Las Vegas Regional Qualifier Breakdown

The sweep

Five of the eight Top 8 seats went to Draven, and the first non-Draven name on the standings sheet appears at sixth place. Bologna at least dressed the problem up: three Top 8 Draven lists, a loss in the finals, and two unexpected champions standing over him. Vegas offered no such comfort, as places one through five all belonged to the Glorious Executioner.

The numbers behind the sweep are just as blunt. Draven drew 216 Day 1 players, or 15.2% of the field. Eighty advanced to the 224-player Day 2, so 37.0% of Draven players made the cut. Draven then accounted for 35.7% of the Day 2 field. Bologna had nearly the same numbers one week earlier: 37.9% of Draven players advanced, and Draven made up 34% of Day 2. Two events, two continents, one week apart, and the deck posted nearly identical numbers both times. Vegas was not a one-week spike.

The broadcast leaned into the sweep rather than apologizing for it. Closing the weekend, the desk argued that you could not “call the Draven games boring,” and the finals made the case for them: SAMDSHERMAN's slower, unit-focused build against TTA's Miracle Draven showed two distinct approaches to the same champion, and the desk marveled that the deciding game came down to a Switcheroo.

Who advanced to Day 2

Rek'Sai sent 12 of her 44 Day 1 players to Day 2. That is 27.3%, the largest share outside Draven. Her best player, Vouz, finished 49th overall, so the Void Burrower is still waiting for a headline finish. Even so, a deck that sends that many players through the cut is worth testing. The broadcast opened Day 2 on the image of a lone Rek'Sai sitting at the top tables in a sea of Draven.

Irelia sent 25.0% of her players to Day 2 after sending 25.6% in Bologna. The nearly identical results show Bologna was repeatable, and DeluxePhilCheese carried her to sixth place here. Kai'Sa sent 21.6% through the cut and put aggresia at 11th, close enough to the final table to sting. Jax was the strange one: only 3 of 44 players reached Day 2, yet Theverybestgamer took a Calm/Body build to seventh. One great finish beside a poor overall showing usually says more about the player than the deck. Even the desk did a double take when Jax appeared late in Swiss. By the Top 8 preview, it was joking that he would be unstoppable if he had a real weapon.

“

Imagine if he had a real weapon.

The official tournament report includes all 28 Champions. These are selected rows. Leona, Rumble, Garen, Teemo, and Lee Sin sent nobody to Day 2.

The Top 8

Seven of the eight decks at the final table were built in a Chaos domain identity, and the only holdout was the Calm/Body Jax in seventh. The domain that defined Bologna, where six of the eight Top 8 decks ran Chaos runes, now looks less like a trend and more like the format's resting state.

1st

SAMDSHERMAN

DravenFuryChaos

2nd

TTA

DravenFuryChaos

3rd

Argan

DravenFuryChaos

4th

Shizzle

DravenFuryChaos

5th

Prismaticismism

DravenFuryChaos

6th

DeluxePhilCheese

IreliaCalmChaos

7th

Theverybestgamer

JaxCalmBody

8th

Alanzq1

EzrealMindChaos

Full placements and decklists are in the official Vegas top decks article.

The winning list

SAMDSHERMAN's build is a study in trusting the format's best cards. Draven, Vanquisher anchors the champion slot, the rune base is a clean 6/6 Fury/Chaos split, and the main deck plays three copies of every card that has become standard for the deck. Spinning Axe adds 3 Might to an attacker as a Reaction. Overzealous Fan is defensive: when it defends, it can die to move an attacker back to base. Stacked Deck selects the next card, while Fight or Flight can move a unit from a battlefield back to base.

The cards Draven players agree on

Adds 3 Might to an attacker as a Reaction.

Can die while defending to move an attacker back to base.

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

Moves a unit from a battlefield back to base and can be hidden for later.

What separates the list is the supporting cast. Tideturner and Treasure Hunter smooth the early turns, Hard Bargain and Rebuke handle the mid-game exchanges, and its most expensive units runs the Kai'Sa, Survivor and Darius, Trifarian pair alongside Noxus Hopeful and Ferrous Forerunner, so the deck never stops presenting units that demand an answer. The two copies each of Brynhir Thundersong, Falling Star, and Ride the Wind look like choices for finishing close games without weakening the main plan, and the battlefield trio of Obelisk of Power, Reaver's Row, and Targon's Peak keeps the pressure mapped to the deck's aggressive plan.

1st

Winning list · SAMDSHERMAN's Draven, Glorious Executioner

1st place · Won the Draven mirror finals against TTA

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

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Open in Deck Builder

All five Top 8 Draven lists live in the same Fury/Chaos domain identity, because the Legend leaves them no other choice, so games between two Draven decks come down to which cards each player chose rather than domains. The winner's even rune split reflects a list built to cast both halves of its card pool at their intended Energy costs, and with five separate players reaching the final table, the deck clearly does not depend on any one player's read of the field, which might be the most frustrating part for everyone trying to beat him.

