September Ban List Updates (Effective September 18, 2026)

Effective: September 18, 2026

Two cards are being added to the Standard and 2v2 Constructed ban list:

• Ekko, Recurrent
• Stacked Deck

With the Shenyang Regional Open completed and the Los Angeles Regional Qualifier on the horizon, we wanted to release these bans quickly to let people adjust as we head into the Regional Championships. With this in mind, we’re publishing this article first in English and will translate it for other languages as soon as possible.

As we’ve previously discussed, there are three questions we ask when considering whether to ban a card:

1. Is this card overrepresented in an unhealthy way?
2. Are the problems with this card likely to get better or worse over time?
3. Does this card promote unhealthy play patterns?

Ekko, Recurrent

Since the emergence of the Lux combo deck in Unleashed, we’ve been monitoring its tournament representation and performance. Although the play rate has remained low, we believe this style of infinite promotes an unhealthy play pattern due to its limited windows of interaction and solitaire-esque gameplay required to execute the combo. The design of Ekko is unique in that it both effectively grants an extra turn and also recycles itself, and in retrospect the benefits of a risky exciting effect that's resonant to Ekko's identity didn't outweigh the dangers of the infinites he enabled. Considering how the strategy has developed and that banning it shouldn’t affect most other Mind decks, we’ve decided to act now. A match of Riftbound should be a fun and interactive experience for both players, and this change should help ensure that.

Stacked Deck

Stacked Deck is a low opportunity cost inclusion in a decklist that provides general consistency as well as cheap synergy when combined with cards like Ravenbloom Student or Battlefields like Abandoned Hall. While we acknowledge that the card is fun to play and can slot into any Chaos strategy seamlessly, the consistency it provides is higher than we would like and has shown a compounding issue with the release of the Kennen legend.  When combined with Lightning Rush, this card lets Kennen churn through the deck a little too efficiently, finding key cards like Nocturne while simultaneously filling the trash for Rhasa the Sunderer and Last Rites.

We think Kennen will feel the loss of Stacked Deck acutely, as his current strategy is built around maximizing card selection and having less access to it will slow down the entire engine. Without Stacked Deck as an autoinclude in most Chaos decklists, we’re excited to see the adaptation in deckbuilding that players make.

We’ve been carefully monitoring the win rates of decks in our major tournaments as well as general community sentiment around the current metagame. For everyone that’s talked to us and shared opinions, we hear you, and genuinely appreciate your passion. The Riftbound community is truly great, and we’re committed to working with players to make the best decisions we can for the health of the game.

We want to avoid having a definitive best deck in the format. Kennen’s play rate and win rate warrant a targeted ban that doesn’t obliterate the deck and strategy, but brings it more in line with other top decks. We think the Stacked Deck ban will leave the core strategy intact but make it less consistent and less powerful overall.  We recognize this will have knock-on effects on the rest of the metagame, but we’re confident that it will put us into the best position for the future of the game as we head into the Los Angeles Regional Qualifier and the Chengdu Major.