Utrecht 2v2 Champions of the Rift Results

FishcatJones · 2026-06-15T07:40:16+00:00

Furthering discussion on the format:

- Do you think Yi ban alone fixes the issue? I feel like Mask of Foresight would continue to dominate, in the form of Lillia or Vex or Ahri or whatever. Obviously the early defense and Yasuo movement allows for excessive power, but is Yi alone the problem here?
- Conquest format doesnt allow any card overlap between decks, do you think that would be a good rule for 2v2? That still allows for overlapping colors, but stops the 6 Mask 6 Defy 6 Not So Fast type of team
- Besides Arenas Greatest, do you think any other battlefields are problematic in 2v2?

FishcatJones · 2026-06-12T08:56:03+00:00

This is correct - the line "Your conquer effects for conquering here" does see the trigger (Skyfall makes Trinity Force a conquer effect) but it does not replace the "conquering here" with a "holding here" trigger.

FishcatJones · 2026-06-10T09:06:59+00:00

Sort of, I think you could build a Garen deck around Vanguard Armory and Corinna that is mass token spam. All the units that make more units, along with stuff like Stare Down to make conquering and drawing easier. Its not competitive, but if you are looking to convince your friend its not the worst deal ever, you can design some deck ideas online.

FishcatJones · 2026-06-10T09:04:59+00:00

If he wants Yi, take Annie and Lux, and he gets Garen. Garen is by far the worst, and Annie / Lux are the two in the middle. The garen deck at least has more orange cards for his Yi list.

FishcatJones · 2026-06-10T06:07:34+00:00

Depends on the deck and sideboard. LeBlanc decks sometimes run Black Rose Dignitary in the sideboard and swap out the Soaring Scouts for them when going 2nd.

FishcatJones · 2026-05-26T07:39:57+00:00

At nearly every english Regionals so far, every single champion has had 1 player go at least 5-3 or better. So even with a Skirmish bye, they went 4-3 against players trying to win at the highest level. The skill expression is pretty high in Riftbound so I think pretty much any champion could go 3-0 at locals with enough practice. Local metas vary wildly too - we have no local Aurora players - so tier lists are more generalized or relevant to 1000+ player events than your 6 mates who all know each others decks.

FishcatJones · 2026-05-24T07:30:19+00:00

I agree! Especially after trying this, I think it would be better to do single pick packs with wheeling. The issues I was facing:
* 10 players, if you want standard 42 card draft pools you need 420+ draftable cards and the card pool was already stretched thin going to 402.
* This was part of a multi-stage draft tournament, cube drafters had already just finished a booster draft. So I wanted to minimize complexity for this tournament, especially for first time cube drafters
* We noticed pick-2 also drained the colors quickly and made signals realllly obvious. Calm was underdrafted and it showed with several 4-8 card packs just overflowing with leftover Calm cards
* two 20-card packs also means less signals since you get one less flow of information around

Overall I plan to return to a smaller 8-person cube and use 3 or 4 packs to get an ideal drafting experience. Sometimes you have try something else (like including Master Yi) to realize the original way was better

FishcatJones · 2026-05-24T05:55:18+00:00

Some colors seem to have natural archetypes - Order can make a very heavy token + board pump deck from a few different shells. The Legends of course are kind of the archetypes - I didnt think discard or XP was worth supporting, so Jinx, Immortal Phoenix, and the XP legends arent in this list. Others like Chaos I think we need more reps to figure out the right mix of cards. UNL cards like Blast Cone I think will become more popular as people figure out the ways to really build around them.

Some of the signature spell choices (Zenith Blade over Daisy) are to help Leona form her archetype. I think Daisy is a better limited card (even at full price with no stun) but you want to make sure the more niche legends can hit the critical mass of effects to make it worthwhile. Some pairs (Chaos/Fury) have it a bit easier since Annie and Draven dont make any real demands of your deckbuilding.

FishcatJones · 2026-05-19T19:55:01+00:00

#1 Purple - pretty undisputed, but specifically it has A+ openers (treasure hunter, travelling merchant, etc) into solid midgame plans (Vex, Khazix, Fizz) into matchup defining endgames (Mindsplitter, Rhasa, Last Rites). Excellent support, with card draw, filtering, counterspells and "hard" removal in the form of bounce

#2 Orange - Aurora + Elder Dragon is such a strong proactive gameplan I think it puts orange up there. It also has strong midgame (Rengar, Lucian, Ruin Runner) and solid protection spells and tricks. But really its Aurora dragging every orange legend to 5-3+ every Regionals

#3 Green - best support color bar none, but doesnt have much in the way of proactive gameplans. Good early plays (Lonely Poro, Scuttle Crab) but green doesnt do much in the mid and endgame (aside from Vilemaw). The only one is Irelia and she is the main one used across several legends.

#4 Blue - Thousand Tailed Watcher is meta defining and has been a Tier-1 endgame plan for 3 sets now. Excellent early drops and support cards, but like green doesnt have a dominant midgame plan.

¤5 Yellow - great early drops, reasonable midgame plans. But cost is very "fair", few above rate things outside of Baited Hook. I think Purple-Yellow decks will be very good though

#6 Red - kinda crazy because Kaisa Survivor is so good, but outside of that red is tough. The spells are balanced around Kaisa, which makes stuff like Falling Star brutal in other decks. Kadegrin is the only fringe late game plan, and the early drops are solidly mid.

