This past week has been quite significant for the Riftbound community. On Monday, Riot Games revealed that seven cards would be banned from competitive play, effective immediately, just two weeks ahead of the Lille Regional Qualifier.
The cards facing bans include Draven (Vanquisher), Called Shot, Scrapheap, Fight or Flight, The Dreaming Tree, Reaver’s Row, and Obelisk of Power. The removal of Fight or Flight, which allowed players to relocate a unit from the battlefield to its base, has notably affected Irelia players who depended on this card to protect Irelia (Fervent) from various dangers.
With the surprise ban of the ‘miracle’ archetype, which heavily utilized Called Shot, and the hit taken by Draven, it seems Irelia is poised to dominate the current meta until the release of Unleashed on May 8. The announcement quickly led to a spike in the price of Flash, a card enabling players to move up to two friendly units back to their base, as it is viewed as a straightforward substitute for Fight or Flight.
Scalpers wasted no time in capitalizing on this situation, purchasing as many copies of Flash as they could find. Although Flash has a printed rarity of common, it is only available in the Proving Grounds play set, which quickly sold out during the initial set, Origins. This limited availability makes Flash somewhat rare, as it cannot be found in booster packs.
On TCGPlayer, the price for a single Flash card surged to as high as $72 amidst frantic buying and price manipulation, with players typically wanting at least two copies for their decks.
However, shortly after the initial excitement, the official Riftbound account announced that Flash would be distributed to local game stores in April and that community members would be rewarded with copies of the card. Additionally, Riot indicated that they would be reprinting both Origins and Proving Grounds, which should alleviate some of the price concerns surrounding cards from this set.
As expected, this announcement caused Flash’s price to plummet, bringing it down to around $40 on TCGPlayer and approximately €14 on Cardmarket. While the card’s market may not have completely collapsed, players still have a need for copies in light of the upcoming regional qualifiers in Lille and Atlanta, meaning there’s no assurance whether local game stores will have them in stock in time.
It’s always satisfying to see scalpers faced with the consequences of their actions.
