Riftbound Banned Cards & Battlefields

Banned Cards

• Called Shot (Spiritforged) — Enables 'Miracle' deck strategies that filter through the deck and get ahead on cards at a pace that's too efficient. These decks consume excessive tournament time and become increasingly powerful as the card pool expands.
• Draven, Vanquisher (Spiritforged) — Provides guaranteed access to a strong turn-two play, giving Draven decks excessive early-game pressure. The combination of a powerful Legend, a strong Champion, and a highly efficient card pool created an unhealthy metagame presence.
• Fight or Flight (Origins) — Best in class in too many scenarios, crowding out other Chaos domain designs.
• Scrapheap (Origins) — Enables 'Miracle' deck strategies that filter through the deck and get ahead on cards at a pace that's too efficient. These decks consume excessive tournament time and become increasingly powerful as the card pool expands.
• Stealthy Pursuer (Origins) — Enables a potential infinite Unit combo with Eye of the Herald and Renata Glasc, Industrialist that can create infinite Recruits as early as turn three with only small windows for interaction. Internal testing showed the combo is consistent enough to become a harsh check on the metagame, leading to polarizing 'Do you have it?' games -- a problem that would only get worse over time.

Banned Battlefields

• The Dreaming Tree (Origins) — Provides excessive card consistency by functioning on both players' turns, distorting deckbuilding choices.
• Obelisk of Power (Origins) — Reduces strategic deckbuilding by allowing players to bypass energy cost restrictions and ensure they always hit the same breakpoints.
• Reaver's Row (Origins) — Promotes noninteractive gameplay patterns where players retreat rather than engage meaningfully.
• The Arena's Greatest (Origins) — Impacted the structure of competitive play in an unhealthy way: picking it became a de facto play in Game 2 or 3 once players knew whether they were going first. It is particularly powerful when going first, reinforcing a first-player advantage with unhealthy consistency. Removing it increases battlefield diversity and makes choices less deterministic on play order.
• Aspirant's Climb (Origins) — Impacted the structure of competitive play in an unhealthy way: picking it became a de facto play in Game 2 or 3 once players knew their play order. Adding the extra point also increases round length, making rounds take longer to execute in a tournament setting.

2v2 Constructed

The 2v2 Constructed ban list includes every Standard ban above, plus:

• Wuju Bladesman - Starter (Proving Grounds) — Banned only in Constructed 2v2. While the Proving Grounds Master Yi is a solid 1v1 competitor, his Legend has consistently overshadowed other options in 2v2: the defensive bonus extends to both you and your ally, providing far more stats from the start of the game than are healthy. Top 2v2 teams showed a huge overrepresentation of Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman.