Lille Regional Qualifier Breakdown

The format walked in different

Seven cards came off the table between Bologna and Lille: Called Shot, Draven, Vanquisher, Fight or Flight, and Scrapheap, plus the battlefields Reaver's Row, Obelisk of Power, and The Dreaming Tree. That list reads like a targeted strike on everything the last two majors rewarded, and the broadcast desk treated it that way, opening Day 1 with the announcement that the cards had been “banned, and it has shaken up the meta.” The number the desk kept coming back to was Obelisk of Power sitting at “52% of the entire field in the previous” regional, and their argument was that removing it made Riftbound feel “a little bit more like a card game” again instead of a solved script.

Three of the seven bans

Draven, Vanquisher

Draven's chosen champion, off the table before the event.

Fight or Flight

Part of the strike on everything the last two majors rewarded.

Obelisk of Power

The desk had it at 52% of the entire field in the previous regional.

Draven himself was not banned, and the desk was careful about the distinction: his chosen champion was gone, but they did not expect that to push him out of the field entirely, just down into a fairer, slower unit-focused shape. The standings agreed with half of that. Draven players still showed up, but only one Draven sat in the top 16 entering Day 2, and the deck that had swept the entire top five in Vegas produced exactly one Top 8 finish in Lille.

The field and the Day 2 numbers

The event ran eight rounds of Swiss on Day 1 and five more on Day 2 before an untimed Top 8, and twelve players finished the first day undefeated, ten of them at a clean 8-0. Irelia was the deck of the weekend by volume. Seventy Irelia players reached Day 2, or 28% of those who entered with her. That raised her share of the field from 15% on Day 1 to 22% on Day 2, and Annie sent 26% of her players through the cut.

Then the bracket happened. Three Irelia made the Top 8 and all three landed in the bottom half of it, which the desk called out with unusual bluntness: three Irelia in the Top 8, “zero in the top four,” and their conclusion was that they all flopped. Numbers win Swiss, but brackets show how far a deck can realistically go, and Irelia failed that test in Lille.

The Top 8

Five of the eight decks still ran Chaos, so the domain did not go anywhere, but the desk noted the surprise of a finals without a single Chaos deck in it. The quiet winner of the weekend's deckbuilding argument was slower unit-focused Master Yi, who put two copies into the Top 8 a week before anyone was calling him a contender.

1st

Squirtle

AzirCalmOrder

2nd

Schorn

Master YiBodyCalm

3rd

CTCG DZiden

DravenFuryChaos

4th

Prismaticismism

AnnieFuryChaos

5th

Natureal

IreliaCalmChaos

6th

Alex Shans

IreliaCalmChaos

7th

tinodluffy

IreliaCalmChaos

8th

barczek

Master YiBodyCalm

Placements and decklists from the official Lille's Top Decks article.

The champion nobody predicted

Squirtle, introduced on stream as Pedro, ran a Calm/Order Azir list on a clean 6/6 rune split through the entire event without a single match loss. His semifinal ended Prismaticismism's Annie run, and the desk's call caught the mood: an Azir had “powerfully pummeled their way into the finals,” with one caster admitting he had tried to make the legend work himself and could not. The finals against Schorn's Master Yi went two games, and the desk crowned him with the record attached: undefeated all the way, with only two draws.

“

Powerfully pummeled their way into the finals.

The list underneath that record carries a conviction the result only underlines: ten of its sixteen main-deck cards appear at three copies each, from Arise! and Desert's Call through Eye of the Herald and Hidden Blade. Only Facebreaker, Guardian Angel, and Salvage appear once. A structure that consistent usually belongs to a player who stopped hedging long before the event, and going a whole weekend without dropping a match seems like reasonable evidence that Squirtle knew exactly what he wanted every game to look like.

Four cards the winning list runs at three copies

Arise!

Desert's Call

Eye of the Herald

Hidden Blade

Before the finals started, the desk said it plainly: not a single person predicted a Master Yi against Azir finals. Two legends that had spent the Spiritforged season as afterthoughts met for the trophy the first weekend after the bans, and that feels less like a coincidence than like the whole point of the bans.

