Team Trios - A Perfect Format for Riftbound
I think one of the smartest directions for Riftbound competitive play would be to introduce the Team Trio format.
This is a constructed format in which a team of three players must each play cards unique to their own decks. This forces a single team to represent all six of the playable domains, creating an incredibly healthy, interesting and diverse deckbuilding ecosystem. Each team plays three separate 1vs1 matches where each win by your individual teammates accumulates points.
As a quick example a team could register as Vex, Rengar and Viktor.
I believe right now the Chaos domain is widely considered the strongest of them all and in normal constructed environments it's not uncommon them dominant the top tables. But in team trios, technically every top table always has every domain choice.
Instead of every player against "What's the best Chaos deck?", teams of players are forced to ask:
- Which of us gets to play Chaos?
- What are the strongest non-Chaos combinations?
- How do we distribute enough power across our lineup?
I think the result is an incredibly fun deckbuilding challenge where diversity essentially becomes mandatory rather than optional.
I played a tournament like this for Lorcana during it's second set and it was one of the most fun experiences I've ever had in a constructed TCG format. Because both these games utilize six different colours it works out perfectly.
However, Lorcana didn't utilize Legends, so in that game there was 15 combinations of possible teams. However in this game, with the addition of Legends, there are indeed still 15 combinations of Domain choices for your teams, but many Legend choices within each of those lineups.
I am aware Fury/Calm, Body/Mind and Order/Chaos don't exist yet, but they will eventually and there are still 8/15 combinations possible.
For example: Vex, Rengar, Viktor is the same as Irelia, Volibear, Leblanc and so there is way more diversity in what you could see for a team.
I'm going to try to see if I can get my LGSs to fire events like these in the near future because it's a super fun experience.