Notable decks from the Top 8

TTA's Miracle Draven (2nd)

The desk called the finals Miracle against slower unit pressure, and TTA's list is the reason the label stuck: this is a Draven deck that runs three copies each of Called Shot, Seal of Discord, and Ezreal, Prodigy, a spell-heavy group you would sooner expect behind an Ezreal Legend, wrapped around the same Noxus Hopeful units the winner played. Scrapheap, Stacked Deck, and Traveling Merchant keep the cards flowing, Rhasa the Sunderer and Battering Ram give the deck something to spend them on, and the decision to use only two Spinning Axes might be the clearest sign of where the priorities sit, because in this build the axes support the plan rather than define the whole plan.

The rune base leans 7/5 into Chaos where SAMDSHERMAN's sits even, and the battlefields diverge too: both finalists start from Obelisk of Power, but TTA takes Trifarian War Camp and Zaun Warrens where the winner takes Reaver's Row and Targon's Peak. The sideboard rounds out the picture with three Ferrous Forerunners for the games that still need more units, plus two copies of Switcheroo sitting next to the single one in the winner's board, which makes a deciding game that turned on a Switcheroo feel almost inevitable in hindsight. The run was no fluke either: TTA is the player who ended Alanzq1's back-to-back bid in the quarterfinals before pushing SAMDSHERMAN to that deciding game in the finals.

Switcheroo

The deciding game of the finals came down to this card.

2ndTTA's Draven, Glorious ExecutionerView decklistCollapse▾

2nd place · Miracle Draven

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

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Runes (12)

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Open in Deck Builder

Alanzq1's Ezreal (8th)

The Bologna champion brought the same flexible, answer-heavy list on the same 7/5 Chaos/Mind rune split, and the familiar central cards are all here: three copies each of Called Shot, Seal of Discord, Stupefy, Stacked Deck, Ravenbloom Student, and Wages of Pain, with Vex, Cheerless as its most expensive unit and one or two copies each of Frigid Touch, Smoke Screen, Rebuke, and Morbid Return that lets the deck answer whatever the round presents. The battlefield set moved to Obelisk of Power, Sigil of the Storm, and Void Gate, and the sideboard is where the preparation shows: Factory Recall sits exactly where the desk's “very underrated purple card” praise said it should be, next to three Pickpockets for games against other control decks and a Dr. Mundo, Expert for long, resource-heavy games.

Eighth place with the field warned is arguably more impressive than first place with the field asleep, and the list's consistency across two events is the strongest argument yet that Ezreal's varied-answer plan is a repeatable strategy, not one player's trick.

8thAlanzq1's Ezreal, Prodigal ExplorerView decklistCollapse▾

8th place

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

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Runes (12)

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Battlefields (3)

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Open in Deck Builder

The Bologna threads

Alanzq1, who lifted the trophy in Bologna, backed it up with an eighth-place finish here on the same Mind/Chaos Ezreal pairing, and back-to-back Top 8s at the two biggest Western events of the season is the kind of run that separates a hot weekend from a genuinely elite player. The desk had picked him before a card was played, one caster flatly predicting on Day 1 that Alanzq1 was “going back to back,” and the run only ended in the quarterfinals against TTA, the eventual finalist. Ezreal himself stayed a boutique choice: 74 Day 1 players in Vegas after 77 in Bologna, roughly 5% of the field at both events, so the copycat wave I expected after his Bologna win never actually arrived.

Prismaticismism is the other repeat storyline, finishing fifth on Fury/Chaos Draven here after taking fifth on the same champion in Bologna, which makes it two events, two fifth-place finishes, and one deck. Somewhere there is a very consistent player wondering what it takes to crack the top four.

What we learned

Draven is no longer a question but the answer key. Nearly the same share of his players reached Day 2 at two consecutive events, he took a Top 8 majority in Vegas, and he now holds a trophy. Bologna proved the field could beat him in a bracket, but Vegas showed that result was not a pattern. Until something changes, every serious testing session starts with the Draven matchup.

The format underneath him is still breathing. 23 of 28 Champions put at least one player into Day 2, which is a small step down from Bologna's 25, and the interesting movement is happening in the middle of the table. Rek'Sai sent a larger share of her players to Day 2 than everyone but Draven, Viktor and Azir both held their own, and 15.7% of Lucian players advanced in his Spiritforged debut season. The pieces for a counter-meta exist. Somebody still has to assemble them.

Chaos identities in seven of the eight Top 8 seats is the stat I keep coming back to. The domain question has effectively been answered for this format, and the real competition is happening one layer down, in which champion gets to carry the Chaos half of the pool.

Looking ahead

Two Western Regional Qualifiers on back-to-back weekends gave us more clean competitive data than the game had produced in its entire life before February, and the picture they paint agrees with itself: Draven on top, a stable second tier of Irelia and Kai'Sa, and a long tail of champions that can spike a bracket but not a field. The next stretch of the calendar will tell us whether the game's designers or its players solve the Draven problem first, and I honestly could not tell you which side I would bet on right now.

If you were in Vegas or followed along from home, hit me up on X at @shadow618tv and tell me what you would play next weekend, because my honest answer might just be Draven.

See you on the rift,
Shadow