Our Aussie players are starting to make their impact on the global Riftbound stage, with several making the Day 2 cut at 2026’s first Regional Qualifier in Bologna, Italy last weekend.
While the event was eventually taken out by former Legends of Runeterra world champion Mateusz “Alanzq” Jasiński on his signature Ezreal deck, two Australians made big pushes towards top eight, as well as fighting for the prestigious metal cards on offer for the best placements on each legend.
Ross “LovelySnOw” Jones, representing Team Stacked Deck, finished with a 9-4 record on Irelia after going 5-1 in the warmup tournament on the Friday. He slid into Day 2 with a 6-2 record.
It was a long trip for the South Australian, but he was confident with his preparation.
“We felt we had prepared well enough for Spiritforged in online testing prior to release and were excited to have the opportunity to represent the team overseas,” he told Snowball Esports.
Irelia was a favourite heading into the regional, even if it lacked a major result in the 512-player Chinese opens across January and February. 129 of the more than 1700 players entered with the Blade Dancer, the third-most popular legend.
“Irelia has a lot of nuance to [her] gameplay with quite a lot of board states requiring a lot of energy [and] might calculations in order to win,” Jones explained, “then making the hard decision to try and hold BFs or come back to base.
“It’s a fine balancing act that I enjoy as the reward is high when you’re able to consistently pull this off across different matchups.”
The strategy varied from other Australian Luca “LucaWh”, who has found success in his first competitive TCG at a local level. Instead of going for a meta deck in Draven or Kai’Sa though, he opted for Ahri.
The Nine-Tailed Fox, who was released as part of the game’s first set, was a comfort option for Luca. “I played her all Set 1 and I was familiar with her,” he said.
“Overall Ahri is pretty honest. I enjoy her drawing power and more combat-focused spells and build. Her biggest strength is the ability to have access to different counterspells and the strongest late game unit in the game [Thousand-Tailed Watcher].”
Luca also overcame the six-win barrier to make it to Day 2, finishing with a similar 9-4 record just outside the top 100. He fell narrowly short of getting the metal card for best-of Ahri.
Both Jones and Luca remarked on the exponential increase in skill as the rounds ticked on.
“I felt quite relaxed when I started the day at 3-0,” Jones said. “However as soon as I lost my first match and was at 3-1, I really started to feel the pressure because I realised from there on it wasn’t going to get any easier to make Day 2.
“From round 4, the player level was basically asking you to consistently win BO3s against the top 3 players in your local scene without losing, which is a tall ask when so many variables are involved.”
“The difficult part was… I wasn’t ready to play for 11-12 hours straight with no breaks,” Luca added. “The more you advance, the more you need to stay focused since you get stronger opponents.”
All 28 released legends were represented, which led to some variance in the matchups.
Jones ran into a lot of the meta favourites: Draven, Fiora, Irelia, Kai’sa. But there was one exception.
“Probably the best kept secret in Europe was the 3x Vex main board tech with the miracle engine,” Jones remarked. This was the deck Jasiński piloted to his win after going top 8 on Kai’Sa in Houston late in 2025.
“That was the most surprising deck of the tournament, and I can easily see why it performed the way it did.”
Luca, on the other hand, found quite a few players who had dodged the S-tier legends.
“I was expecting to find mainly Irelia, Sivir, Kai’Sa and Draven, but after talking to other players, [some] got to day 2 without ever matching against a Draven or an Irelia.”
The League of Legends TCG released to much fanfare in October 2025 — delayed to November in Australia — with a large competitive circuit announced for its first full year.
This includes two Regional Qualifiers in the broader APAC region with Sydney hosting Riftbound’s best in May before jumping over to Singapore in September.
These follow the region’s first big unofficial event at The Game Expo in Melbourne on 15 March, with a $2,500 prize pool on offer. A further $10,000 will be on offer in Auckland over Easter weekend, with more than 300 players registered.
Both Jones and Luca will be in attendance at Sydney, hoping to improve on their first international results. However that won’t be the end of the line for them.
“I hope to represent Team Stacked Deck and Adelaide at as many events as possible this year,” Jones said, listing Atlanta in April and Singapore as his other major targets.
“I am considering attending Utrecht [in June] for Set 3 [Unleashed],” Luca mentioned. “Being towards the end of the set, it would give me the most time to… understand how Ahri can win against more meta picks.”