Riftbound Deck Tech: Budget Kai'Sa - Daughter of the Void

Riftbound, the new League of Legends TCG, earned several nicknames during its troubled launch—one with delays, card shortages, printing issues, and demand far exceeding supply. One of these, very common in the community, is that the game is expensive, very expensive.

The numbers don't lie: the spikes in card prices in this game are extremely aggressive—Flash, a common exclusive to the Proving Grounds box, averaged $60 per copy when Annie became a more popular legend, and Kai’Sa - Survivor reached $150 after Christmas as early results with Spiritforged in China not only showed that its deck remained a relevant archetype in the new format but was also a staple for Draven lists, which has proven to be the new potential competitor in the second set Metagame.

Add other staples to the equation: Dazzling Aurora if you want to play Ramp, Thousand-Tailed Watcher for any list with Mind, and Showstopper for Seth are just a few examples of the game's high prices today, and it doesn't seem like a second wave—expected to be released between the end of December and the beginning of January—will solve all the accessibility issues the card game currently faces.

These high costs create a problem of collective perception. Building a competitive Riftbound deck today costs, on average, the same as building a Modern deck in Magic: The Gathering, and sometimes even more than building a Classic Constructed list in Flesh and Blood, except that this game has been out in the West for less than a quarter of a year, and all the controversies surrounding its disastrous first set and inability to meet demand generate uncertainty and low expectations about its future — Why, after all, would a player accustomed to the costs of card games invest $700 in a competitive Riftbound deck instead of trusting competitors who have a solid history and trajectory in the niche?

For this reason, today we present the decklist of Vitor Cavalcante, a Brazilian player who reached second place in a Skirmish using a budget variant of Kai'Sa, overcoming both players with suboptimal lists and competitors playing with complete decks—even winning two Kai'Sa mirror matches.

This isn't the exact decklist Vitor played due to one small detail: the player only had one copy of Darius - Trifarian and used other common units in its place. In a talk with him, the player mentioned that this was the card he missed the most in the tournament, and therefore, I optimized the list a bit by including two more copies of the Champion because, honestly, it's the best unit in this version.

If you're familiar with a Kai'Sa deck, you're probably already used to what this list offers: a game plan focused on conquering the battlefields and using removal spells to impede the opponent's advances in a constant back-and-forth rhythm of combat and interaction. For a Magic player, Kai'Sa is very similar to archetypes like Jund or Delver—archetypes that can easily switch positions during the game to win via efficient resource exchanges.

Since we already have an optimized Kai'Sa Deck Tech on the site, I'll focus on the crucial differences between this variant and the most common one in the format, and the main details we can learn from it, especially regarding how to play optimally without spending too much.

You can't play without this duo

Darius - Trifarian and Falling Star are the best cards in your deck. If you need to prioritize your budget on rares to play a Skirmish or Nexus Night, start with these—unless you're playing Riftpobre, you'll need them at some point to maintain your power level parity with the rest of the Standard format.

In theory, Vitor's list only used one Darius, and it's possible to play with fewer than three copies, but your strategy is significantly worse without him. We have ample opportunity to trigger his ability, and seven power attacking out of nowhere can turn a game in your favor if your opponent isn't thoroughly prepared, not to mention the number of possible double conquers we can perform with him if we have more units in the base and a Cleave or Smoke Screen.

Falling Star is one of the best removals in the game right now, and Kai'Sa is the deck that best utilizes this card by blending aggressive drops with the ability to bypass a Power cost using its Legend ability, allowing us to keep the tempo very positive on our side while delaying potentially very aggressive advances from the opponent.

The Champion Unit

Kai'Sa - Survivor is one of the most powerful cards in the game and should remain so during the next season, but $150 is a very high price tag even for a deck aiming to use only one copy of it as a champion unit — and I was particularly surprised by how much value Kai'Sa - Evolutionary yielded during the games I watched.

The blue version doesn't compare to Survivor in terms of cost efficiency, but dominating a single Battlefield with it and reusing a Falling Star from the trash can cause considerable damage to the opponent's plans and even ensure she remains there to secure another point in the following turn through Ganking, reusing another spell in the process.

Kai'Sa - Evolutionary also dodges many one-for-one removal spells in the mirror match, except for Falling Star and Icathian Rain. Therefore, the opponent is almost always forced to spend two resources against it to avoid dominating the match or at least suffers the concession of letting you generate value—even if it's by reusing a Stupefy—before managing to resolve it with a Showdown.

Falling Star with Extra Steps

Thousand-Tailed Watcher is another relatively expensive card, but besides that, it's difficult to find someone selling it, since several archetypes run it today. Vitor took advantage of a Riftpobre staple in its place with two copies of Singularity, whose effect can be summarized as a "Double Falling Star damage for double the costs".

Its function is, in essence, the same: to punish opponents who overextend themselves in the game and in costs where, normally, the opponent needs to extend themselves. It doesn't guarantee double conquer like Watcher does and certainly doesn't compare in function, but it's an effective answer against most matchups and can be combined with Smoke Screen or other smaller removals to broaden its scope in matches against go tall decks like Master Yi and Miss Fortune.

What didn't work

Both of this deck's losses in the Skirmish came from the same archetype with very different setups and players — Viktor. Once in the Swiss rounds and during the finals, proving that there is a relevant discrepancy when it comes to dealing with many smaller units with this version, perhaps due to the absence of Watcher and/or Icathian Rain.

One lesson I learned playing this match on Riftpobre is that Iron Ballista is too slow against Viktor, despite working relatively well in other matches where it reinforces our removal spells — Viktor demands a mix of consistent pressure with medium and large units and ways to exchange our spot removals for effects that deal with more than one unit at a time, and in that case, Icathian Rain would be the ideal choice, but perhaps Unchecked Power would work as a "budget" version.

Overall, Vitor Cavalcante's list serves as inspiration: in a Brazilian scene where we see many players demotivated by prices and/or stores resorting to holding Nexus Nights allowing proxies to please the clientele, a Budget list reaching the finals of a Skirmish — which isn't even that big of an event but is enough to make players play seriously — serves as an example of how creative we can be and how we can use our skills and learnings from each match and with our list to overcome financial barriers.

This may not be the best version of Kai'Sa. Perhaps a less experienced player or one in a more professional environment, like a Regional tournament, wouldn't achieve nearly the same results, but it serves as a starting point and example of how to create lists adapted to your reality and how playing better makes much more of a difference than paying more in card games.

Thank you for reading!