks? Maybe, I hope so. Or maybe just idk... units to play the game Riot designed or something. I guess you could do that too. ### On Play? More like on Catch! Lecturing Yordle's "When you play me, draw 1." and Faithful Manufactor's "When you play me, play a 1 might Recruit unit token here" are GREAT to fish off hook. They grant you additional card advantage just for doing what you wanted to do anyway and then act as bodies later for you to use well then fish more. Spectral Matron's "When you play me, you may play a unit costing no more than 3 and no more than rune from your trash, ignoring its cost." is going to be unbeliavably strong to be fished out, granting more recursion for the low low price of... nothing. Amazing. And shes best friends with the Vanguard Captain, making an astounding combo. Make sure on turns where you are aiming to catch a Spectral Matron combo you do two things: 1. Check the weather (And by this I of course mean check your trash for good targets before you go fishing. Any "When you play me" are great but also whatever you may need in the moment) 2. Make sure you play a card from your hand if you can. This way if you do revive a Vanguard Captain she will get her legion effect! ### The Payoff Imagine it. A perfect fishing adventure. Picture this beautiful scene for a moment. You play your 3rd Baited Hook from hand, runes ready to go and the perfect bait lined up. You tap your Baited Hook, killing a Machine Evangel and you find... a Machine Evangel! Plop it down. Ready the next hook, away it casts, digging through the next 5 cards. Another Machine Evangel! Lets use it for another dig, and oh my goodness! A third Machine Evangel, well, lets use that for the final hook we've assembled throughout our intense game. We find off this, a Spectral Matron! She hits the board reviving a Vanguard Captain granting two further 2 Tokens. What an amazing day since on the board you already had a Karthus and 3 Viktor. I didn't mention the final token amount in one turn for the final dramatic reveal: The fishing trip has yeilded Vanguard Captain, Spectral Matron and *30 tokens*. A grand total of 37 might, and speaking of grand, hypothetical grand strategem here is a total of *197 Might*. Or Siphon power, for a total here of *69 Might* oughta do it too. Now obviously, thats not going to happen consistently (good luck though)... but to a lesser extent would still be good. And THATS what we're aiming for. --- ## Battlegrounds Candlelit sanctum is a mini fish radar. Trifarian War Camp lets us do insane pushes with recruits Obelisk of Power lets us get more power to spend to throw our rod about. --- ### Mulligan & Drawing FIND THE HOOK. Sigils are very helpful too :) BUT FIND THE HOOK ASAP. Always mulligan 2, the more you get through your deck, the closer you are to your next hook. Hidden Blade is primarily here for draws but I guess you can use it as situational removal. But Pentestag! What if I have 2 energy drops! I want to play them. No you don't. You will get them through Baited Hook, believe in the heart of the cards. --- ### Side Deck This deck was primarily aimed for Gen Con, but! If you want to take this to a local/ weekly tournament go wild! The side strategy is to completely frazzle the opponent, once they are used to your bait shinanigians and try to side in gear removal or whatnot, completely throw them a smokescreen by removing 3x Baited Hook, 3x Karthus, 2x Viktor and side in all 8 cards (Suggested, 1x Siphon Power, 2x Falling Comet, 2x Grand Strategem, 3x Harnessed Dragon, adjust to taste). Congratulations you're now playing (relatively) normal Viktor swarm. Then, in the event your opponents brain was melted but the game is at a game 3, flip a coin (physically or mentally), to decide whether u wanna play fish for friends or Viktor Swarm. Or! Some combination of both, nothing stopping you from keeping Baited hook in and instead siding out the the Machine Evangel, Seals of Unity, Spectral Matron, 2 copies of Viktor or whatever suits your fancy.