SeaweedStrangler ➡️ RC LV

Ok team long Riven lost because not enough Riven posting Many people ask me why I am so critical of specifically the current meta even if other metas have had similarly or more egregious decks based on event winrates. The stand out reason I hate the current format so much is that Riven simply does not play the game. Irelia on Abandoned Hall or Leblanc on Hillock or whatever other broken combinations can get really absurd might totals, but they are still fundamentally contesting a battlefield. They do it far too well in many scenarios compared to the average deck, but you are still playing the game. Riven on Star Spring and Dais literally just does not play the game. There are two fields that allow Riven to end every single turn with a double conquer and every unit in base. It is actually pathetic that we can see top 8 games at a Showdown end with legitimately ZERO combats. Here's the ban text for Reavers Row: "The first is Reaver’s Row, which promotes a noninteractive pattern (especially if both players bring it in the same game) - rather than have meaningful showdowns and interactions between players or situations where a player tries to hold, players will just retreat." I am flabbergasted that Riven is being allowed to exist as is with Dais and ESPECIALLY Star Spring. Every justification for banning Reavers applies to Star Spring. Star Spring also enabled 8-0 games from Faefolk decks this weekend, absurd Leblanc shenanigans, and the master yi first mate classic where he auto wins turn 2. Not emergency banning Star Spring before Stuttgart is extremely silly because it will almost certainly be banned afterwards. The Vegas meta will be entirely different, but have the same worlds qualification! The fact Riven never has to actually care about holding enables EXTREMELY auto pilot gameplay. Im not exaggerating when I say I believe it is the easiest deck in the game to competitive results on by FAR. there is almost zero concept of balancing board development and combat tricks. Almost every other deck in the game has to worry about the fundamental balancing of board development and spells. Riven just shits out units, sends them all to base, draws 10 cards, and automatically beats 90% of decks in the game. At this point Stuttgart is a lost cause. The tournament will feature a plethora of Kennen and Riven matches with close to zero combats per game and extensive cost cheating from Rhasa/Nocturne and Heron. Whoever plays solitaire better wins. Amazing! I'm begging Riot to do the right thing and be liberal with bans post Stuttgart. Riftbound should be about CONTESTING BATTLEFIELDS. Get rid of the absurd cards that prevent this and/or enable decks that ignore this. Going forward, don't be scared to make the right changes for the game. Making game play not miserable to play and watch should be the top priority. Just rip bans and adjust instead of holding yourselves to silly standards just because you tweeted you would THANK YOU!

Long post about why current Aurora decks are objectively unhealthy for Riftbounds game design So currently one of the most prominent decks is Dazzling Aurora Jayce centered around Elder Dragon. Combined with Bellows Breath and Flurry of Blades, the deck presents continuous cheap instant kills and infinite unit recursion with garbage grabber. Currently I've been working on Rengar and Irelia. When I sideboard against Aurora, I am legitimately swapping 8-10 cards in these decks. There are portions of my side board entirely present for this singular deck to not be an automatic loss That is not true for any other deck in the game. Sideboarding in Riftbound has effectively become how generalized can you make your Aurora hate? Star crossed is a great example because it's good into any big unit. Sabotage is another because it hits other spells/gear. Brittle steel is objectively just horrible and the general consensus is that it simply isn't worth playing. The strength of a deck ends up being capped by how well it can do into Aurora. Many colors simply do not have any viable option for dealing with an Elder dragon, while also dealing with the instant kill spells, while also dealing with the gear. And all of this is further compounded by the fact that the Jayce deck is allowed to play more draw spells than any normal deck. So in essence you have to figure out how to deal with like 3-4 different things that instantly lose you the game while seeing less cards and having fewer runes. And you have to stuff all of those answers into your side board because the gameplay vs Jayce is not Riftbound, it is point racing. If you actually built a deck around beating jayce you will simply lose to everything else. This further exacerbates the fact that some decks are terrible. If it weren't for Aurora the "bad decks" could have more sideboard freedom. Shen for example is a bad legend. Maybe he'd be a marginally better legend if he didn't have to spit half his sideboard into Aurora hate to have a fractional chance at winning? Some decks to do far as to say that it simply isn't worth sideboarding for Aurora, they will simply automatically lose if they face them. This is the current Akali strategy as making the deck playable into Aurora simply isn't viable even with 10 slots. Another downstream impact of all the aurora hate is that any other gear deck is simply unplayable. Try making an Endless Riches Zed Deck in a meta where people main deck 2 gear kills. Try playing Mech Jayce with all the empower gears. Try playing Bottled Constellation (lol) The absurd auto win condition of Elder Dragon+Aurora means that gear kill must be ABSURDLY efficient in comparison. It also means that any other gear based strategy must be similarly absurdly efficient as aurora. It also means unit bounce and kills must be absurdly efficient in comparison. If Star Crossed was banned any deck with cheated Elder becomes strictly tier 0. This makes high end units effectively unplayable if they aren't similar in impact (watcher/heron/everything else is awful) As these bounce and kills and efficient gear kills are not evenly distributed between colors, we just end up in a spot where decks like Nasus or Akali simply cannot function into Jayce or other Elder decks. Nobody wants to show up to events where their deck doesn't function event post 10 sb swaps. It simply isn't fun I really hope we get an Elder Dragon ban after LA and Riot more seriously considers downstream impacts of their changes. The resulting meta was VERY easy to predict.