Riftbound Battlefields: What 111 Tournament Decks Ran

Seat of Power was the battlefield registered most often in the decklists Riot published from Riftbound's three Vendetta-season Regional Qualifiers: 25 of 111 lists ran it, including 9 of the 24 that made a Top 8. In a 1v1 game it draws you one card, at most.

That is the kind of thing a battlefield pick hides. Our deckbuilding guide covers the rules for the three battlefields in your deck: unique names, no domain, and shared with your opponent once one hits the table. What it cannot tell you is which three the players who did well actually chose. Riot's own decklists can, so I counted them. Then I added the ten battlefields Radiance brings on 23 October, which Riot says will be legal at the European Regional Championship in Stuttgart from 6 to 8 November.

Where the 111 decklists come from

Riot published a Top Decks article after each Vendetta-season Regional Qualifier: Barcelona (21 to 23 August), Singapore (4 to 6 September) and Los Angeles (25 to 27 September). Each one prints the eight Top 8 decklists plus 33 Best-Of lists, and a Best-Of goes to "the highest-placing competitor piloting each eligible Legend", where eligible means a Legend from Spiritforged, Unleashed or Vendetta. Some Top 8 players also hold a Best-Of, so once the repeats are removed the three articles carry 37, 38 and 36 distinct decklists. That is 111 lists and 333 battlefield slots.

Every count below is mine, tallied from those decklists, and you can redo any of them from the three articles linked at the bottom. Three things to keep in mind while reading them:

• It is not the field. The three events drew 5,985 Day 1 registrations between them, by the sum of Riot's own Legend tables. These 111 lists are the Top 8s plus one Best-Of list per eligible Legend, and five of the Best-Of lists finished outside the top 500.
• One list per Legend flattens popularity. At Los Angeles, the Best-Of from a Legend 13 people registered counts the same as the one from a Legend 193 people registered.
• The same players come back. DSG Prismaticism (Rengar), MICE Squirtle (Azir) and MICE TheManLand (Ornn) each appear at all three events with the same three battlefields every time. Our RQ Los Angeles results follows those three players across the season.

The most-registered battlefields

Every battlefield that appeared in at least eight of the 111 lists, with its count in the 24 Top 8 lists alongside. Card text follows the current official wording, lightly shortened; "1 Energy" stands in for the cost symbol.

Forty-seven different battlefields fill the 333 slots, and seven of them appear only once. Twelve battlefields that Riot's card gallery lists from Origins through Vendetta, and that are neither banned nor token battlefields, appear in no list at all - among them Hallowed Tomb, the example card in our deckbuilding guide. None of the five on Riot's ban list shows up: The Arena's Greatest, Aspirant's Climb, Dreaming Tree, Obelisk of Power and Reaver's Row.

Three of the texts in that table are Riot's errata rather than what is printed. The Origins errata rewrote Sigil of the Storm (adding "must", so the effect chooses nothing) and Targon's Peak (adding "up to"), and the July Vendetta errata rewrote Emperor's Dais. Riot's card gallery still showed the printed wording for all three on 11 October, so read the errata articles before you argue a ruling from the gallery.

Seat of Power draws one card at most in a duel

Seat of Power reads: "When you conquer here, draw 1 for each other battlefield you or allies control." Both 1v1 modes put exactly two battlefields on the table, one from each player (Core Rules 485.4 and 486.4, renumbered 487.4 and 488.4 in the rules that take effect on 16 October). So "each other battlefield" is one battlefield at most, and it only counts if you already control it at the moment you conquer Seat of Power. The card pays the player who is already ahead on the board, one card at a time. In the free-for-all and 2v2 modes, which put three battlefields out (see our multiplayer rules guide), the ceiling rises to two.

The other thing to know before you register it: it stops being your card once it is on the table. Core Rule 190.6.d, unchanged between the July and October rules, says "you" in a battlefield's abilities "refers to the battlefield's Controller". If your opponent conquers your Seat of Power while holding the other battlefield, your opponent draws.

