Weve seen it happen before so many times. At the beginning Elusive decks were top and it was nearly impossible to beat them unless you were playing, you guessed it, a control deck.

So the elusive decks started including control cards. And then the absolute atrocity that was Ezreal control was born. This overpowered deck that ran nearly nothing but a handful of elusive cards and 30 control spells was not fun nor really that fair to play against. This game places heavy emphasis on the attack token system and priority, yet both of these decks entire function is to completely undermine that system entirely.

Control decks don't need to attack or defend really at all, and Elusive decks completely undermine the blocking system. They have their weaknesses though.

Control deck weaknesses is they typically run out of steam or have to overpay significantly for their cards. If you can whether through the storm and answer correct threats and outvalue them, you will win in the long run.

Elusive decks suffer something similar, they frontload most of their power into unblockable and usually cheap statlines. The buffs usually make them incredibly strong, but there are rarely ever buffs that arent VERY high cost to make them worth running.

The problem is, when one of these is good, there is always an oppressive deck that will make use of the other as well. Weve seen it before and now were seeing it again with Aphelios.

Aphelios completely removes both penalties that control decks have. Riot for whatever reason just decided to add in premium control generation engines into the game which basically makes it impossible to properly counterplay them. The sheer amount of generation and burst spells mean that they will be playing 1-3 cards every time its their priority at an absolute premium and will still have a bigger handsize than you.

I am already seeing the exact same impact that this deck had in its startup that the Ezreal deck did. It was this deck with very little weaknesses that shook the meta on its conception, and it's going to happen again. There are a number of key issues with this deck

1) The Veiled Temple

This card makes its value back on the second turn its in play and, lets be honest, its impossible to remove. Every landmark removal piece is an absolute terrible card and no one is going to run them as tech for this thing. Now that applies to every other landmark as well, but its far, far better than every other landmark. After two turns of playing a whopping 2 cards youre already profiting in value and every turn after that for the rest of the game youre getting 10 free mana and pump. This card is just flat out overpowered. Every other landmark either has a gigantic hurdle or has very minimal impact. This card has basically no condition and is pretty cheap.

2) The burst spells are too good and let you combo off without ever giving up priority.

Many of the burst spells basically give you free phases to play extra card and gain exponential value, on top of the fact that they are are generation. They have no counterplay in any form whatsoever because there are no burst removal options to stop mid combo and there are also no way to deny burst cards, so a spell being burst needs to pay a heavy cost for being burst.

Gifts from Beyond, Behold the Infinite, Written in Stars, etc are all burst value/card generation spells that should not be burst. Burst spells that are cheap are meant to have minimal impact yet spells like these give you a gigantic variety of options to choose from while comboing with an engine for virtually free. The cards by themselves as fast spells would already be very good because while they would take up your priority for doing so you can do it in response to enemy spells or attacks to save yourself time, but still limits your ability to combo off without ever giving up priority. On top of this they don't even cost that much mana, all of these cards at burst rarity could absolute justify going up maybe 1 or even 2 mana each.

Lets take Written in Stars for example. Entreat is the obvious comparison, but whats different is that for 1 more mana youre actually pumping the card, so instead of just drawing the card you are also adding value to it unlike Entreat, so it just shouldn't be a burst spell because of it. Literally no other card in the game at burst can give 2/ 2 permanently for 1 mana, let alone bundled onto a drawing a specific card.

3) The cards generated are way too good

All of the moon weapons are absolute premium removal or buff pieces. The only balancing aspect of the cards is the fact that they are slow, but who cares if they are slow if you can pull a gravitum out of your ass every other turn and use it for 1 mana that you got for free from your landmark. Every single moon weapon costs way too little mana for its effect given the fact that you didnt put them in your deck. There is no opportunity cost for using the card. No other card in the game continuously generates cards and still has them cheat the known curve. 2 mana let alone 1 mana for each moon weapon is basically nothing even without the consideration of the landmark, especially with all the attune cards and ways to refill spell mana for virtually nothing.

Theres not a single bad moon weapon in the cycle and every single one either helps you control more, helps you finish the game faster, or helps you gain life back against rushdown decks.

4) Its way too easy to be consistent with it.

On top of all the other reasons, Its far too easy to be consistent with the deck.

So many of the good cards either draw you specifically what you need, or just continually generate and draw cards from your deck until you get what you need. All of the cards ive previously listed can be coupled with other packages to last you until you finally draw your engines.

So overall were seeing the exact same pattern repeat again. Another deck thats taking advantage of the two mechanics completely undermining the main focus of the game being strong again. And whats its primary way of ending the game? Elusive cards and generated control cards. Aphelios is going to shoot its way to S tier and then 30-50% of the ladder is going to consist of this deck and the rest is anti meta for it, just like it happened with Ezreal. In my own personal experience, I run a Daybreak Dragons deck and im absolute appalled at how long this deck could last and inevitably beat an entire board of 10/10s for several turns. They just have way too many answers and win conditions that have absolutely no counterplay. Youre forced to run one of the few ways to pocket 3 damage and just hope they have nothing to save their key cards.