Houston Regional Qualifier Breakdown

The field

Kai'Sa was the story before a single game was played. She drew 372 Day 1 entries, or 33.1% of the field, and no other champion came close: Master Yi sat in second at 14.8% and Annie in third at 10.9%. When one deck is a third of the room, every other list in the building is either playing it or planning against it, and Houston became a referendum on whether the Daughter of the Void deserved that much respect.

The broadcast desk framed the rest of the field as an open secret, saying the worst-kept secret coming into the event was that “this Annie deck is insane,” and the question the casters kept returning to was historical: in the Chinese events it was Master Yi that “kept Annie away from the top tables,” so Houston doubled as a test of whether the Western Annie builds had actually solved that matchup.

“

This Annie deck is insane.

All 16 legal Champions saw Day 1 play, but only 10 of them put at least one player into Day 2. Ahri, Sett, Leona, Jinx, Lux, and Garen were shut out entirely, and some of those misses came from real numbers: Ahri brought 63 players and Sett brought 56, so those decks went home with nothing to show for a meaningful share of the field. The Day 2 cut was brutal at this event, with only 64 players surviving into the second day, and that small field matters when you compare the numbers below.

Who advanced to Day 2

Day 1 attendance tells you what players expected. Day 2 tells you what worked. Kai'Sa sent 27 of her 372 players to the 64-player Day 2, so she grew from a third of the field to 42.2% of the second day.

The quieter number is Miss Fortune. Seven of her 59 players reached Day 2, or 11.9%. No other Champion sent a larger share of its players through the cut. Nobody was calling Miss Fortune a top deck going into Houston. The broadcast spotted it early: a Miss Fortune Dazzling Aurora list led the standings after Day 1. One caster admitted he expected the deck to fold without its namesake card, then watched the lists win without drawing Dazzling Aurora. Keep that card name in mind, because it shows up again in the finals.

The official tournament report includes every Champion. This table omits the six that sent no players to Day 2: Ahri, Sett, Leona, Jinx, Lux, and Garen.

The Top 8

The final table settled as four Annie, two Master Yi, and two Kai'Sa. The champion that owned a third of the field walked away with two seats and neither of the top two finishes, while the two starter deck legends everyone learned the game on claimed six of the eight slots between them. Dhawally finished first and Blargh1111's Calm/Body Master Yi took second, and the bracket the broadcast called gave the result real shape: Dhawally won a game between Annie decks against Zent in the semifinals while Blargh1111 cut down two of the other Annies on his side of the bracket.

1st

Dhawally

AnnieFuryChaos

2nd

Blargh1111

Master YiCalmBody

3rd

Zent

AnnieFuryChaos

4th

Prymor

AnnieFuryChaos

5th

Alanzq1

Kai'SaFuryMind

6th

Clyde

Master YiCalmBody

7th

GEORGEG

Kai'SaFuryMind

8th

NoVeggies

AnnieFuryChaos

Placements are taken from the final standings, and both finalists' full decklists appear in the sections below.

The winning list

Dhawally won the first English Regional Qualifier with the Annie, Dark Child starter legend, and I think that sentence is going to age into one of the best arguments this game has for its own health. You did not need a binder full of chase rares to win Houston, but you did need to know exactly what your deck was doing. The broadcast added the detail that makes the run remarkable: the desk introduced Dhawally as a player who started “the game only mere weeks ago,” learning the Annie list his team developed together, which makes this trophy either terrifying or encouraging depending on how your own testing has been going.

The list runs a clean 6/6 Fury/Chaos rune split and plays like an aggressive deck that keeps finding useful cards. Annie, Stubborn and Vi, Destructive supply the early pressure, Stacked Deck finds the next card, Fight or Flight moves a unit from a battlefield back to base, and Rebuke plus Scrapheap give it answers when the board stalls. Its most expensive units are the same Kai'Sa, Survivor and Darius, Trifarian pairing that the rest of the field was building whole decks around, which might be the smartest part of the build: it plays the format's best cards without paying the tax of being the format's most targeted legend.