None of that kept it out of the lists, and Riot has said why battlefields spread like this. Its March ban note pointed out that battlefields "can be played in any deck regardless of the champion or domains", which puts them "at greater risk of over representation and repetition than any other type of card in Riftbound." Eleven different Legends ran Seat of Power, it made at least one Top 8 list at every event (three at Barcelona, one at Singapore, five at Los Angeles), and two of the three Regional Qualifier winners registered it: MICE TheManLand on Ornn at Barcelona and DSG Prismaticism on Rengar at Los Angeles. Read the 25 with the repeat pilots in mind, though. Nine of them are Prismaticism, Squirtle and TheManLand, each bringing it to all three events.

Six battlefields with no payoff for their holder

Six battlefields in that table carry no ability that rewards the player who controls them. Each one only restricts or punishes play at that battlefield, and the units standing on a battlefield you hold are usually yours:

• Forbidding Waste gives a unit defending alone there -2 Might. If you hold it with a single unit, that unit is the one defending alone.
• Sigil of the Storm makes whoever conquers it recycle one of their runes, sending it to the bottom of their Rune Deck.
• Rockfall Path stops units being played there, which shuts off Ambush and anything else that drops a unit straight onto a battlefield. Units can still move in.
• Frozen Fortress deals 1 to every unit there at the start of each player's Beginning Phase, before scoring, so a 1-Might unit holding it dies before the hold scores.
• Vilemaw's Lair stops units there from moving to base, yours included.
• Forgotten Monument stops everyone scoring there until their third turn. Riot's Spiritforged FAQ spells out how far that goes: "no conquer triggers, no hold triggers, and no points from doing those things", although you can still take control of it.

Fifty-three of the 111 lists ran at least one of the six. Only 4 of the 24 Top 8 lists did: the two Kennen lists that added Forbidding Waste to Minefield and Zaun Warrens (5th at Barcelona, 6th at Singapore), and both Akali Top 8 lists - Gorica's Singapore win and HXN TEMPETE一些雪's 7th at Los Angeles - which ran Forgotten Monument and Sigil of the Storm with Void Gate. Rockfall Path, Frozen Fortress and Vilemaw's Lair, in 13, 12 and 9 lists, made no Top 8 at all.

Read that gap with care. Twenty-four lists is a small sample, and battlefields follow Legends. The Sivir and Poppy pilots who registered Forgotten Monument, Sigil of the Storm and Threshold of the Gray (four lists between them) were on Legends that put nobody into a Top 8 at these three events. It is a pattern in who finished well, not proof that these battlefields lose games.

What the Top 8 decks registered

The 24 Top 8 lists used 21 different battlefields, and they sort cleanly by Legend:

Every Kennen list ran Minefield and Zaun Warrens, every Wuju Bladesman list ran Emperor's Dais, and each of the Azir, Rengar, Ornn, Irelia and Akali entries registered one identical trio. The Irelia trio goes further than the Top 8: all four Irelia lists Riot published across the three events, Best-Ofs included, ran Abandoned Hall, Sunken Temple and Targon's Peak.

One discrepancy in Riot's own article: the Singapore write-up's introduction says that Top 8 held five Kennen, but its Top 8 decklists show four Kennen plus Fr0zen's Fiora in 8th. The table above follows the decklists.

The Kennen pair explains itself once you read the cards. Minefield puts the top two cards of your Main Deck into your trash when you conquer it, and Zaun Warrens discards one and draws one. Both fill the trash, the resource Riot's September ban note said Stacked Deck was feeding when it let Kennen churn through the deck "while simultaneously filling the trash for Rhasa the Sunderer and Last Rites." All eight Kennen lists Riot published at the three events ran both battlefields, including the single Los Angeles list registered after Stacked Deck was banned. That list's full before-and-after is in our RQ Los Angeles results.

Emperor's Dais is the most Top 8-heavy battlefield in the sample: eight lists, seven of them Top 8 finishes, every one a Rengar or Wuju Bladesman deck. The eighth is Prismaticism's own 11th place at Singapore, with the same three battlefields he took to the Barcelona Top 8 and the Los Angeles title.

Vendetta's battlefields took 31 slots

Vendetta was three weeks old at Barcelona and eight weeks old at Los Angeles, and its battlefields barely registered:

That is 9.3% of the slots for the newest set. Its best performer, Sandswept Tomb, is the last row of the table above at eight lists, and two of its ten - Mystic Vortex and Piltovan Forge - appear in no list. A new battlefield does not get a slot just for being new; it has to push out something like Seat of Power.

