Hello everyone! This article is going to be a bit of everything. Touching on the latest happenings at Mastering Runeterra, my own thoughts and experiences about the game and maybe a story about Majiin losing a rock, paper, scissors contest against an Elvis impersonator while we were in Vegas…..maybe.
State of Mastering Runeterra
It’s been a real whirlwind here behind the scenes. Before we jump into all the recent changes, I wanted to thank all of you that support us by subscribing to the website or Patreon, participate in our monthly tournaments and read, watch or listen to our content. We couldn’t have made it this far without you, we are still just getting by but every little bit of support lets us do a little bit more. Know that we are constantly trying to bring more value and entertainment to the Runeterra community and have more great stuff in store for you.
Mastering Runeterra will now release the new cards from each set and mini set alongside Mobalyics and Dak.gg, so you can see the new cards here as soon as they are released by Riot. Thank you again to Riot for trusting us with this privilege and allowing us to share the excitement of new patches and cards with our community!
Riot Worlds Qualifier Coverage
Mastering Runeterra was chosen to put on the Worlds Qualifier Coverage in large part to the work that we did developing our own Mastering Runeterra Open Series. We only had two weeks to put on coverage for all three regions. Working with new tools, new crew members and a new workflow was no small challenge. The team behind the scenes both on our side and on Riots really did amazing work being up early and staying up late to make sure we put on a show worthy of the community. Considering all the possible things that could have gone wrong at some point I was very happy with the cast we delivered and so proud of all of the community members that came together to make it a reality. I sincerely hope that we get to do more of these events, we haven’t yet had a debrief but I think Riot was happy with it.
I just went back and watched the stream again and I’m even more proud of it, I think the cast was very close to any Riot has done in the past and we did it with a completely community led effort. Between our casting and the efforts of the Runeterra Report on Twitter and others in the community it really showcases what tenacious hard working members of the community can do to help elevate the game we all love so much.
MTGStorm.com
We have spread our brand into another card game, Magic the Gathering with our own website MTGStorm.com We have premium content, deck guides, tier lists and so much more. Again we are just getting started and already have hundreds of thousands of views in the very first month of launch. Looking forward to growing this website and community for all of our fellow MTG enthusiasts and at sometime in the future we will expand into more card games that we love.
State of Legends of Runeterra
We have entered a whole new tournament scene and new world when it comes to LoR. I honestly think the team has been doing a great job trying to more or less salvage a somewhat desperate situation a year ago. We really were in the Shuriman desert for a long time in more than one way. To think that two years after launch we had significantly less features than in the previous time is wild. We went from having multiple labs, a limited format, cross shard play and coverage to having ladder and Path as the only ways to play or enjoy the game. Looking back things might have been even worse than I had ever thought or maybe they weren't. I can say as a player I am engaging with the game and enjoying it a lot more now than I ever have.
Speaking of playing the game. I ironically got into card game content creation as a way to be able to do the thing I loved aka play the game. However after starting the website I have been so busy that I hardly had time to play for certain periods. I was going to start streaming again and decided not to simply because the little time that I did have to play the game I wanted to be enjoyable and for me. This has been great for my mental health and relationship for the game. I play more on a fun competitive axis now, for instance I brought Targon Seraphine Bar to the open rounds of the Worlds Qualifier and had a blast playing it. Turning your hobbies into work means you just work all the time, which I don’t recommend. I almost stopped playing after I was 7-0 and punted round 8, but I finished out my series and made the top 64 at 9-2. With most 9-2's making the top cut this time around the match making update was a huge bonus. It felt almost impossible to 9-0 or 9-1 with good tie breakers. But having two byes and having to go 7-2 is much more achievable for any player and I am really looking forward to the Eternal Opens coming next month!
Leading up to the Worlds Qualifier I had a lot of fun playing best of three for trophies trying to get to my two prime glories. Being able to play best of three on demand for stakes is something I have wanted since I first started playing LoR and I am so happy to have it. I will say however, playing some of the “fun” or non qualifier formats simply because I “had to” felt like work. I was playing the game when I didn't want to simply get something I did want and that felt really really bad. Being essentially forced to play the game or a type of the game that you don’t want to is never good. This is why MTG has made their qualifiers the same format as their larger qualifier tournaments so that all of that knowledge and time spent playing the game doesn’t go to waste.
I think it’s great that Riot is trying out new formats, I am over the moon to have two ladders coming and two formats to play. I sincerely hope that they keep both ladders heading into the next season so that everyone that loves eternal can continue playing with the decks and champions that make them enjoy the game. However, finding a way to experiment with new formats outside of the competitive landscape and then incorporating them into the competitive realm would be my ideal solution. Also so far none of them has really “hit right”. None of these new formats with extra champs or regions has been particularly exciting for me atleast. I would love to see a speed format where players had a lot less time to make each action and force players to think quickly, something akin to speed chess. Not only would this be challenging but I would bet that it would be exciting to watch as everyone frantically tries to find the correct lines and lots of hilarious blunders get made.
There is still fine tuning to be done with the system. We need new clocks, the points distribution could be reworked, MMR needs to be fixed on ladder and removed from tournaments. But these are all very fixable issues that I know the team will smooth out later in the year and as we move into the next to build on this one. One random note on things I’d like to see changed while we are on the topic. With balance patches and rotation I’d really like to see Riot release more cards. With so many of them never seeing the light of constructed play I would like to see the card pool expanding at a much more rapid rate so that there are more options for deck building and we aren’t always using the same staple cards in every deck of every region. I’d also like to see the design space continue to open up. Riot has shown that at times they can really embrace the digital design space to bring us never before seen mechanics and keywords. I assume a lot of this has to do with coding issues but some of my favourite cards are the ones that let you do things you can’t in paper card games.
There are so many things to look forward to, we have a competitive limited format on the horizon. The World Championships are shaping up to be an absolute banger as truly the best of the best will be fighting for hopefully a significant prize pool at the end of the year. My hope is that with a closer working relationship with Riot we may even be able to bring you new types of tournaments or revive old favourites.
Once again thank you for reading and being a part of this stellar community that we all get to enjoy and I look forward to attacking you with Overwhelming 30/30 kitty cats!