Effective: July 24, 2026
Standard
The following additions are being made to the Standard ban list:
Cards
- Stealthy Pursuer
Battlefields
- The Arena’s Greatest
- Aspirant’s Climb
2v2 Constructed
With today’s bans, we are introducing a 2v2 ban list. It is comprised of the entirety Standard ban list plus the following. Any future ban updates will explicitly note if they apply to both formats.
Legend
- Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman
The complete ban lists can always be found on the Riftbound Rules Hub.
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As we have discussed previously regarding our ban philosophy, there are three questions we ask ourselves when considering whether to ban a card:
- Is this card overrepresented in an unhealthy way?
- Are the problems with this card likely to get better or worse over time?
- Does this card promote unhealthy play patterns?
For today’s ban announcement, you can kind of categorize each of these bans as originating from a different one of these questions.
For Stealthy Pursuer, when we ask if this card’s problems will get worse over time, the answer has been a resounding yes. We shared our intent to ban this card early in Vendetta’ preview season as many in the community had already identified a potential infinite Unit combo involving it, Eye of the Herald, and Renata Glasc, Industrialist. This has the potential to create infinite Recruits as early as turn three with only small windows for interaction. Internal testing has shown that even though the combo is disruptable, it is consistent enough that it becomes a harsh check on the metagame, and would lead to very polarizing games where you just get to turn three and ask your opponent “Do you have it?”
For The Arena’s Greatest and Aspirant’s Climb, these battlefields have been very popular, but not necessarily to the extent that we would feel the need to act. However, they also have impacted the structure of competitive play in an unhealthy way, and we feel the game will be stronger without them. For many decks, using one of these point battlefields has become a de facto play in Game 2 or 3, once you know whether you are going first or second.
The Arena’s Greatest is particularly powerful when going first, and gives the first player an advantage that we don’t think it’s healthy to reinforce with such consistency.
For Aspirant’s Climb, adding the extra point has the additional negative impact of increasing round length and making it take longer to execute rounds in a tournament setting.
Removing these two battlefields will increase diversity of battlefields played and make player choices less deterministic on being first or second.
Lastly, we have Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman, who is only being banned in Constructed 2v2. While the Proving Grounds Master Yi has solidly proven himself as a 1v1 competitor, his Legend has been consistently overshadowing other options in 2v2 to the detriment of that format. Since the defensive bonus extends to both you and your ally, he is providing far more stats from the start of the game than are healthy. As we have been experimenting with 2v2 as a competitive format, we’ve already seen a huge overrepresentation of Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman among top teams and we think this ban is necessary for the health of the 2v2 constructed format.