Radiance adds ten battlefields

Radiance's battlefields are RAD 157 to 166, and all ten are in Riot's card gallery as of 11 October, the day after preview season's last scheduled reveal. The gallery lists every one as an Uncommon, the rarity that fills three slots in every Radiance booster, so they can turn up in a Pre-Rift pool from 16 October.

Half of them work for both players whoever holds them. The other five say "you", and under Core Rule 190.6.d that means whoever controls the battlefield, exactly as with Seat of Power.

Three of the ten are worth a second look before your first Radiance build:

• Cosmic Vista is a point engine with a real condition. You channel two runes a turn from a 12-card Rune Deck, so without extra channel effects the deck is empty on your sixth Channel Phase at the earliest. Every rune you recycle for Power goes to the bottom of your Rune Deck and refills it. Ruined Monastery, also new in Radiance, lets you discard 1 to channel an extra rune when you conquer it.
• Hunters' Circle and Rakelstake count gear. Non-unit gear cannot normally sit at a battlefield without some special permission (Core Rule 152.2). Radiance's Deploy keyword (rule 830 from 16 October) prints that permission on the card: a Deploy gear can be played to any battlefield, and only to a battlefield. Our Radiance mechanics breakdown covers how Deploy plays. Rockfall Path's text names units only, so on its wording it does not stop a non-unit Deploy gear being played there.
• Packed Amphitheater is the Ultimate Rare, and also an Uncommon. The base card is RAD 164. The Showcase version, RAD 184, is the card Riot's Radiance Overview shows as "our first showcase Battlefield also being an Ultimate Rare", at roughly 0.025% of packs. Both print the same text, and the Tournament Rules require your three battlefields to have unique names, so the Uncommon does everything the chase version does in a deck.

No Regional Qualifier or Regional Championship has been played with any of these yet, so there is no Radiance version of the counts above. Riot's Regional Championship page says the European Regional Championship in Stuttgart, 6 to 8 November, will be played in Standard and include Radiance cards.

Picking your three

Our deckbuilding guide has the selection rules and Riot's three filter questions. The decklists add five practical points:

• Plan to play all three. Tournament Rule 404.2 says most Riftbound matches are best of three, and a battlefield used in a game someone won is removed for the rest of the match (Core Rule 486.5, renumbered 488.5 from 16 October). Barring a drawn game, a three-game match uses every battlefield you registered.
• Read every "you" as "whoever holds it". A conquer payoff rewards whoever is likelier to conquer that battlefield, and that may not be you. It is the second question in Riot's Deckbuilding Primer: which battlefields "would be disastrous for my strategy if my enemies were able to control them?"
• A copied trio is a copied plan. Minefield and Zaun Warrens serve a deck that uses its trash, and Ornn's Forge discounts gear for a gear deck. Lift the trio without the deck and you keep the costs without the payoff.
• Seat of Power extends a lead. In a duel it draws one card, and only for a player who already holds the other battlefield.
• Do not carry these numbers into Radiance unexamined. Every list here predates a set that adds ten battlefields and a gear keyword two of them reward.

Quick reference

• Source: 111 distinct decklists from Riot's Barcelona, Singapore and Los Angeles Top Decks articles (August and September 2026): every Top 8 list plus the Best-Of for each eligible Legend. 333 battlefield slots, 47 different battlefields.
• Most registered: Seat of Power 25, Forbidding Waste 23, Zaun Warrens 21, Sigil of the Storm 19, Star Spring 18.
• Most common in the 24 Top 8 lists: Seat of Power 9; Zaun Warrens, Minefield and Emperor's Dais 7 each.
• Never in a Top 8 despite 12 or more lists: Rockfall Path (13) and Frozen Fortress (12).
• Whose ability is it: a battlefield's "you" is its controller (Core Rule 190.6.d), whoever brought it.
• Seat of Power in a duel: one card at most, and only if you already control the other battlefield.
• Banned battlefields (Rules Hub, 18 September 2026): The Arena's Greatest, Aspirant's Climb, Dreaming Tree, Obelisk of Power, Reaver's Row.
• Radiance: ten new Uncommon battlefields, RAD 157 to 166, five of which work for both players. Packed Amphitheater also exists as the Showcase Ultimate Rare, RAD 184.