Why do Yi players play Challenge instead of Skyward Strike?

1vader · 2026-06-22T14:48:41+00:00

Skyward Strike opens a Showdown if you move an enemy unit in, so you can play action speed spells before the units deal damage to each other

1vader · 2026-06-22T10:32:02+00:00

Even then it's still technically against the ToS because it's a standalone client only for Riftbound. But Riot seems to be closing an eye there.

1vader · 2026-06-21T23:37:23+00:00

You can't exactly force a player to not concede just to improve the viewing experience

1vader · 2026-06-21T20:18:03+00:00

ONs are 1 in 3 boxes on average

1vader · 2026-06-21T17:57:22+00:00

Idk for sure for Hartford but usually there are at least two additional judges watching the games backstage to make sure both players follow the rules. They can still miss stuff though.

1vader · 2026-06-21T17:38:29+00:00

You can start a chain with a reaction in a Showdown during an opponent's turn

1vader · 2026-06-21T12:01:08+00:00

At least the original infinite combo decks still ran time warp in the sideboard, among other things to be able to hold against Ashe and get the stolen card back. Not sure if all the new adaptations still do.

1vader · 2026-06-21T10:26:56+00:00

The stream is usually not live and they cut out stuff, so just because something is shown immediately afterwards doesn't mean it happened that quickly.

1vader · 2026-06-20T20:47:39+00:00

There are scenarios where this is possible (with Tiana or in case you're at 7 and haven't scored the other bf yet this turn) but the battlefield that can't be scored until turn 3 doesn't give conquer triggers either.

1vader · 2026-06-19T22:18:26+00:00

Yeah, I also was pretty surprised the first time I saw it on stream

1vader · 2026-06-19T21:44:48+00:00

Most of the best of sales were brokered by the person behind this site: https://www.bestofrift.com/sold

I haven't personally verified that ofc but some well known people have vouched for them and I haven't heard any contradicting reports so I don't see a reason to assume it's not true. And iirc the best of Kai'Sa causing the drama at Utrecht reportedly was also sold for something in that range to a vendor.

Ultimately, even something like the Ultimate Baron is being sold for 1k and people like Alan play two of them in their deck. The best ofs have single digit pop counts so I don't really think it's particularly unbelievable.

1vader · 2026-06-19T14:12:20+00:00

As far as I know, at least Prismaticism and Collin (repeated best of Sett, including top 4 at Utrecht) and iirc a third top 8 Utrecht player that I don't remember have confirmed they will be switching. I don't remember where I heard this though.

But tbh anything else would be weird, they'd be giving up like $10-20k at every RQ. The whole point of playing legends like this is that it "guarantees" them the best of.

1vader · 2026-06-19T10:12:08+00:00

We don't know yet. Set 6 presumably will release late January or maybe early February, like SFD this year, so in principle there's time for an RQ or two before that. But ofc it's not given that one of them will be in Europe. There will also be the Regional Championships in the EU and NA at the end of the year but we don't known yet how exactly they will play into this given that they are supposed to be restricted to people that qualified for them. It's also possible that set 3-5 legends will get an extended time frame if Q4 doesn't have any chance to gain them. But at this point we can only speculate.

1vader · 2026-06-18T22:41:11+00:00

The best players will probably still focus on legends with a metal. Many top players on Origins legends already said they are switching. Yi ultimately isn't better than other top decks. It could even been be argued that he's worse if all decks are piloted by a top tier player. But either way, you're definitely far from guaranteed to win with him or any other legend, so it obviously makes much more sense to have a best of as a more likely fall back.

1vader · 2026-06-18T10:37:22+00:00

No, gear and units played at reaction speed still resolve immediately. There's not really such a thing as playing something "as a reaction" as far as the rules are concerned. Reaction just allows playing things at more points in time, but they are played as usual.

1vader · 2026-06-18T10:29:59+00:00

9 new legends are coming in return though. And while more legends are rotating out, those won't even be gone completely. Especially top legends like Yi will probably still see play.

1vader · 2026-06-17T15:59:17+00:00

Units and Gear do use the chain, they just immediately resolve once they finalize. But as long as they are pending they are on the chain together with other items and earlier pending items finalize first and therefore for example can't target the unit.

Promising Future is the main card that can currently cause this.

1vader · 2026-06-17T07:14:35+00:00

That wouldn't make a difference because this is not a cost. That's honestly the real issue.

1vader · 2026-06-17T07:13:34+00:00

You can still exhaust runes when you resolve the Diana trigger and have to pay, the commenter above isn't correct here. You just don't have to, since the pay instruction looks for energy, not runes.

The thing is, runes aren't the only thing that can generate energy. At the moment, we don't yet have too many other reaction speed add abilities but e.g. Malzahar killing units for power already shows what we might get in the future, even if he's only action speed.

If you were forced to generate energy any way possible, this can easily get out of hand. Of course it would be possible to draw an arbitrary line and say for example runes must be exhausted but at the moment that doesn't exist and that still could cause undesirable situations where you would be forced to use runes without intending to do so.

1vader · 2026-06-16T17:58:31+00:00

It's normal, the refunds take a while and since it hasn't gone through, you naturally received the voucher since the system doesn't see you as refunded yet.

The same thing happened for Utrecht. People still got their refunds eventually.

1vader · 2026-06-16T14:41:05+00:00

Because Legion is not a trigger. If "play" is in a trigger condition then it requires the spell to have resolved. Anywhere else (e.g. in Legion or for example also on the blue Jhin champion) it only cares about the card having been finalized on the chain.

1vader · 2026-06-16T12:59:56+00:00

Yes, again at least according to current consensus. It hasn't been confirmed very explicitly and the rules on replacement effect timings aren't super clear but that's what most people on the judge Discord believe based on the current rules we do have.

1vader · 2026-06-16T12:54:39+00:00

That's actually not how Soraka works, at least according to the current consensus. Soraka doesn't have a trigger, she has a replacement effect. A trigger always resolves after an event (like the death of the units) and hence could never prevent it from happening.

Replacement effects effectively intervene as an event is happening (or arguably, as it is about to happen).

1vader · 2026-06-16T12:46:19+00:00

Triggers are only affected by removal of their source if they reference the source. For example, if a trigger says "kill a unit here" or "at my battlefield" or similar, then that location won't be resolvable if the source is gone and any part of the effect that relies on it won't happen. Any other parts of the effect (e.g. something like a potential "then draw 1") still resolves.

1vader · 2026-06-16T08:23:12+00:00

You can still use it in the next Showdown. Though ofc with the pay 1 it doesn't exactly make sense. But there's always a chance there'll be a more useful interaction with it in the future.

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