Taric Fiora Guide (Call of the Mountain)
In our latest Glimpse Beyond deck guide, Precipic and Rattlingbones are teaming up to teach you how to play Taric Fiora! Here’s the decklist:
Deck code: CECAIAIADIOSWLIGAMEQYIZJHJDVCAICAAAQCAYAAYBACAIAB4AQGCIGAA
[See Taric Fiora deck details]
Give this deck a shot if you enjoy playing with Support mechanics and buffs from Targon and Demacia to dominate combat.
This rest of this guide discusses the deck’s win condition, mulligans, matchups, tech choices, and more, so stick around!
Win Condition and Expected Turn to Win Game
The goal of this deck is to utilize the Support mechanic to grant your Challenger units and Lifesteal units insane stats.
Cards like War Chefs, Taric, Mentor of the Stones, Tyari the Traveler, and especially Mountain Sojourners help make cards like Radiant Guardian and Screeching Dragon big enough that they will run away with the game.
Pair this with cheap removal in Single Combat and some 0 mana Arbiter of the Peaks and you have a force to be reckoned with.
Mulligan for Different Matchups and General Mulligan
In this deck, you are always looking to keep a solid curve of units and powerful Support payoff cards. This means setting up hands that have both buff cards like Tyari the Traveler, War Chefs, Mentor of the Stones, and Taric along with buff payoff cards like Fleetfeather Tracker, Fiora, Screeching Dragon, and Radiant Guardian.
Practice your mulligans with the Starting Hand Simulator.
Keeping in mind that Taric with Pale Cascade is ultimately one of the best turn 4 plays in the game, it is sometimes a viable mulligan keep. Especially if it’s paired with some 1-2 drop units.
Card Choices and Key Synergies
One of the key synergies of the deck is the combination of Taric with Pale Cascade.
These cards together allow you to draw 2 cards, get 2 spell triggers for Taric and make 2 units +2/+1. It is an incredibly powerful synergy and can often win games by itself from all the value it generates. Beyond that, once Taric levels up it will make it so that your Challenger units and Radiant Guardian become unable to die or take damage.
When that happens you get to kill a free unit every turn or get a free Lifesteal hit off every turn.
Radiant Guardian is another one of the most important cards of the deck. The Lifesteal on this card is a menace for any midrange or aggro deck, making it basically impossible to kill you with timing pushes especially when paired with Single Combat and Concerted Strike.
The Tough keyword makes the card even more obnoxious because it makes Radiant Guardian unkillable against all but the best of the best removal spells in the game. The trick with Radiant Guardian is getting its trigger off by having a unit die.
In general, the best way to do this is by setting up an attack with a Fleetfeather Tracker or a Support creature like Mentor of the Stones where the opponent either is forced to block because of a Challenger or because they need to kill your Support card because you’ll get way too much value.
In this deck just passing on 5 mana to set up a Radiant Guardian is usually wrong. It’s an incredibly obvious play that’s very easy to punish by most decks and often leaves you way behind on tempo. Only do this if your opponent has literally no choice other than to attack.
The next two key cards are Single Combat and Concerted Strike. Let’s be real, both cards have been maxed out in every single Demacia deck in the format.
Nothing feels more oppressive for an aggro deck than seeing their opponent drop a Radiant Guardian with 5 health remaining.
Pair that with 3 banked mana and you’ll have your opponent crying. What’s really interesting about these two cards however is their overall synergy with Taric, Arbiter of the Peak, and of course, the Dragons.
To expand on this a little further, Single Combat and Concerted Strike will both always target your own units which will proc both Taric & Arbiter of the Peaks.
Screeching Dragon & Inviolus Vox both take advantage of the fact that they have Fury. Last but not least, Inviolus Vox will create a random dragon every time that you kill a unit with Screeching or itself.
Beyond the overall synergy in the deck, Single Combat and Concerted Strike in decks like this require you to be aware of what responses your opponents have available to them.
For example, if you’re playing into the typical TF/Swain deck and have a Screeching Dragon at 4 health, playing a Single Combat to destroy a Swain (with 4 health) while they have 1 mana available is a really bad play.
