Hi all, and welcome to my first article here on Tacter! This one's special because it coincides with my first proper deck profile for Riftbound, and it's for an absolute fan-favorite character that I feel is super underexplored in the competitive landscape. Today we're diving deep into my Jinx Aggro "Trash Turbo" deck from this video.
The deck profile video gave you all the details and rationale for the card choices, so in this article, we'll breakdown the deck's gameplan, win conditions, sideboard strategies, and more!
Starting with the gameplan, let's explain why I'm calling this "Trash Turbo." One of your objectives when playing this deck is to fill up your trash. By filling up the trash through board flooding, efficient trades, and deck filtering, we're accomplishing the following things:
- Reducing our handsize efficiently to maximize Jinx's legend ability
- Enabling Vi Destructive and Rhasa the Sunderer
- Digging through the deck to find our best cards
We're playing an aggro deck, so that means we want to hit hard, score fast, and win as soon as possible. As I mentioned in the video, while playing this deck, you usually won't have the feeling that you're absolutely decimating your opponent in advantage or even in board presence. Instead, you're playing so fast that you're looking to "steal" wins before the opponent really gets a chance to set up their game plan. Our early game units aren't really going to be hard for our opponent's to deal with after they've scored us points, so we're using them as stepping stones so that our late game bomb plays can secure us the win. Those bomb plays consist of some combination of the following:
- Ride the Wind or Sun Disc enabling a unit to move and score immediately
- Vi/Draven/Rhasa with huge Might numbers that our opponent can't really deal with on our final push
The highest cap when it comes to game ending potential is Ride the Wind + Vi, if you can get Vi to something like 10+ Might. Since she has Ganking, Ride the Wind takes her from tapped in base, to ready in a battlefield, and after she's decimated that battlefield, she can move herself over to the other battlefield, ideally clearing out both battlefields and scoring 2 points right away, and winning you the game if you were on 6 or 7 points already. A similiar situation can be created with Windswept Hillock and Draven, which is why I mentioned potentially playing that battlefield over Hallowed Tomb.
So, if Ride the Wind is our highest cap for winning games, where does Sun Disc come into the picture? If you've been around the channel long enough, you know that I LOVE this card. This Jinx build sets up the legion that Sun Disc requires so easly through all of the low-cost cards we play, and it helps us score faster in the early-mid game. The faster we score in the early-mid game, the sooner we can clean up and win with Ride the Wind + Vi. One really strong play that Sun Disc enables goes like this:
- Have Sun Disc already on board from a previous turn
- Play Jinx Demolitionist from Champion zone with accelerate
- This activates legion on Sun Disc
- Now the next unit you play enters ready
- Now you can immediately attack and score with 2 units
This play is a big reason why I'm liking Hollowed Tomb and flexing it over Windswept Hillock, but both have their merit and key playlines, so you're free to pick and choose after your own testing.
So, now that we know how the deck is meant to be played, how are we approaching the meta? What is the plan for each match up? Well, the beauty is, since we're the aggressor in every match up, we're in the driver's seat, and it's our opponent's job to respond to and stop what we're doing.
So how can this play out in the Master Yi match up? Yi is one of the most popular decks in the format, and is incredibly defensive. They can definitely get the upper hand on us if the game gets prolonged and they're able to stabilize, so we need to win as fast as possible. Removal like Hextech Ray is key here to get Yi out of battlefields and score early, and Gust can be clutch from the sideboard to supplement our Hextech Rays. Then, a Ride the Wind + Vi combo at enough Might to outpace Yi's defensive buffs can seal the deal.
Then how do we approach Kaisa, the actually most played deck in the game? When it comes to any deck's gameplan against Kaisa, the goal should be to stick units that they can't easily remove. That means dropping as many 7 Might or higher units as possible. Luckily, that's relatively easy for us to do if our deck is firing on all cylinders. By following the same "score fast and early" mentality, we can boost our Draven's up to 7+ Might easily, and we can get Vi to a point where it's going to be extremely hard for Kaisa to kill it mid battle, so our Ride the Wind combo can seal the deal.
Obviously these are all just hypothetical scenarios for how things should play out. But we're in the business of card games, where there is variance, and each game is different. So, I urge you to test this Jinx deck until the wheels fall off, and let me know what you think about it below!
You can also watch this gameplay video that shows you exactly how the deck is meant to operate!
