5 Riftbound Decks To Dominate Nexus Night

The long wait for the global launch of Riftbound is over, and players outside of China finally have a chance to get their hands on the new League of Legends card game. The 298-card Origin set features 16 Legends (12 in the main set and four in the Proving Grounds learn-to-play kit) representing 12 different rune color combinations and countless strategies to experiment with. 

The sheer number of cards in the base set can make constructing your first deck feel daunting, but lucky for you, the Chinese Riftbound community has already done a lot of the legwork. With a two-month head start and four major tournaments in the rear view, we have a lot of data to work with, and plenty of deck lists to help us get a head start in the meta. If you’re looking for a deck that you can dominate your Nexus Night tournaments with, these five lists are your best bet.

#1 Kai’Sa – Beijing Regional Winning Deck

Kai’Sa has proven herself to be an extraordinarily dominant Legend in Riftbound inaugural meta. Her spell-heavy strategy leans into hard removal and combat tricks to easily take control of battlegrounds early, then follows up with powerful units like Darius and Thousand-Tailed Watcher in the late game to further dominate her opponents.

Kai’Sa’s Legend ability effectively gives you a free, multi-color seal, allowing you to maintain a health rune pool and outvalue many greedier decks. Check out this list by 闪闪, which took first place at the Beijing Regional in August.

#2 Master Yi – Hangzhou Regional Winning Deck

Kai’Sa may be the most successful Legend by tournament wins so far, but Master Yi is quickly creeping up. This Proving Grounds card was designed to be a beginner-friendly Legend, but industrious players have found a way to turn it into Riftbound’s most intimidating power house.

The Master Yi strategy is simple: conquer battlegrounds with giant monsters and never let them go. The combination of orange and green gives Master Yi plenty of big bodies to work with, as well as lots of movement and counter spells to keep them out of harm’s way. This deck, created by 小牛, won the Hangzhou regional tournament in September.

#3 Teemo – Guangzhou Top 8 Deck

If you’re more of an anti-meta player who wants to look outside of the Kai-Sa/Master Yi-shaped box, Teemo offers a great place to start. This fan-favorite LoL character has an appropriately themed deck that uses plenty of secrets and trickery to his advantage. His runes, Blue and Purple, are the colors of Mind and Chaos, which should give you a good idea about the kind of deck Teemo works best in.

Teemo is a high-risk, high-reward Legend that relies on synergies between his champion units to make big plays, and more importantly, ward off big attacks. The downside of the Hidden mechanic is that it requires you to already control a battleground to see its true power, so you’ll need to have a strong start or the skill to get into your opponents’ head, but ideally both. Here’s a Top 8 Teemo list developed by 布莱克 from the Gaungzhou regional tournament you can try out.

#4 Viktor – Best-Of-One Deck

Viktor is bound to be a popular choice for new Riftbound players, both because his low-cost Champion deck is a great foundation to build upon, and because he’s arguably the best best-of-one Legend in the game right now. If your Nexus Night events are running best-of-ones, this zoo-style deck is a solid pick.

Viktor is a great starter Legend because his strategy is pretty straightforward. His goal is to flood the board with tokens and low-cost units, then quickly overwhelm his opponents with sheer numbers. When one unit goes down, there are always two more to take its place. Yellow gives Viktor access to a healthy amount of hard removal tools too, which can shut down beefy units and open a path for his swarming army of tokens. Here’s a popular Viktor list you can create using his Champion deck as a base.

#5 Annie: The Anti-Kai’Sa 

Another Proving Grounds Legend, and a LoL fan favorite: Annie is an up-and-coming archetype that’s starting to show a lot of promise in the meta. This deck relies on movement spells to split up the opponents' forces and cleverly weaken their advances, while also keeping her own units out of the trash pile. This isn’t the easiest deck to pilot, but it has the potential to run circles around decks that rely on a few big units to control battlegrounds, like Kai’Sa and Master Yi.

Annie’s tournament performance hasn’t been overly impressive in China, but with this week’s global launch is the perfect time to innovate and push the Legends to new heights. Here’s a popular version of the Annie deck you can get started with. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to crack the code and elevate Annie to the top tier.