The Flock will essentially lose you the game. Similar spots come up against any deck with access to fast speed removal spells, as such it is essential to be aware of what these cards are in every matchup.
However, as a general rule, the best play is often to be reactive in most spots with these cards or only play these cards when the opponent is low on mana and thus maximize the value of cards.
If you ever manage to Single Combat a unit that your opponent is using Single Combat on then you have learned to play with the card correctly.
Support is an incredibly interesting mechanic to play with. It can allow you to get attacks through boards that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to attack into or even get free kills on opposing units with Challenger units.
In general, when playing Support you should be setting up attacks where either none of your units die to your opponent’s blocks or only your most worthless unit dies to a block.
Support is also way more powerful in this deck than others because we have 2 cards that give us a huge payoff for supporting a bunch.
Arbiter of the Peaks and Mountain Sojourners both create completely unstoppable boards in a heavy Support deck like this.
Arbiter is very very often 0 mana by turn 7 in this deck and its Overwhelm paired with our giant buffs can kill opponents very quickly. Mountain Sojourners as a card creates some of the biggest blowout boards that the deck has to offer.
If you have 2-3 Support cards in play Mountain Sojourners can generate as much as +12/+12 in stats on a board which often will just end a game on the spot.
Good Matchups (and How to Win Them Consistently)
Any deck that often passes the first and second turn will get punished by a deck like this. Warmother, Targon, and Deep decks are good examples.
They typically start their development on turn 3 (Wyrding Stones, Deadbloom Wanderer, or Remembrance). This is something we can capitalize on because we’re playing Support units with good stat lines.
Looking for cards like Fleetfeather tracker into Tyari the Traveler or War Chefs will often put us very much ahead in tempo.
We have to be a little more careful of the Warmother lists if they play Avalanche. In this matchup, we would ideally be looking for War Chefs into Fiora setup. This allows us to play around Avalanche and Wyrding Stones on turn 3 giving us insane value.
The early turn development allows us to play towards the strategy of buffing low cost/efficient units turn after turn. We all know that in LOR, removals aren’t as mana efficient as units so our opponents will always be on a minus tempo.
We also have good matchups against most of the aggro decks utilizing Demacia. We’re able to constantly heal up Radiant Guardian or have bigger units that are hard for our opponents to trade into. Utilizing Screeching Dragon & Fiora for optimal trades or removal of big threats allow us to easily close out those games.
Bad Matchups (and How to Give Yourself a Better Chance at Winning)
MF/GP or TF/GP Burn lists are definitely hard matchups. They play at a faster pace than our list and will often force us into playing Single Combat proactively.
As mentioned earlier, this is very punishable with cards like Fervor which can usually be tutored for with Zap Sprayfin. In order to win this matchup, it’s important to be patient and maintain a healthy board state.
That means you may have to sacrifice some early damage to your Nexus for development. Finding the right balance is going to be key for winning the game.
Endure is a pretty hard matchup. They are able to fight us well with their fast draws of Cursed Keeper, Ravenous Butcher, and Blighted Caretaker so it is hard for us to kill them quickly. Additionally, we don’t have great answers to a giant They Who Endure.
The best way to win in that matchup is try to look for value trades with their units off of Challengers plus Support cards and then try to set up a big swing with Mountain Sojourners or Arbiter of the Peaks before they can Endure plus Atrocity you
Tech Choices
- Relentless Pursuit
- This is a great choice if you’re running into a lot of control decks.
- It’s straight up the best finisher you could ask for, especially in a deck like this where we can abuse our Support and Challenger units for value.
- Ranger’s Resolve
- If the entire meta is dominated by Bilgewater decks with Make it Rain or decks running Avalanche, Ranger’s Resolve is a great call as a 1 of.
- Bastion
- Useful if you’re running into a lot of Targon.
- Hush
- A great tool against Endures and Elusives.
- Guiding Touch
- Crucial inclusion in a burn-heavy meta.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask Rattlingbones during his streams (every weeknight @9PM EST).
Bones streams at twitch.tv/rattlingbones_ every weeknight @9PM EST
