Meta Monday 9/8/25

Welcome to this week's Meta Monday article! Every Monday I’ll be taking a look at the current state of competitive Riftbound, recapping any big or notable tourneys, and giving some predictions on how the upcoming meta game could change!

This weekend had a couple of tournaments including an online TTS tournament with players from all over the world, and the 3rd Official Riot Games Open, held in Chongqing.

Riftlab Clash III

Riftlab Clash III was a 4 round tournament that at the end had 3 undefeated players at 4-0, and all 3 of them were different decks. Yes there was a Kaisa at 4-0, but the other 2 decks are decks that we haven't really seen much in the China opens. They were Darius Hook, and Annie Aggro. The tournament is a short 4 round tournament so there aren't enough rounds to have as decisive results as a 13 Round Open, but it still gives us an idea of how some decks can do that are potentially under explored or under played in the Open Meta game. On the Riftlabs stream, we got to see Annie beat Kaisa and Darius Hook beat and MF Aurora, so it's not like these decks also just hit meme decks every round either. Most of the Western scene has known and adopted Darius Hook as one of the top decks in the meta, and we have all seen Annie Aggro go on good runs as well, it's only a matter of time before China's meta shifts to also accept a wider range of decks.

Chongqing Open

Speaking of China's meta game, let's recap the most recent Open, the Chongqing Open. The meta trend is going in the direction others and I have predicted which is Kaisa play rate keeps going up, MF Play rate is going up in an attempt to counter Kaisa, and Viktor play rate is going in the direction that no one is surprised about, down.

Here is a look at the Overall Meta breakdown of the Chongqing Open

Kaisa has ballooned up to an astonishing 33% play rate with 168 copies, Master Yi is stay about where is expected at 22.5% play rate with 114 copies, and Viktor again going even further down in play rate while still barely holding on the third place at 12% play rate with 60 copies played.

Here are the conversion rates for Day 2 of the Open.

Some silver lining in all of this is that Kaisa's conversion rate took a hit and didn't have as many copies in day 2 as she did last week. Of course with the larger play rate numbers, you'd expect (or at least pray) that her conversion rate wouldn't also go up, however it not only didn't go up, but she lost almost 30% of her pressence in day 2 going from 34 decks in top 64 last week to only 24. This is likely due to the rise in Miss Fortune popularity and more Kaisa's losing to Miss Fortunes and not being able to make day 2, but this is also a much more reasonable number than having over half of all the decks in day 2 be the same deck. These are numbers of a best deck in the meta, but not necessarily a tier 0 deck. With that being said though, the outcome did not change for this Open as it was another Kaisa vs Yi finals and Kaisa taking home the W.

Even though people will look at this tournament and see that Kaisa won and that be their main take away, this tournament actually made me feel pretty good about the potential state of Riftbound. It showed that you can't just pick up Kaisa and win with it, and it showed that something happened where even though more players played Kaisa, less players made day 2 with Kaisa. We also saw the rise of different styles of Master Yi, with this greedy ramp Yi list doing the best and making it all the way to 2nd place in the tournament. This is most likely a result of China's current meta where all of their lists are trying to get as greedy as possible since in card games traditionally (and it's looking like this rule is also applying in Riftbound) the greedier your deck is, the better your deck will do into other greedy decks. So as long as the meta stays in this spot where Kaisa decks are playing 3 Watcher and 2 Mundo and some amount of Progress Day and now some amount of Time Warp, then the really greedy ramp Yi lists that are playing 3x Dragon and 3x Deadbloom will keep doing well.

However the next level to this type of meta is PLAYING AN AGGRO DECK OR SOME STYLE OF DECK THAT APPLIES PRESSURE!! This is why it's very frustrating not seeing a single Darius Hook player doing well in top 64 yet. In fact, we've only seen 1 Darius deck playing Baited Hook across all 3 tournaments. You know how sad your Master Yi opponent is going to be when Darius plays a vanguard captain on turn 1, and they look down at their hand and see that they can't play a unit for 2 turns? Hell even at this point the best Kaisa deck is a lower to the ground tempo Kaisa like what George played to win the tournament. Let your opponents all sit there with these very expensive late game cards in their hand while you're applying pressure with efficient units.

While Kaisa is looking like the best deck right now, and will most likely maintain a top 3 deck throughout set 1, this past tournament should open people's eyes and let them see that she isn't actually unbeatable. Once Riftbound launches globally and there are even more touranments ran and official Riot Tournaments outside of China, I'd be very surprised if the tournament results are similar to what we're seeing now in China. There's still 1 last Open in China, and unfortunately I don't see a big meta shift coming for it, but I do still believe that Kaisa can get dethroned.

Before signing off I want to just remind people that Riftbound will have a good meta and to not take these tournament results as 100% fact of how the meta will be Globally. We're already seeing different tournament results in the West as far as online tourneys go including a $1,000 tournament that happened where Kaisa didn't even make it to the finals. Kaisa is being setup to win these tournaments due to the China meta favoring greedy slow decks, an extreme lack of Sett or Darius to be applying pressure to these greedy decks, and of course when a deck has 33% play rate, the odds of one those decks winning is going to be much higher than any other deck brought.

As always, thanks for your time, I hope I've helped you on your journey to achieving your Riftbound goals, and have a nice rest of your day, evening, or morning!

~ Moe