Contents
This weekend marked the first Riftlab Clash tournament, which had players face each other in pods of 16 to battle their way through 4 rounds of Swiss. Hosted by Jakub and Piltover Archive, these Clash tournaments are the qualifiers for their Trials tournament, hosted once per release-season.
In the Riftlab Clash, players earn points from their wins, and those with the most points are invited to the Trials; therefore we’ll be seeing plenty of players taking part in the Clashes, and can gain a lot of information about the current and future metagame from them. With this, it’s important to remember that the metagame is still volatile between online and paper, and will continue to change as more players get their hands on cards.
In this report, we’ll go over the four legends who made it to a 4-0 win, our thoughts on the metagame, and what information we can take away from this tournament. We’ll also go over their decklists, discussing their gameplay and key cards, and what this means for the metagame moving forward.
Clash I
In Clash I, we saw 64 players across 4 pods battle between themselves until one person was left undefeated. Out of these undefeated legends, we saw one Darius and one Teemo, who have both been performing pretty well lately within other tournaments, and two unexpected challengers: Leona and Lee Sin, who have both never seen a win, and have very minimal Top 8 play.
Surprisingly, none of our S Tier legends Kai’Sa, Sett or Master Yi made it into the Clash I winning decks. This is an interesting thing to keep an eye on, as we could begin to see a difference in metagames between larger and smaller tournaments, but this could also be due to the specific pod metagames.
Leona by Pedro Silva
Leona finally makes her debut into the metagame, coming 4-0 in the first pool of players. After her prior 16th place win in the Riftbound Meta Weekly, this deck made moves across the playerbase for being an anti-Meta pick, and since then has grown in popularity as players try to crack the code to make this deck perfect.
As a Midrange decklist, Leona focuses on stunning her enemy’s units using cards like Rune Prison and her own Champion Leona Determined to buff her own units and control the early game; in the late game, she wants to go all out and defeat her opponent, and her game-ending Champion Leona Zealot is the perfect way to do so, eliminating all of the enemy’s defences to claim victory.
Leona is a very interesting deck, as she is the first anti-Meta pilot we’ve seen in this meta. I’m interested to see how she develops into the current and future metagames, and if we’ll see any more support for her going into Spiritforged.
Lee Sin by Presto
For the first time since the MaxTapera Tournament, Lee Sin has made an appearance in our metagame, with a 4-0 in the second pool of players. Recently, this legend has been a controversial pick; sharing the same domain pool as Master Yi, many players have been testing Lee Sin, believing that he could be just as successful as his counterpart.
This aggro deck focuses on buffing friendly units to send out large attacks, both with Lee Sin’s own ability and spells like En Garde and Discipline; alongside cards Udyr Wildman and Mistfall, those buffs become even more deadly for the opponent.
Overall, it will be interesting to see how Lee Sin develops in this meta: whether he is able to rise up the ranks like Master Yi has, or whether he falls short due to their playstyle differences.
Teemo by Prismaticism
Teemo had a great performance over this weekend, with a high metashare and one Top 8 entry into the Guangzhou Regionals, and this 4-0 win from Prismaticism in the third pool of players.
This deck mainly focuses on playing spells, reactions and the Hidden mechanic to control the gamestate, with cards such as Fight or Flight slowing down the opponent, or Consult the Past boosting your value. Surprisingly, this Teemo deck is not running any copies of Nocturne Horrifying, instead choosing to run Rhasa the Sunderer for a low-cost powerful endgame finisher.
Currently, Teemo is a great deck into the current metagame, with a very strong gameplan that leaves many legends defeated. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Teemo in the Top 4 or 2 of a large tournament however, so we’ll have to keep an eye on this small legend to see how he performs in the future.
Darius by GanZtrax
After his dominating win in the Luxury Riftbound Championship Series 1K, Darius has been performing very well with his Hook list, including a 4-0 win in the last pool of players in the first Clash.
This deck revolves around the card Baited Hook, letting you play out higher-valued units for no extra cost. This combo works amazingly well with Spectral Matron, as you can ignore its 2 Order cost, and use its ability to replay a unit from your trash such as Vanguard Captain and reap the rewards.
Darius is proving to be a very strong deck within the meta, and I believe this legend could continue to perform well up until Spiritforged releases. But, things might be very different in paper, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Closing Time
Overall, the results from this tournament were very intriguing. With none of our S Tier legends in sight, these results showcase that although they’re dominating the meta, other legends still have a great chance of succeeding; there is still hope for our low-ranked decks (maybe Garen could succeed one day!)
Be sure to check out our report on the second day of the tournament, the Riftlab Clash II, which had a larger player pool and a very different pool of results. Also, check out the rest of Riftbound.gg! We’ve got a ton of articles as we head into Origins and beyond, so keep an eye out.
In any case, thank you for your time, and I’ll see you on the rift.
