Bologna Regional Qualifier Breakdown

How my predictions held up

In the meta preview, I predicted Draven would be the most popular legend at 20-25% of the field, with Kai'Sa and Annie behind him. Draven came in at 15% on Day 1, which is lower than I expected, but he ballooned to 34% of the Day 2 field because his conversion rate was the highest in the tournament. So the spirit of that call was right even if the numbers were off.

I said I liked Irelia or Annie for Day 2 conversion, and both delivered. Irelia converted 25.6% of her pilots to Day 2 and krowz took her to 3rd place overall. Annie converted 16.4% and COPE Anªrchy finished 27th. Both showed up.

Where I got it wrong was the winner. I gave the edge to Draven, Annie, or Kai'Sa. Alanzq1 took it down with Ezreal, a champion I had in Tier 3 alongside Miss Fortune, Lux, Jinx, and a bunch of others I described as needing “a very specific metagame read and some luck.” Turns out Alanzq1 had exactly that, and SEBIQQQQQQQQQQQQ took Miss Fortune to 2nd place on top of it. Two Tier 3 champions in the finals. I said “I'd love to be wrong” and I got my wish.

The other miss was Sett. I called him the dark horse I was watching closest and said if even one made Top 8, it would confirm the Nanjing signal. No Sett in the Top 8. NLV Tomino finished 96th overall as the best Sett, which is respectable in a 1,719-player field, but the breakout I was hoping for didn't happen. Looks like I overread the Chinese data on that one.

The field

Going into the weekend, the big three were Draven, Kai'Sa, and Irelia. All three drew triple-digit pilot counts and combined for 35% of the Day 1 field. Draven alone accounted for 219 entries. Everyone knew Draven was the deck to beat, and a lot of people showed up specifically trying to beat it.

All 28 legal Champions saw play on Day 1, and 25 of them made it to Day 2. Compare that to the Houston RQ where only 10 of 16 legal Champions survived the cut. Spiritforged has done what it was designed to do. The meta is wider than it's ever been.

The three Champions that didn't convert anyone to Day 2 were Ornn, Leona, and Garen. That said, the individual Legend performances tell a different story. Ghostfunk took the top Ornn slot at #490 overall. RiftboundTee led all 15 Garen players to #403. Daakkotah97 piloted Leona to #320. These Champions didn't make the Day 2 cut as a group, but their best pilots still put up competitive Swiss finishes.

Day 1 to Day 2 conversion

Raw attendance only tells half the story. Conversion rates from Day 1 to Day 2 show which Champions actually performed under pressure, and the numbers are pretty telling.

Draven's 37.9% conversion is the headline number. Nearly four out of every ten Draven pilots made Day 2, and the champion went from 15% of the Day 1 field to over a third of Day 2. That's not a champion being kept in check; that's a champion eating the tournament while everyone aims at it and still comes up short.

Irelia's 25.6% is also notable because it confirms what the Dalian data was showing: she converts well even in fields warped around Draven. She can play the Draven matchup and she can beat the decks that are trying to beat Draven, which is a strong place to be in competitive play.

The Top 8

Full decklists are up on the official Riftbound site. Here's who made it.

Three Draven, two Ezreal, one Miss Fortune, one Irelia, one Viktor. Chaos runes showed up in six of the eight decks, which is the defining trend of Bologna. Chaos is no longer a fringe domain. It's the backbone of the competitive format right now.

The winning list

Alanzq1 won the whole event with Ezreal, a champion that had 77 Day 1 pilots out of 1,466 who made it to the table. That's barely 5% of the field. Nobody was talking about Ezreal as the deck to beat going into the weekend, and that might be exactly why it worked.

The list runs 17 unique cards in the main deck with a lot of one-ofs, which means this isn't a linear game plan. It's a toolbox. Vex, Ravenbloom Student, Stupefy, and Wages of Pain give it enough removal density to grind through Draven boards, while Arcane Shift and Called Shot keep the Ezreal engine going. The Chaos/Mind rune split (7/5) commits hard to Chaos for the disruptive spells while splashing Mind for card selection and late-game threats like Thousand-Tailed Watcher and Singularity.

Three Pickpockets in the sideboard is interesting because it means Alanzq1 was prepared for the control mirror, not just the aggro matchup. That's the kind of targeted preparation that wins tournaments in a field where everyone else is focused on beating Draven.

Notable decks from the Top 8

The Draven problem

Draven put three copies in the Top 8, converted 38% of his pilots to Day 2 (the highest rate in the field), and grew from 15% of the field to 34% on Day 2. He did all of this while being the most targeted champion in the room. All three Top 8 Draven lists from Prismaticismism, Randyyy, and M4rcus99 ran Chaos/Fury runes with Ezreal, Prodigy as a support piece and the Stacked Deck, Called Shot, Scrapheap shell. The archetype is converging on a stock list, which is usually the last thing you see before balance intervention.

The saving grace for Draven's balance case is that he lost in the finals. Alanzq1's Ezreal proved the champion can be beaten by a well-positioned deck with a great pilot. Whether that's enough to stave off errata is anyone's guess. My take: enjoy Draven while you can.

The broadcast

Quick shoutout to the broadcast team. Leonard K, Amy Wosley, James O'Leary, and Aaron Chamberlain did an amazing job all weekend. The game is still young and the broadcast is already at a level that makes you want to keep watching. Card-by-card breakdowns of key turns, real-time metagame reads during Swiss, and some genuinely great commentary during the Top 8 matches. If you missed the live broadcast, the VODs are up on YouTube and Twitch and they're worth your time even if you already know the results.

What we learned

Chaos is the dominant domain in competitive Riftbound right now. Six of eight Top 8 decks ran Chaos runes, and the disruptive tools in that domain (Called Shot, Stacked Deck, Fight or Flight, Seal of Discord) are defining how the best players approach the format.

Draven is the best deck and the most beatable. He has the numbers and the conversion rates and the Top 8 representation, but he lost in the finals and both champions that beat him came from outside the expected top tier. The metagame can answer Draven. Whether it will answer him consistently across multiple events is the question heading into Vegas.

Ezreal is the breakout champion. From 5% of the field to two Top 8 slots and the trophy. The Chaos/Mind toolbox shell that Alanzq1 built has real legs, and the fact that TheManLandRFT got there with a completely different Ezreal build means the champion has more unexplored space than people realized.

And the format is healthy. 25 of 28 Champions on Day 2 is a massive improvement from Houston's 10 of 16. Spiritforged delivered on the promise of opening up the meta, and Bologna proved it at the biggest stage the game has seen in the West so far.

Looking ahead

Las Vegas is two days away. Players who watched Bologna have had barely enough time to process the results, let alone rebuild their decks. Expect a lot of people trying to copy Alanzq1's Ezreal list, and a lot of other people preparing for exactly that. That's the beauty of a fast tournament cycle: the meta can't settle, and the players who stay one step ahead of the field are the ones who end up in the Top 8.

I'll have a price impact follow-up later this week once the market has time to react to the decklists. In the meantime, if you're competing in Vegas or just watching from home, hit me up on X at @shadow618tv and tell me what you think the Vegas meta looks like now that Bologna has reshuffled the deck.

See you on the rift,
Shadow