3 Competitive Takeaways to Make You Better at Riftbound - Chongqing Riftbound Regional Open Finals Match

As I was commentating the Chongqing Regional Finals match, I picked up on some key competitive plays that I want to share with you all here that will help improve your game!

1. Give your opponent time for spells in combat, no matter how simple the combat seems like it should be

Here in game 1, we see the Yi player attack into Kaisa Survivor, and the Kaisa player lets the Survivor die immediately, without really allowing the Yi player an opportunity to activate any spells. This is all well and good at a locals or in a friendly game to speed up the pace of play, but in a competitive tournament, you should always ask your attacking opponent if they'd like to activate any spells or pass priority on spells in the showdown, and give a consistent amount of time for them to make that decision. It's a minor thing, but you're giving yourself the best chance to win, because you're giving your opponent the chance to misplay, however small that chance might be. Especially when you're on Kaisa, or any deck that has a lot of midbattle removal, the Yi player could get spooked and preemptively activate a Discipline or En Garde. So, always go through the proper proceedings of a showdown, and give both players the opportunity to activate spells. This could also save you from a rulesharking incident in the future.

2. Activate Cleave (or similar cards) in Showdowns, not before

There are a few times that we see our Kaisa player plan to attack into a battlefield, but before attacking, he casts Cleave. Cleave is an action spell that grants +3 assault. Make sure you utilize the "action" portion of the card! Again, this is an extremely minute detail, but playing it out this way gives you the ever slightest advantage, by depriving your opponent of information until the very last second that you need to reveal that information. It may not seem relevant, but seconds in different parts of a match can add up to minutes, and if you can get back minutes where your opponent can't think on how to react, that can be game winning.

In Pokemon VGC, it's very common for players to nickname their Pokemon, or use mons from other regions. This hides the name of the mon from the opponent upon switch in, which removes just a few seconds from the opponent's ability to process what mon is coming in until they actually lay eyes on it. As a result, they lose precious seconds for planning around that mon and adjusting their gameplan. If the best Pokemon players in the world are doing this to get back even just a few seconds, you should be doing this in your competitive Riftbound matches.

3. Know When to Play Chicken

At this point in the game, we see the Kaisa player progressively load Zaun Warrens with unit after unit. He did this because he recognized that he was ahead on points, and if could just simply hold that battlefield for another two turns, he could win the game outright. He also recognized that his opponent was on Master Yi, who doesn't have access to any sort of total battlefield removal, so this strategy was perfectly viable in this particular match up. You're going to find yourself in situations like this all the time, where you need to decipher whether the correct play is to play chicken and hold one battlefield for the win, or if you need to go for the double conquer win right away, or if you should just retreat all your units and go for the double conquer on the next turn. Knowing the right answer is going to come with experience with your deck and experience against all of the other strategies in the meta, but this concept should be on the forefront of your mind as you go into the 6th point of any game.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you learned something new or disagree with me somewhere in the comments!