1st

Winning list · Squirtle's Azir, Emperor of the Sands

1st place · Undefeated with two draws

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

×1Chosen

×3

×3

×3

×1

×2

×3

×2

×2

×3

×3

×3

×1

×3

×1

×3

×3

Runes (12)

×6

×6

Battlefields (3)

×1

×1

×1

Sideboard (8)

×2

×1

×1

×1

×1

×2

Open in Deck Builder

Notable decks from the Top 8

Schorn's Master Yi (2nd)

The runner-up list is the clearest picture yet of what slower, unit-focused Master Yi looks like when it is built for a bracket instead of a kitchen table: an even 6/6 Body/Calm rune base, the full three copies of Charm, Desert's Call, Discipline, and Lonely Poro, and three Ruin Runners on top, the unit the Bologna desk had already flagged as the card Kai'Sa decks cannot fight through. The sideboard leans the same way, committing a full three copies to Akshan, Mischievous, which is about as single-minded as sideboard space gets. The battlefield trio of Forge of the Fluft, Ravenbloom Conservatory, and Vilemaw's Lair is nothing like the pre-ban standards, which is exactly the point: the three battlefields everyone used to agree on are gone, and Schorn found a set that fits a deck built to outlast opponents.

2ndSchorn's Master Yi, Wuju BladesmanView decklistCollapse▾

2nd place

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

×3

×2

×2

×2

×3

×1

×1Chosen

×1

×1

×2

×2

×2

×3

×2

×2

×3

×3

×1

×2

×2

Runes (12)

×6

×6

Battlefields (3)

×1

×1

×1

Sideboard (8)

×1

×3

×1

×1

×1

×1

Open in Deck Builder

CTCG DZiden's Draven (3rd)

This is the list that answers the question everyone asked on March 31: what does Draven even play now? The ban took Draven, Vanquisher, Fight or Flight, and two of his three standard battlefields, and DZiden's answer was to lean all the way into a slower, unit-focused plan, with three copies each of Kai'Sa, Survivor, Darius, Trifarian, Noxus Hopeful, Ferrous Forerunner, and Spinning Axe, a pair of Rek'Sai, Breacher on top, and Aspirant's Climb, Targon's Peak, and Zaun Warrens as the new battlefield set. The desk predicted before round one that the bans were not enough to take Draven out of the field, and third place on the first attempt is about as strong a proof as the prediction could ask for.

3rdCTCG DZiden's Draven, Glorious ExecutionerView decklistCollapse▾

3rd place

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

×3

×3

×3

×2

×3

×3

×3

×1Chosen

×1

×3

×1

×3

×2

×3

×1

×1

×2

×2

Runes (12)

×6

×6

Battlefields (3)

×1

×1

×1

Sideboard (8)

×2

×1

×1

×2

×1

×1

Open in Deck Builder

Prismaticismism's Annie (4th)

File this one away, because the fourth-place Annie list is a draft of something. The Fury/Chaos plan is familiar from Houston, but its most expensive cards now include Rengar, Pouncing and Rek'Sai, Breacher alongside Kai'Sa, Survivor, and the whole list reads like a player systematically testing which threats survive the post-ban format. Fourth in Lille makes it four final tables in four Western events for Prismaticismism, and a list this tuned suggests the near-misses are sharpening something rather than wearing him down.

4thPrismaticismism's Annie, Dark ChildView decklistCollapse▾

4th place

Main deck (40 incl. chosen champion)

×3

×2

×3

×3

×3

×3

×3

×1Chosen

×3

×1

×1

×2

×3

×3

×2

×2

×2

Runes (12)

×6

×6

Battlefields (3)

×1

×1

×1

Sideboard (8)

×1

×1

×2

×1

×1

×1

×1

Open in Deck Builder

What we learned

The bans worked, at least on the first weekend's evidence. The format produced a finals nobody called, a champion from outside the established top tier, and a Draven population that behaved like one strong deck among many instead of the deck the tournament was about. Whether that holds once players have had more than three weeks to rebuild is the real question, and Atlanta is only days away with the answer.

The other lesson is about Irelia, and it cuts both ways. Her Swiss numbers were the best in the room and her bracket results were the worst of the Top 8, which might mean the deck is the format's new consistency king without being its power king. We might see that exact profile become the defining shape of post-ban Spiritforged.

Looking ahead

Atlanta runs this coming weekend, and it closes the Spiritforged season, which makes it the second and final look at the post-ban format before Unleashed changes everything again. The specific things I am watching: whether Draven's slower, unit-focused rebuild holds up in a field that has now seen it, whether Azir was a one-weekend miracle or a real deck, and whether Irelia's Swiss-monster, bracket-mortal profile repeats. If you are competing in Atlanta, the Lille Top 8 lists above are the homework, and I will have the full breakdown here once the trophy is handed out.

See you on the rift,
Shadow