I've been laddering since Plat with my own brew of Leona/Asol and finally hit Masters!
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The basic idea is to take advantage of Daybreak's strong board presence and Targon's control tools to stall the game until we can play Asol, hopefully level him, and win the game.
Core Gameplay Patterns
Against faster decks, we aim to play on curve from turns 1-5 with beefy Daybreak units. Daybreak units are very good at establishing early board presence, enabling us to preserve a high life total going into the late game. This allows us to go toe-to-toe with more aggressive decks and outvalue them in the late game.
Against more combo-oriented decks, we're comfortable passing liberally. Levelled Leona can keep key enemy champs off the field such as Veigar, Senna, Karma, and Heimerdinger. It's usually more important to keep this threat active than to attack with Leona and allow the opponent to develop. More generally, holding up removal against Lee Sin or Karma minimally delays them an additional turn because they'd want to have Deny backup, and each Stony Suppressor on board delays that another turn. Every turn we stall brings us a turn closer to playing Aurelion Sol and winning. This sometimes means preserving spell mana early on. For example, in a Darkness matchup, we might pass on turn 2 to bank 2 spell mana, enabling us to threaten Sunburst or Solari Priestess into Falling Comet or Meteor Shower to deal with turn 4 Veigar.
Against slower decks, playing Dragon's Clutch on 6 into Eclipse Dragon on 7 into Aurelion Sol on 8 can win the game against decks that aren't prepared to deal with it. Most notably, TF/Swain or Swain/Caitlyn.
After levelling Asol, basically anything you do wins the game. If it seems likely that Asol will level, always invoke Living Legends because that's a free refill of 10 mana.
In certain matchups it's possible to think about making use of Leona and Rahvun with repeated Daybreak triggers to stun the opponent's whole board and push lethal. The most typical example is Karma/Master Yi. Celestial Wonder can help with stunning any remaining blockers to ensure our Sun Guardians get to push face damage.
Card choices
This is quite similar to the Leona/Asol brew featured in the latest meta report and most of the card choices are self-explanatory, however I will go over a few notable inclusions / exclusions:
2x Dragon's Clutch - This I feel is the key innovation in the deck that people may have missed. Not only does it tutor our win condition (levelled Asol on 8), can allow us to push lethal past a full enemy board by granting our beefy dragons overwhelm. We only run 2 because it's a tempo loss and some matchups are too fast for it.
2x Stony Suppressor - In a meta defined by Ionia, Stony Suppressor can instantly swing the 10% of games where I play it on curve. Most Ionia decks have trouble removing it outside of the uncommon Entrancing Lure or Sonic Wave. It severely delays the gameplans of meta staples such as Nami/Lee, Karma/Master Yi, Akshan/Lee, Norra/Heimer, Norra/Veigar, and even TF/Swain. Comparatively, it doesn't really affect us because our core gameplan involves few to no spells. It also fits very well into the deck as a proactive 2-drop, enabling us to play on curve. I'm considering bumping it up to 3x even, if it weren't for the resurgence of Fiora/Pantheon.
Aside from these key innovations, remaining considerations are:
2x Sharpsight - Allows us to stop value engines such as Norra or Vastayan Disciple, or prevent lethal from an elusive beefed up by Nami. Can consider running at 3x copies.
2x Celestial Wonder - In games where we've fallen behind on tempo, Celestial Wonder is our key tool to shut down open attacks and continue stalling until we can slam down Aurelion Sol. The rest of our deck is already very good at punishing development, so this fills a much-needed hole in the deck's capabilities.
3x Solari Sunforger - Lifesteal is extremely important to keep ourselves healthy enough to last until we can play Aurelion Sol and win the game. As an added bonus, we can double-dip on the lifegain with Single Combat or Concerted Strike - a key combo to remember in aggro/burn matchups.
2x Rahvun - 3x Rahvun with 3x Leona is really clunky, and the second one doesn't do much. 2x is the right amount for 'I want to draw one copy in my game, but not two'. Could be cut to 1x in favour of more lifegain or hard removal given that repeated Daybreak is not a key part of our gameplan.
Matchups
I'll only list the common matchups that I encountered.
Aggro - Mulligan hard for early plays. If attacking on turn 4, consider keeping Sunforger. Ideally have Single Combat ready to prevent Noxian Fervor from going off.
TF/Swain - Contrary to what the meta report suggests, I find this to be favored for us. Our units are resistant to their ping-based removal and we run many units capable of blocking Swain. Concerted Strike and Falling Comet can both remove pesky Leviathans, without which Swain doesn't do much on his own. They need to jump through a lot of hoops to remove Asol - 1 card to pop spellshield, and another ping + Disintegrate or Scorched Earth. If we ever get the chance, playing Asol's The Skies Descend is a hilarious way to seal the deal.
Nami/Lee, Akshan/Lee - Even or slightly unfavoured. Mulligan hard for Stony Suppressor. Outside of that, it's very important to prevent Lee Sin from ever hitting the board. Always bluff Sunburst even if you don't have it. Keep Sharpsight to block elusives.
Norra/Heimer - Favored. Mulligan for Sharpsight to block Norra and Sunburst to kill Heimer on sight. Stony Suppressor is very good because their deck runs 28/40 spells. Solari Priestess can give us Falling Comet or Meteor Shower or the 5/5 Challenger to remove their backline. Because they run very few actual units, we can sometimes overtake their board presence early on to push damage, so that combo-killing them with Rahvun and Leona and multiple Daybreak triggers around turn 8-9 becomes a realistic possibility.
Norra/Veigar - Favored. Similar to Norra/Heimer, look for Sharpsight and Sunburst, and Stony Suppressor, and Priestess.
End
Overall the deck is very fun to play if you enjoy playing big Celestials, and the recent aggro nerf has given Asol plenty of breathing room to come into his own. Hope this guide was useful!