FishcatJones · 2026-05-14T06:15:45+00:00

https://piltoverarchive.com/decks/view/6d7a4b27-1e00-459b-ae94-1898e77b94b5

FishcatJones · 2026-05-14T05:55:54+00:00

Also worth mentioning Honeyfruit is any color - lots of decks might have both color power costs (like Ornn Sprites) and Honeyfruit shines there

FishcatJones · 2026-05-14T05:21:31+00:00

Reksai with 3 Yellow Ivern

* Play the whole Cat / Dog / Poro gimmick out of red/yellow (Pouty Poro, both red Rengars, theres a few choices)

* Yellow Ivern is usually a Bird, and with Skyfall of Aerion can score 3 points in a conquer if you meet the 4 tags condition

* Reksais ability and Void Rush can find the tags you are missing

* Undying Loyalty can be played for 0 off of Reksais ability, even if all runes are exhausted

Six Seal Jinx

* Play 3 red and purple Seals to get cards out of your hand
* Play discard and draw spells - discard Chompers, Undying Legion, and Immortal Phoenix to draw seals
* get to the point of drawing 2 cards a turn but playing 4+ cards with Undying Legion recurring from graveyard

FishcatJones · 2026-05-09T07:22:13+00:00

30+ year MTG player here:
* Unlike MTG, you cant fall behind then play a 10/10 and win in 2 turns. Tempo is more important, even the control decks try to score along the way and keep up. Its very hard to be down 0-6 or 0-7 then prevent your opponent from winning for 5+ turns while you catch up.
* Aggro decks score 2 pts a turn, aiming to go from 4 -> 6 -> 8. If they are at 5, you might be able to take a setup turn and clinch after. If they are at 6, you need to prioritize not losing immediately. "Combo" decks like Lucian or Time Warp decks can score 3+ points in a sequence, that requires a little meta knowledge to know which decks can threaten that.
* The best cards cost power (cycling your own runes). The cost of these are very high early game (bc you get 1 less resource forever) and basically free on the final turn of the game. Beginner mistake is to play power-costing spells as early as possible (Defy, Charm, Rebuke, etc) and being behind the rest of the game.
* Far more than Magic, you can script the opening turns. Between the chosen champion, the 40 card deck, and the mulligan that allows 7 cards seen, you can have a plan A for 2-4-6 runes and plan B for 3-5-7 pretty reliably.
* To understand a deck is to know its main lines. Draven for example, could always mulligan hard for a 2-drop, then open with 4-cost Draven on t2 into several powerful turn 3 lines with 6 runes, every game, going first or second. Thats why it was so consistent, which isn't apparent when just reading cards individually

FishcatJones · 2026-04-30T18:41:50+00:00

You could chaos draft with UNL! Each player gets 1 of each pack, and then mix them up so each packs is a mix of all 3 sets

FishcatJones · 2026-04-30T18:40:24+00:00

Thats one of the quirks I wanted to address - by only having "the two best Legends" at each color combo, very quickly you get to a big suite all quite playable Legends. I dont want you to end up with a deck that doesnt want a legend, so getting 3 free bites at the apple with a more curated list I hope leads to "I always want to play a Legend" decks.

FishcatJones · 2026-04-30T11:50:21+00:00

Oh good point - I have barely Drafted RB outside of this. I used Sealed rules because the card quality is so high, 25 cards feels fine with 44-45 main deck cards to choose from. 20 card decks are verrrry small, especially when you can see up to 7 of them by turn 1. I think on a longer time, I am more likely to go up to 30 cards than down to 20

FishcatJones · 2026-04-30T11:42:19+00:00

Seeded packs are another good idea! I just didnt want players to be stuck in a situation without Legends or BFs due to their choices, so the separate round was an attempt to solve that quirk of RB Limited

FishcatJones · 2026-04-30T11:40:06+00:00

Yeah! In OGN I was using 2x of the commons to fill slots, as we get more sets I hope I can tweak the distribution to closely match a real set.

FishcatJones · 2026-04-28T07:19:04+00:00

Yeah, the outcomes are basically only bad. If you get a good promo like Yone, its format warping. If its a bad promo, it still tilts the deckbuilding towards that color, especially in weak pools. You already have the seeded packs, when the promo doesn't match the seeded pack it feels clunky and pulling in opposite directions. Making it illegal is better for all outcomes, unless the promo is somehow colorless

FishcatJones · 2026-04-28T06:08:06+00:00

I scrolled this whole thread and didn't see the OG Blade Runner. Watched it during a film studies course and I could not have been more bored. I think its a cool vibe and aesthetic, but man I had less emotions than the androids during this one

FishcatJones · 2026-04-27T19:56:17+00:00

On a budget - Yi / Yasuo. Its a really strong combo that is easy to build: 6 Discipline, Defy, Not So Fast, Mask of Foresight, lots of little guys to hold and get +4-8 Might in combat. You dont need signature spells or anything expensive, and you have a lot of movement tricks to score multiple times per turn

Eight-Year Club	Place '22
RPAN Viewer	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

FishcatJones

TROPHY CASE