What stands out once the full list is in front of you is how disciplined the construction is: eleven of its fifteen distinct main-deck cards appear at three copies, and only Gust and Rebuke appear once. The sideboard explains why those two get away with it, carrying two more copies of each alongside a pair of Draven, Showboat, and when the finals settled it, the desk credited Dhawally's preparation and said his Rebukes “showed a lot of respect for the matchup.”

Inside Dhawally's Annie

Half of the early pressure the list is built around.

The other early attacker alongside Annie, Stubborn.

Looks at the top three cards, puts one into hand, and recycles the other two.

One copy appears in the main deck, with two more in the sideboard.

His battlefield choices (The Arena's Greatest, The Dreaming Tree, Zaun Warrens) round out a list that seems built to win long, demanding tournament days rather than pretty games, and a three-day, 1,129-player event is exactly the environment that rewards that kind of build.

1st

Winning list · Dhawally's Annie, Dark Child

1st place · Beat Blargh1111's Master Yi in the finals

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

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Runes (12)

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Battlefields (3)

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Sideboard (8)

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Open in Deck Builder

Notable decks from the Top 8

Blargh1111's Master Yi (2nd)

Master Yi was the second-most-played champion in Houston at 14.8% of Day 1, but only 6.6% of its players reached Day 2. Blargh1111 still carried the deck to the finals while beating two of the Top 8's four Annies along the way. The Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman list uses a 6/6 Calm/Body rune split. Its expensive cards include three copies of Catalyst of Aeons next to three copies of Dazzling Aurora, the same card the desk spent Day 1 marveling at in Miss Fortune's hands. If the Aurora lists leading the Swiss were the quiet story of the first day, the finals put that card on the biggest stage of the weekend inside a completely different Legend. That Catalyst and Aurora pair may fit more decks than anyone gave it credit for.

Catalyst of Aeons

Three copies support the deck's expensive Dazzling Aurora plan.

Dazzling Aurora

The card the desk marveled at on Day 1, here in a different legend.

Around those expensive cards, the build plays three copies each of Charm, Defy, Find Your Center, Mobilize, Tasty Faefolk, and Zhonya's Hourglass. Its most expensive unit is one Volibear, Imposing, and it spends six of its eight sideboard slots on three Stalwart Poro and three Clockwork Keeper, with Aspirant's Climb, Obelisk of Power, and Vilemaw's Lair as the battlefields. There is a version of this weekend where the finish surprises nobody: the casters had already pointed out that Master Yi was the champion holding Annie back in the Chinese events, and Blargh1111 came within one match of proving the pattern held in English. The Annie he finally met had simply prepared for exactly that fight, and Clyde taking the same Calm/Body pairing to sixth place says that deck style's weekend was no accident either.

2ndBlargh1111's Master Yi, Wuju BladesmanView decklistCollapse▾

2nd place

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

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×1Chosen

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Runes (12)

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Battlefields (3)

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Sideboard (8)

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Open in Deck Builder

What we learned

Kai'Sa is beatable, and the room proved it by beating her. A third of the field and 42% of Day 2 turned into fifth and seventh place, and if there is a configuration of the Daughter of the Void that improves her expensive cards, nobody in Houston found it. She might still be the safest deck in the format, but Houston showed the gap between safest and best.

The starter legends are real tournament decks. Annie and Master Yi taking six of eight Top 8 seats, including both finalists, means the entry-level builds are not just training wheels, and that has implications for anyone deciding what to buy before the next qualifier.

The other lesson is less comfortable: six champions brought a combined 208 players and sent nobody to Day 2. Ten of 16 Champions reached the second day. That is not a crisis, but the bottom of the roster is clearly a tier below the top, and that gap may matter more as prize support grows.

Looking ahead

Houston was the proof of concept: over a thousand players for the first English qualifier, a Top 8 that punished the consensus, and a starter deck holding the trophy. The next wave of qualifiers is going to look different because everyone now knows the field can be this deep, and the players who treat Houston as one result instead of a fluke are the ones I expect to see on the final tables next year.

If you were in Houston or watched from home, hit me up on X at @shadow618tv and tell me what you think the field misread, because I do not think Kai'Sa at 33% happens again.

See you on the rift,
Shadow