What is gear in Riftbound?

Gear is one of the three kinds of card in the main deck of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game, next to units and spells. A gear is a thing rather than a character, such as a weapon, a shrine, a machine or an item from the video game like Zhonya's Hourglass. Once you play a gear, it stays on the board and keeps working turn after turn until something removes it.

The Core Rules, which Riot publishes on its Rules Hub, count units and gear as permanents, the cards that stay on the board after they are played, while a spell does its work once and goes to the trash. Unlike a unit, a gear has no Might, cannot be dealt damage and does not fight in combat. Its job is to help the units that take the battlefields.

How do you play a gear?

You play a gear from your hand during your own Main Phase, while no showdown or combat is going on and nothing waits on the Chain, and you pay its Energy cost, and its Power cost if it has one, with your runes. The gear goes to your base, and rule 149 of the Core Rules says it enters play ready. A unit enters exhausted and usually waits a turn, but a gear can use an ability that exhausts it in the same turn you play it.

A few gear change these rules on the card itself. Iron Ballista enters exhausted, so its ability waits for your next turn. Sumpworks Map has Reaction, so you can play it at almost any moment, even on your opponent's turn. Zhonya's Hourglass has Hidden: you can hide it facedown at a battlefield you control for one Power of any domain, and from the following turn on you can play it from there as a Reaction without paying its cost.

What does a gear do once it is on the board?

Gear works in two ways, and some gear does both. Many gear have an ability you pay for, most often by exhausting the gear, so it works once a turn and readies again in your Awaken Phase. Unless such an ability has Action or Reaction, you use it in your own Main Phase outside a showdown, as rule 151.2 says. The other gear work by themselves, whenever the moment named in their text comes.

• Iron Ballista, a Fury gear from Origins, exhausts to deal 2 to a unit at a battlefield.
• Seal of Rage costs no Energy and one Fury Power, and it exhausts to add one Fury Power. Its ability has Reaction, so you can use it even on your opponent's turn.
• Mask of Foresight, a Calm gear, gives a friendly unit +1 Might for the turn whenever that unit attacks or defends alone.

Some gear can decide a game. Gutter Palace from Unleashed wins you the game at the start of your Beginning Phase if you have exactly four cards in hand and exactly four units at battlefields. Dazzling Aurora, a Body gear from Origins, plays the first unit from the top of your Main Deck at the end of each of your turns without paying its cost. Bottled Constellation from Vendetta costs 10 Energy and two Mind Power, and at the start of your Main Phase it lets you kill three of your other units or gear to score a point.

What is Equipment?

Equipment is gear with the Equipment tag, made to be attached to one of your units. An Equipment card has a Might bonus in its lower right corner and a second text box, and both start to work only once the gear is attached. Usually you first play the Equipment to your base like any other gear, then pay its Equip cost in your Main Phase to attach it. Doran's Blade costs 2 Energy to play and one Body Power to equip, and it gives the unit +2 Might.

Origins had no Equipment among its 30 gear cards. Spiritforged, the second main set, brought Equipment into the game, and 31 of its 42 gear cards are Equipment.

Can a gear go to a battlefield?

Not by itself. Rule 149 of the Core Rules says gear is played only to your base unless an effect says otherwise, and an unattached gear that ends up at a battlefield is recalled to its controller's base in the next cleanup, unless it is a unit or has Deploy. A gear that is not a unit never controls a battlefield either, because control of a battlefield comes from units alone (rule 190.4). Only a card or a keyword can bring a gear there.

• Attached Equipment goes wherever its unit goes, battlefields included.
• Hidden gear is played at the battlefield where it was hidden, and the next cleanup sends it back to your base, as rule 459.1 says.
• Deploy is a keyword of gear in Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026. A gear with Deploy is played only to a battlefield, it stays there because Deploy keeps it from being recalled, and it is killed when an opponent holds that battlefield. Banner of Conquest gives your units at its battlefield Assault.
• Lady of Clockwork, the Legend of Orianna in Radiance, lets you pay 1 Energy at the start of your Main Phase to make one of your gear a unit gear, with Might equal to its Energy cost. A unit gear moves and fights like a unit. The Ball, the signature gear of Orianna, has Ganking, so as a unit it can move from battlefield to battlefield.

How do you get rid of a gear?

Usually you kill it with a card that names gear. Rule 148 says gear can be killed, and an attached Equipment can be chosen like any other gear. A spell that deals damage cannot touch a gear, because gear cannot be dealt damage.

• Detonate kills a gear for 1 Energy and one Fury Power, but the gear's controller draws 2 cards.
• Thermo Beam kills every gear on the board, your own included, and its Action lets you play it during a showdown.
• Disarming Rake, a Calm unit from Spiritforged, may kill a gear when you play it.

Some gear is made to leave the board. Petricite Monument has Temporary, so it gives all your units Deflect until it is killed at the start of your next Beginning Phase. Treasure Trove draws you a card and channels you a rune when it leaves the board, and you can kill it yourself for one Chaos Power and an exhaust. The Gold gear token, which many cards make, is killed to add one Power of any domain.

How much gear does a deck play?

A deck plays as much gear as its plan needs. Gear follows the same deck rules as units and spells: up to three copies of each name, in the domains of your Legend. There is no minimum, and the ready-made decks from Riot show the range. The Spiritforged Champion Deck: Fiora runs ten Equipment to make its units bigger, the Spiritforged Champion Deck: Rumble runs two gear, and the four Proving Grounds decks run none at all.

Signature gear belongs to one champion, and only a deck whose Legend carries that champion's name may play it. Spinning Axe is a signature gear of Draven, Hextech Gauntlets one of Vi and Demacian Standard, a card of Radiance with its release on 23 October 2026, one of Jarvan IV.

A piece of advice for a first deck: a gear takes the place of a unit or a spell, so pick gear that pays you back every turn and helps what the deck already does. Because every gear takes such a place, how many units, spells and gear a deck should run decides how much gear fits.

Every gear card is on the gear page, the newest set first, and every deck among the shared decks shows how much gear it plays.