Riftbound Heads to Barcelona - What to Expect at the Vendetta Regional Qualifier
A Packed Lineup - A Weekend Built Around Riftbound
The Regional Qualifier may be the namesake main event of the show, but you definitely don’t need to be playing in the tournament to have something to do once you arrive.
One great addition to the show is the dedicated Demo Area for anyone who wants to learn Riftbound. We will also have a Free Play Area for players who just want to sit down and get some games in. It’s a good option if you’re bringing friends who are newer to the game, or if you’ve got a deck you’ve been working on and want to try it against someone outside your usual playgroup.
For the main event at a Riftbound Regional Qualifier: Barcelona, you’ll enter a two day tournament with a Swiss round structure. On day two there will be a top cut playoff. During the Swiss portion of the event, every player competes in a set number of rounds. As the event progresses, you are paired against opponents with similar records. Each match is usually best of three games, which allows players to adjust strategy and sideboard between games.
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We also have some great League of Legends and Riftbound-themed attractions, with cosplayers and guides helping you make the most of your experience. We’ll have our iconic Riftbound Graffiti Wall, where you can leave your own personalised mark on the event. We’ll also see the return of our fan favourite photo booths and unboxing station!
If you’d rather watch some games than play them, the Live Stage will have the Main Event running on a giant LED screen. There will also be a Riftbound Museum and a Cosplayer Meet & Greet. So even if you aren’t spending the entire weekend playing rounds, there’s plenty to check out around the venue.
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Champion Select - What Are People Playing?
This is probably the question most competitive players will have going into Barcelona. Vendetta is still relatively early in its meta-game, and new decks are popping up left and right. This is part of what makes this Regional Qualifier so interesting; here players will have had enough time to figure out their own strategies, look at some of the new decks that have been performing well, and come up with some unique game plans of their own. The meta-game is still new enough, though, that we don’t believe that it’s solved and we know just what the top performers are.
However, for those curious enough and looking for some answers, we can take a look at some notable results from other tournaments these past few weeks.
Kennen, Heart of the Tempest, has quickly become one of the Legends to watch. At the Ottawa Showdown on August 8th, it was the most played deck in a tournament of nearly 600 players. Kennen benefits from an aggressive playstyle in the early game while taking advantage of filling his trash with useful tech spells that can be played with the brand-new Flow mechanics. Running several ways to filter and dig through the deck, Kennen is showing up as a consistent powerhouse that offers a lot of utility and counterplay to many of the other popular decks in the metagame.
Looking further from the western tournaments, we also saw a series of City Challenges all across China on the 16th. We’re seeing a lot of familiar faces in these top 8s as the metagame still looks to be relatively undiscovered, with Azir, Master Yi – Wuju Bladesman, Rengar, and Diana placing high frequently and winning these events. Looking through the decklists, most of these players are still using barely modified decks with cards released in Vendetta. However, we did see Nasus win S4 Tianjin City Challenge, making great use of the new Astral Heron to overwhelm opponents with massive units.
All this makes it difficult to point at one deck and confidently call it the deck to beat in Barcelona. Kennen is clearly going to be on plenty of players’ radar, but Master Yi hasn’t gone anywhere, and the likes of Draven, Rengar and Rek’Sai are all capable of putting up results.
Ranked Lobbies - Playing The Main Event
For those of you in the main event, there’s a lot you can expect from the Riftbound Regional Qualifier. You’re getting a chance to test yourself against a large field at the start of a new competitive season, with Regional Championship invitations and other rewards on the line. The top 64 players will earn invitations to an upcoming Regional Championship, putting them another step along the path towards the first-ever Riftbound World Championship. We also see the return of the fan-favourite Best-Of Legend prizes, with the special metal Legend cards awarded to the highest-finishing player for each Champion.
But preparing for a tournament like this is about more than finding a deck list online and sleeving it up. If you’ve been testing Vendetta since release, Barcelona is where you finally get to see whether all those games have actually taught you anything. Maybe you’ve found a clever answer to Kennen. Maybe your version of Master Yi is a little different from the lists everyone else is using. Or maybe you’ve decided that the safest option is to stick with something you’ve already put hundreds of games into.
Creating A Brand New Metagame
Barcelona is going to be the largest event of the Vendetta season to date, and here we’ll see just how the metagame will shape up. We’ve got some early favourite Legends. We’ve got players already adapting to them. We’ve got established Legends that continue to put up a fight, and we’ve got plenty of room for someone to turn up with something nobody has prepared for.
This is what makes the event worth following. For the players competing, it’s an opportunity to test themselves at the start of a new competitive season and chase a place at the next stage of Riftbound’s organised play. For everyone else, it’s a chance to spend a weekend playing, watching and talking about the game with a much bigger community. So whether you’re bringing your tournament deck or just bringing yourself, Barcelona is ready for Riftbound.
If you’re not at the event, you can still follow along from home and keep up with the live stream and our socials.
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