Outright ban or restricted list? The debate after Stacked Deck
September’s ban list takes effect on Friday 18, and on r/riftboundtcg the argument has already moved from what was banned to how banning should work. A thread by u/AznKicker asks why Riftbound has no choice restrictions: take Stacked Deck away from Kennen players and leave it to Draven, Diana and Zed. Meanwhile 17 of the subreddit’s 25 newest threads are about the bans, most of them hunting for three cards to replace that one spell.
The proposalBan the pair, not the card
The author says they have played trading card games for about ten years and came to Riftbound recently, with Zed. In other games — they name Gundam, Cardfight!! Vanguard and One Piece — a list does more than ban outright: a restriction stops a card being played alongside the combination that makes it unbearable, while every other deck keeps it.
Applied to September, the idea reads like this: Stacked Deck stays legal, just not next to Kennen, Heart of the Tempest and its Lightning Rush. Same for Ekko, Recurrent, which the author would tie to the Lux legend and its infinite loop. “Riot is trying to target the problematic decks, which is a good thing, but it is also affecting the other decks,” they write.
The repliesThe comments want the clean ban
The proposal does not survive the comment section. u/valoopy dismisses it in a line: too much fiddling and testing. u/IzziPurrito makes the practical case: a restriction is more confusing to run than simply saying “you can’t play this card anymore, period”, and if the card really is strong, another deck will eventually abuse it and the pairing will need banning all over again.
u/Fiveironfiveiron moves the problem from the card to the colour: purple has been very strong for almost four sets, Kennen was the last straw, and Stacked Deck does more than dig, because it fills the trash and switches on Ravenbloom Student and Abandoned Hall. Riot says the same: the official article calls the spell a low opportunity cost inclusion that hands out consistency, and an autoinclude in every Chaos list.
What leaves on Friday
Stacked Deck and Ekko, Recurrent exit Standard and 2v2 Constructed. They are two Origins cards, not two legends: anyone running them swaps cards, not archetypes.
What the thread wants
A choice restriction: the card stays legal, only not beside the legend that makes it too strong. That is how other card games do it, not Riftbound.
The waveSeventeen threads out of twenty-five
The hardest number is not inside any thread, it is the pace of the subreddit: of the 25 most recent posts, all filed within a little over six hours, 17 deal with the ban list. Most ask the same question legend by legend: what goes in the Stacked Deck slots in Diana (u/Complete-Ad-3171), in Mel (u/Top_Function7894), in Draven (u/TristoWarhammer and u/hibi_kura), in Zed miracle (u/Domine-Serpes), even in Kennen itself (u/Sora_080, u/ajyn17).
u/CollosusSmashVarian has posted an analysis listing fourteen purple legends caught in the blast — Jinx, Yasuo, Teemo, Miss Fortune, Annie, Ezreal, Sivir, Pyke, Vex and Kha’Zix among them — to argue the ban lands on decks that were never the problem. One thread says the move kills the game, another claims the opposite, that Kennen got better without Stacked Deck. And one post explains the irritation better than any analysis: u/superkornz_ describes buying three copies shortly before the announcement, with a Nexus Night on Saturday.
Why it matters here. Stacked Deck is an Origins card, cheap and present in almost every Chaos deck: far more Italian players own it than have ever seen a Regional Qualifier in person. From Friday the Nexus Nights and store tournaments run without it, so this weekend’s lists need rebuilding beforehand. And the ban-versus-restriction debate decides whether the next list hits a whole colour or only the deck dominating it.
| Card | Code | Riot’s reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Stacked Deck | OGN-183/298 | Consistency at almost no cost, synergy with Ravenbloom Student and Abandoned Hall, compounded by the Kennen legend |
| Ekko, Recurrent | OGN-110/298 | Enables the Lux combo deck’s infinite loops, with few windows of interaction |
The short version
- From September 18, Stacked Deck and Ekko, Recurrent are out of Standard and 2v2 Constructed.
- One thread asks for choice restrictions instead of outright bans; the comments mostly answer that they would be too messy.
- Seventeen of the twenty-five newest threads are looking for a Stacked Deck replacement, from Diana to Mel to Draven.
Sources: the r/riftboundtcg thread and the official ban list article. Images: Riot Games.
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