Twitch Rivals Legends of Runeterra Showdown Results and Decklists

Thursday we got to enjoy matches between some of our favorite streamers at the Twitch Rivals tournament, but it wasn't without problems. I'll cover those briefly, then jump into the decklists. Congratulations to Dog on winning the tournament and walking away $20,000 richer! If you missed the games you can watch the replay below.

Match Timer

One of major complaints against the tournament was the match timer. It was set to 50 minutes, and if it went to time, players had an additional 3 turns each to finish or it resulted in a draw. This type of time limit is very familiar to players of Magic: The Gathering. Unfortunately, with this type of restriction you can have some people play slow to take advantage of the rule and possibly force a draw. The ideal way to deal with this is to implement timers, similar to those used in chess (and already used by games like MTGO), to ensure that slower play does not give you an advantage. In an important match with Swim versus Mogwai, this rule resulted in a draw, when Mogwai would have likely won. This caused Mogwai to get dropped to the lower bracket, where the prize pool was significantly lower.

I don't believe Swim was intentionally stalling, he is just a slow player who puts a lot of thought into his decisions before he commits to action. There's nothing wrong with that, especially when there is $20,000 on the line for the top player and a single misstep could knock you out of contention. Andrew Yip, LoR Game Director, put out a couple of tweets on this and said to Swim "I know the timers were frustrating. We'll continue collaborating with Twitch to improve these experiences for everyone involved," and to Mogwai "We were watching & already talkin about how to improve". Perhaps this means we will see a Tournament mode in the future, where timers and various rule sets can be selected.

Ban Site

Next in the problem department was the website for banning decks. This is a site that allows players to upload their decklists and use it to select which bans will be in effect for their opponent. Evidently, there is some type of bug where it is not displaying the decks correctly. Firebat ran into a situation where a second Deny showed up in a match that wasn't on the submitted list. This wasn't through any fault of the players, but a problem with the website. He spent so much time discussing the issue with the Admins that he ended up running out of time and getting a tie on the match. Hopefully, they can improve the website or use a different method in the future.

Player Lineup

The final complaint of the tournament was there were quite a few players invited who were not dedicated Legends of Runeterra streamers. I understand that Twitch wants to bring in the big names to get viewership, but frankly, it's insulting to those content creators and streamers who play LoR every single day, or at least showcase it as their primary title. There were several other Partnered streamers that could have been on the roster, like navioot or StrifeCro. Or they could have given lesser-known players like AlanzqTFT or BruisedByGod a chance because they are solely focused on Legends of Runeterra content. I imagine the incentive is that you get the big names to start playing your game on a regular basis if you throw enough money at them, but it's disappointing to see them take slots from other people when they stream the game less than 8 hours a week.

Replay

Decks

First Place