Runeterra Royale Week Recap - Standard Format

Runeterra Royale community tournaments are growing exponentially. With that, the idea of bringing competitive players closer to our tournaments, and recapping Royale tournaments, week by week, came to be. We'll bring all the data, and explain how each day in Royale's week went, for you. Maybe you'll end up hyping yourself up to play in one of them if you see what happens on them?

Remember, Runeterra Royale happens from Monday to Friday, has no entry free or rank restriction. You can access the tournament tab through this link.

On Fridays, Cards Realm holds an Eternal format tournament, and, as this patch's competitive focus is the Standard format, for now, we won't discuss Friday tournaments.

- The winner on Monday was Lucidmeeere, with a quite interesting lineup with 2 Control decks which are not that popular: Karma Sett with Shadow Isles, Azir Nasus, and Fizz with Siren Song.

Remember: the week we're recapping preceded the first Runeterra Open of the new set, and, as a result, everyone was testing, or training, for this tournament. Early in the week, Control decks, like Sett Karma, were still being tested as a possible answer to the meta filled with Siren Song archetypes. The three decks used by Lucidmeeere were:

These were the 5 most popular lists on Monday:

Though Fizz with Siren Song was the most played list that day, Karma Sett had a much better win rate, reaching 62,9%. The deck that did the worst out of the 5 most popular decks was Scouts, with just 41,2% win rate, which is quite below average.

These were the most used cards on Monday:

As it was to be expected, the 5 most used cards are part of Siren Song's archetype. This is a pattern that will repeat itself throughout the week, but, even then, it is still interesting to keep up with the decisions regarding number of copies of each card, something that changes with time and with the players getting used to the list they're playing.

If you thought there were already too many Siren Song decks on Monday, on Tuesday that record was broken. On that day, we already knew Karma Sett was possibly the best answer to Siren Song lists, but players opted to bring the most broken deck at that time: Fizz Targon. FNX bywhitte won the tournament on Tuesday, bringing a lineup which mixed aggression and control, and also bringing 3 decks which, on paper, performed well against Siren Song lists.

These were the 5 most used lists on Tuesday:

This day was marked by the incredible dominance of Song archetypes, which was to be expected. But, unlike other days, players opted not to bring a greater variety of decks which bring Siren Song, and focused on just bringing Fizz Targon, as a representative of the archetype. At the end of the day, this list reaffirmed itself as one of the best in the meta, but, even then, Karma Sett still performed better, with 61,4% win rate. The list that went into the Top 5 most popular list which performed the worst was Jhin Gnar, a deck which is hard to pilot, and still needed to find footing in the meta.

The most used cards that day were:

Finally, we had the arrival of the strongest 1 cost card in the game to the Top 5: Divine Clerk. That day, players also focused a lot more on bringing Xolaani as their deck's main win condition, bringing her to 5th place.

On Wednesday, the big winner was me! I was training for the Open, and on that day I brought the lineup which would then later bring me 7 wins in the open rounds on the weekend of the big tournament. Unfortunately, I didn't classify for Day 2, but I managed to have good games, and win some coins while I tested the lineup. I brought Fizz Targon, Karma Sett with Targon, and Annie Jhin.

These were the 5 most popular lists on Wednesday:

Maybe on that day players were already a bit fed up, or even too tired of playing and seeing the same Fizz Targon lists, and, for that reason, they didn't bring it all that much. But, even then, that archetype was still the most played one, as much as the players' greatest focus was bringing decks that won against that archetype. The lineups, in general, focused on bringing at least one Fizz deck, with two lists that won against Siren Song in general, which resulted in a meta which was very similar to what we saw on the Open weekend. Karma Sett carried on performing incredibly well, with 65% win rate, and the deck that performed the worst out of the Top 5 was Samira Jinx, which later on Open weekend proved itself to be a very consistent list in aggressive lineups.

The most used cards on Wednesday were:

That day was the most different one regarding most played cards, because we saw for the first time cards which are not part of the Siren Song archetype making it to the Top 5. Mystic Shot was the second most popular card in the tournament, sealing the Piltover&Zaun region as the most popular region to answer the current meta, a practice that has been repeating itself throughout many metas.

On Thursday, the big winner was LTS HDR topasio, who brought some surprises in his lineup. This player decided to bring faster decks, with Demacia as the main answer against the Targon-filled meta. Some days later, we found out that this strategy really would be one of the best to guarantee a spot in the Runeterra Open Top Cut. Demacia is a great region to play aggressively and just hitting the enemy Nexus, without worrying too much about Siren Song. The three decks he used were:

These were the Top 5 most used lists on Thursday:

It was the only day of the week that Fizz Targon wasn't the most popular deck. On that day, players opted to explore ways of stopping the Siren Song archetype more than anything. But, Fizz's deck win rate remained averaging 55% the whole week; what really surprised everyone was the steep fall in win rates in Karma lists, which is already an archetype which suffers against Demacia. The deck that performed best this time was Scout, with a 68,5% win rate, and the worst deck out of the Top 5 was Jhin Gnar, once more, which possibly sealed off the fate of this list in players' lineups.

The most used cards that day were:

Even though Karma is first in the most used decks list, this champion's decks were very well distributed between Piltover&Zaun and Targon pairs, and that is why the cards from those decks don't appear in the list of most used cards. This way, once again we have Siren Song leading the podium. The most surprising card on the podium was Marai Warden, which showed up a lot in decks which use Demacia and Bilgewater. This card has always been the strongest unit in Bilgewater, and was very popular in the Open tournament too.

On the tournaments from July 10th to 14th, we had a very strong dominance of Fizz Targon decks, which was to be expected. But many players opted to play reactively against the meta, and were successful, because a great portion of them ended up becoming the winners that day.

This week's ranking was:

1st Place - total - 30 points total - 3.400 coins total.

2nd Place - Bruno - 21 points total - 2.200 coins total.

3rd Place - PretaWitch - 21 points total - 2.000 coins total.

4th Place - Vini63 - 18 points total - 1.600 coins total.

Runeterra Royale Tournaments award in-game coins as prizes:

1st Place - 1.600 coins

2nd Place - 1.200 coins

3rd Place - 1.000* coins

4th Place - 800 coins

If you've read this far, now you've seen the full recap of the Cards Realm's Legends of Runeterra Tournament Week.

So? Do you want to play competitively? If you're Brazilian, you can sign up and see all tournaments here.

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