Hangzhou Regional Meta Analysis
The results of the first 3 official Regional tournaments for Riftbound League of Legends TCG were eye-opening to most, unexpected for others, and dissapointing for some. Each of the first 3 events saw some combination of Kaisa and Master Yi in the finals, with Kaisa coming out on top every time. Many players were gearing up for a format where Kaisa seemed like the obvious S tier pick, and some players were even ready to write the game off as poorly designed (because of course, how else could one deck win the first 3 regionals in a row? /s).
But, the 4th official regional in Hangzhou finally produced a different result. Players may not have been the most pleased to see Dazzling Aurora (one of the most powerful and oppressive cards in Origins if unanswered) secure its first win, but students of the game should be extremely interested in the fact that the legend used with Aurora was the everpresent Master Yi. You might ask, why should anyone care about the second most powerful Legend beating Kaisa in the Hangzhou finals? Seems like Master Yi finally lucked out and won over Kaisa, and maybe it was just a streak of dumb luck at that. Well in this article, we're going to go over exactly why you should care about this development in the meta, and just what it could mean moving forward.
So, how did Master Yi Aurora end up dethroning Kaisa? Well, from testing, we know that Volibear and Miss Fortune decks based around Aurora tend to perform well against Kaisa. The main reason is that Kaisa excels at killing units with 6 might or less, but struggles to kill anything stronger. This has been known for a while, which is why players tried innovating with Master Yi last week with the midrange ramp version we saw in the finals. This innovation was enough to get to the finals, but wasn't quite enough to take Kaisa out.
So, in an evolutionary turn of events, we saw Yi players take the next logical step and go all in on the ramp and on the anti-Kaisa strategy. People hadn't really considered Aurora in Yi, but when you see the list, it makes perfect sense. Obviously any orange Legend has the ramp cards and Aurora that the color provides, but there's also Find Your Center in green, which gives the ramp strategy extra consistency. So, when you combine the difficulty of removing such large units from the Aurora strategy, and the combat dominance the Yi Legend offers, you've got a recipe for success against a field of Kaisa and Midrange Yi players.
So, is this the be-all end-all of the format? Is Origins solved? In my estimation, not by a long shot. We just need to wait and see what new strategies will emerge that have favorable Yi Aurora match ups. This could potentially look like yellow decks that have access to the best gear removal in the game in the form of Salvage. Or, this could be hyper aggressive strategies that can cripple Aurora decks before they get online. Jinx and some Viktor builds come to mind. However, there's one strategy that can combine the ability to play Salvage and a hyper-aggressive gameplan: Darius Hook. It's possible that Darius Hook is well positioned to succeed in a format dominated by Master Yi Aurora; heck, Darius Hook has a fine match-up spread across most of the field. The only thing Darius Hook really loses to is itself. The deck requires you to see Baited Hook by at least turn 2, otherwise your strategy crumbles into a mess of weird units you don't actually want to play from your hand. Perhaps something more consistent that still has access to solid gear removal will emerge, but only time (and testing) will tell.
What other developments do you see potentially coming with the recent Master Yi Aurora win? Let me know below!
