Riftbound has its first two-time champion. Two weeks after Sydney crowned Irelia, Alanzq1 went 14-0-2 through the 1,833-player Vancouver Regional Qualifier on Mind/Chaos Diana and did not lose a single match on his way to the title, and the broadcast call gave the moment its full weight: he “has won the Vancouver Riftbound Regional Championship. The first ever second time winner of a regional championship.” The player who won Bologna on Ezreal just won an entirely different format on an entirely different legend, and at this point the argument about the best player in the West is over until somebody takes it back from him.
1,833
Players
14-0-2
Champion's record
1st
Two-time champion ever
3
Past champions in Top 8
A Top 8 full of champions
The desk could not get over the bracket, saying they could not believe “we have three of our returning regional qualifier champions in the same bracket,” with none of them paired in the first round. Alanzq1, Houston champion Dhawally, and Vegas champion SAMDSHERMAN all made the cut, and the bracket eventually forced two of them into each other.
| Place | Player | Champion | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Alanzq1 | Diana | Mind / Chaos |
| 2nd | SAMDSHERMAN | Rengar | Body / Fury |
| 3rd | TSS Houses Are Big | Master Yi | Body / Calm |
| 4th | Dhawally | Diana | Mind / Chaos |
| 5th | Rocklho | Azir | Calm / Order |
| 6th | Arito | Irelia | Calm / Chaos |
| 7th | Swag Yolo 420 | Sivir | Body / Chaos |
| 8th | BaoBaoaz | Irelia | Calm / Chaos |
Placements and decklists from the official Vancouver's Top Decks article; the run and bracket detail come from the official broadcast.
The run, and the revenge
The story of the Swiss was two Diana players refusing to lose. Alanzq1 and Dhawally were the last undefeated players in the room, the desk noting they were “both undefeated currently” when the pair “actually decided to ID with each other” rather than play it out, and the bracket then handed them the semifinal everyone wanted anyway. Alanzq1 won the mirror, and his interview afterward needed exactly one line: this was, in his words, “revenge for Houston.” Two testing partners, two Regional Qualifier titles between them, and a rivalry that now has a scoreboard.
The finals gave the weekend its second story, because SAMDSHERMAN did not bring the Draven he won Vegas with. He brought Body/Fury Rengar on a lopsided 8/4 rune split, and the desk admitted before the quarterfinals that “I don't think anyone expected a Rengar to do well today, much less making it” into the Top 8. The deck kept finding “just enough might all the time to get over the Master Yi” holds, which is how it dismantled the 12-1 first seed in the semifinals, and Alanzq1 himself said Sam played better than he did in the finals before the matchup math swung it back his way.
Vancouver Regional Qualifier · Winning list
Alanzq1's Diana, Scorn of the Moon
1st place · 14-0-2 · Beat SAMDSHERMAN's Rengar in the finals
Runes (12)
6x Chaos Rune
6x Mind Rune
Core cards
Ravenbloom Student · Tideturner · Hwei, Brooding Painter · Gust · Stacked Deck · Stupefy · Ride the Wind · Vex, Apathetic
The Unleashed meta numbers
Eight players entered Day 2 at 8-0, and the conversion table had teeth in strange places: Kha'Zix converted 41% of his pilots to Day 2, the best rate the desk called out all weekend, while Sivir sat at 17%, Sett at 25%, and Lux at 9.7%. The desk's Day 1 read on Diana aged perfectly, with one caster praising how “high agency she is” in long Swiss events where you want to avoid “leaving things down to variance,” and the two players who best embodied that thesis finished the Swiss undefeated on her.
Day 2 conversion, selected champions
The deckbuilding conversation underneath it all was about two cards: the Aurora gear package and Vex, Apathetic. The desk put Vex right alongside Aurora as a meta-warping force, because cheap acceleration from Darius and Kai'Sa shells gets shut down, which is part of why Fury nearly vanished from the top tables, and gear hate has migrated from sideboards into main decks. For all the Aurora talk, exactly one Aurora deck reached the Top 8, and Sivir's 17% conversion suggests the field has learned its lessons since Sydney.
Notable decks from the Top 8
SAMDSHERMAN's Rengar (2nd)
The Vegas champion's Rengar runs a deliberately lopsided 8/4 Body/Fury rune base, and the list explains the desk's line about the deck always finding just enough might: three copies each of Determined Sentry, Kinkou Initiate, Pit Rookie, and Inferna keep sturdy bodies flowing, Nidalee, Cat Form and the Kai'Sa, Survivor package supply the overstatted turns, and Punch First plus Challenge let the deck pick every fight on its own terms. Nothing in it is flashy, which is exactly why nobody built for the matchup, and a player of Sam's caliber piloting an unrespected pile of might checks is how first seeds die in semifinals.
TSS Houses Are Big's Master Yi (3rd)
The 12-1 first seed took the Lille runner-up shell and taught it Unleashed: the Body/Calm core with Charm, Discipline, and Lonely Poro is intact, but Rengar, Trophy Hunter and Scuttle Crab join the three-of row, Akshan, Mischievous slots in as a two-of, and Zhonya's Hourglass covers the late game. A deck that was a curiosity in April posting the best Swiss record in the room in May tells you mid-range Master Yi is not a metagame blip, and the desk calling the top-seed run “the secret sauce” might turn out to have undersold where this deck is headed.
Swag Yolo 420's Sivir (7th)
The only Aurora deck to survive into the Top 8 is worth reading as the package's current best form: Body/Chaos on an even split, the full Dazzling Aurora and Catalyst of Aeons engine with Elder Dragon and Lunar Boon as payoffs, and Flurry of Blades doing the combat work Sydney made famous. One seat out of eight, next to a 17% conversion rate, is the fairest summary of where Aurora stands: strong enough to demand answers, no longer strong enough to ignore them.
What we learned
Diana is the real deal, and Sydney was the warning shot. Two events into the Unleashed season she has a title, a second undefeated Swiss run, and the two most decorated players in the West piloting her, so the question is no longer whether Diana is good but whether anything punishes her before the next set.
Rengar entering the conversation matters beyond one result: Body/Fury was supposed to be the identity the format left behind, and a finals run built on raw might checks says the pool is deeper than the tier lists suggest. The champion's own praise for his finals opponent is the kind of respect you do not fake.
Also worth a line from the desk's MVP segment: Seymour the Scuttle Crab, of all cards, got the weekend's nod because “hand information is so big right now.” When a one-drop crab is the most talked-about card of a Regional Qualifier, the format is doing something right.
Looking ahead
The circuit swings back to Europe next, with Utrecht on the calendar for June 12 to 14 as the continent's first Unleashed Regional Qualifier, and the question writes itself: Europe's last major went to Squirtle's Azir in a post-ban Spiritforged field, while the two Unleashed titles so far belong to Irelia in Sydney and Diana here, so somebody's read on this format is incomplete. Between now and then I want to see whether Diana's numbers survive a field that just watched her win, and whether anyone takes the Rengar blueprint seriously enough to iterate on it. Hit me up on X at @shadow618tv with your Utrecht picks.
See you on the rift,
Shadow