Everything about Competitive tourneys in LoR and how to play them

Legends of Runeterra's competitive scene has always been very engaged and active. Ever since the game's early days, back in 2020, the community has asked for a chance to prove themselves champions and conquer prizes. After a period composed mainly of community initiatives regarding tournaments and championships, Riot heard players' demands and set up the Seasonal Tournament, which happens at the end of every season.

But this tourney isn't the only Legends of Runeterra Riot Official tourney — and regarding grassroots tourneys, we still have plenty of tourneys happening every day, or every week, including tourneys promoted by Cards Realm itself!

In this article, I will list the main existing Legends of Runeterra competitive tourneys and all the details about how to play them, their prizes and their schedule!

As I mentioned before, the Legends of Runeterra community is very competitive and loves battling in tournaments. In the lack of more tourneys made by private organizations, big organizations and the like, the community took it upon itself the responsibility of organizing competitions.

Most of these tourneys are made through the platform Battlefy, which is surprisingly easy to navigate. For the international community, the best way to check the tourneys happening currently is to check the Legends of Runeterra tag in Battlefy or, check out Santupea's Twitter profile. He is an active community member and fan, and posts daily tournaments available for all regions. He also sets up a very easy to follow schedule of all LoR tourneys happening across the world through this platform. But pay attention to the region tag of the tourneys listed, because you might not be allowed to participate in some specific tourneys due to the region they are in, so always check the rule section in the tourney's main pages to check if you can participate.

Here at CardsRealm we also have tourneys for the Brazilian community every Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, in many formats! Check out the tournament tab for more information!.

The Seasonal Tournament, as the name already tells us, happens at the end of every LoR season, so around two to two months. The event has dollar prizes, beginning at around $150 and the big winner getting $10k. It lasts a whole weekend, and is divided by two phases.

To classify for those two phases, players need to reach a position among the Top 700 ranked in the ranked ladder or they need to be the first 324 to complete the Last Chance Gauntlet , an event that happens a week before the tournament.

Players can accumulate Prime Glories throughout the season through the weekly gauntlets that happen every weekend, which are available in the "Gauntlet" tab in the game, so that they need only to play three matches instead of the seven required to complete the Last Chance Gauntlet, this way lowering their run time. As the Last Chance Gauntlet is almost like a race, as only the first 324 get a spot, these 4 glories acquired throughout the season are very important.

After classifying to play in the tournament, we have the two phases:

- Nine Swiss rounds that happen on Saturday, in which the top scores (9-0, 8-1 or 7-2* usually) guarantee the 32 spots for the next phase.

- Single elimination on Sunday, in which the Top 32 battles to get the so desired first place prize.

*The 7-2 score is affected by a tiebreaker criteria based on the ranked ladder points, usually being necessary to be in the top 20 players in the ranked ladder to guarantee advantage.

The Seasonal Tournament is the most frequent official tourney, which makes it also the most watched by the fans. There have been a lot of different editions and winners, ever since it began taking place, back in the end of 2020. You can check out an amazing summary of all the editions we've had of this tourney here.

The Legends of Runeterra World Championship is the most awaited annual event for the competitive scene. Players of all servers are dying to get a spot to participate in this very sought-after tournament and the competition is extremely harsh, as players across the world participate in this event.

This tourney first classifiers is through a point system accounted for during the multiple seasons of the year in the following way: points acquired through victories in the Swiss rounds or the Top 32 phases in the seasonal tournaments, points acquired by being the top ranked players in the ranked ladder in those seasons or by being one of the Top 4 finalists in each seasonal tournament. As these points are acquired throughout the year, anyone who wants to get a spot in the World Championship needs to keep an eye open to know which ranked seasons will be taken into account and also needs to check out the official standings through the game's main page (such as this one.)

That means, if you go well in the ranked ladder, the seasonal tourney phases or even manage to get one of their Top 4 spots, you guarantee a spot for the first phase of the Legends of Runeterra Worlds Championship, which are the Regional Classifiers.

Regional Classifiers are set in a double elimination format, in which the 64 players classified from each region through the criteria above battle for spots in the next phase. It's 3 Regional Classifiers across the world, one for each region. The number of spots to the next phase varies from region to region. The 2022 Worlds Championship had 6 spots for the American Server, and 5 for the European and APAC servers.

After this phase gets its 16 classified players, the next phase of the tournament starts, which is the Group Phase. Players are randomly selected into 4 groups of 4 and play in a round-robin format. The top 2 players which get the best win scores go through the next phase.

The next and final phase is composed of the Top 8 players competing in a single elimination format, just like the seasonal tournament. After 4 rounds, a world champion comes out victorious and takes home the first place big prize!

Speaking of prizes, the World Championship has a considerably larger prize than the seasonal tournament, combining a $200k total prize. Check it out:

These were the main competitive formats that we have today for Legends of Runeterra! I personally love to compete in best of 3 formats, with one ban, in which I feel the game becomes a true competitive experience. I hope you were able to understand a bit about the competitive tourneys we have and have become inspired to begin competing!

For more information about tournament formats (swiss, double elim, single elim, etc), we here at Cards Realm have also written up a guide on types of formats, which you can check out here.

Finally, I want to remind you all that we are currently going through the Legends of Runeterra World Championship! At the time this article was written, we are waiting for the Group Phase to start, which will happen on December 8th and 9th, the final phase happening December 10th.

I hope to see you all rooting for your favorite players in the official broadcast channels of the Legends of Runeterra Championship (for more information, follow the news on the main page). I will be there, keeping up with everything!

GGs!