What is a Legend in Riftbound?

Every deck in Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game is built around one card, its Legend. The Legend is the first card you choose when you build a deck, and it is already in play before the first turn. Everything else in the deck follows from it: which champion you play, which domains your cards come from and which signature cards you may use.

What does a Legend do during a game?

A Legend starts the game in play, in the Legend Zone, and it stays there until the game is over. It never moves to a battlefield, it never fights and your opponent cannot attack it. The Core Rules let nothing remove your Legend from the Legend Zone, which means its ability is on from your first turn to your last.

Many Legends have an ability that you use by exhausting the Legend, so they act once a turn and are readied again at the start of your next turn. Others work on their own, whenever something happens in the game. Either way, the Legend is the one card you can count on in every game you play with the deck.

How does a Legend shape the rest of your deck?

A Legend decides three things about the deck it leads.

• The domains. Every Legend belongs to two of the six domains, and every card in the main deck and every rune in the rune deck has to stay within those two. Loose Cannon, the Legend of Jinx, is Fury and Chaos, so a Jinx deck can play Fury cards, Chaos cards and colorless cards, and nothing else.
• The chosen champion. The name of the champion is the Legend's tag. A deck sets aside one champion unit with that tag as its chosen champion, which starts the game in the Champion Zone and can be played from there as if it were in your hand. A Jinx deck can choose Jinx, Demolitionist or Jinx, Rebel.
• The signature cards. Signature cards belong to one champion, and only a deck whose Legend carries that champion's name may play them, up to three in a deck. Super Mega Death Rocket! is a signature spell of Jinx.

Besides these three, a legal deck holds a main deck of at least 40 cards and a rune deck of 12 runes, and it follows the rest of the rules in what makes a legal Riftbound deck.

What are some examples of Legends?

The best way to see how much a Legend matters is to compare a few of them. Each of these four asks for a different kind of deck.

• Loose Cannon (Jinx, Fury and Chaos) draws you a card at the start of your Beginning Phase when you hold one card or none. It rewards a deck that empties its hand quickly and keeps the pressure on.
• Nine-Tailed Fox (Ahri, Calm and Mind) gives every enemy unit that attacks one of your battlefields one less Might for the turn. It suits a patient deck that holds battlefields and lets the opponent come to it.
• Wuju Master (Master Yi, Calm and Body) grows over the game with XP: at Level 6 your units have +1 Might, and at Level 11 they enter play ready.
• Starry-Eyed Songstress (Seraphine, Mind and Order) makes your spells cheaper when you exhaust it together with three of your units, so it wants a board full of small units and a hand full of spells. It is a Legend of Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026.

How many Legends are there in Riftbound?

Every main set of Riftbound adds a new group of Legends. Origins, Spiritforged and Unleashed added twelve each, and Vendetta added nine. Radiance, with its release on 23 October 2026, brings nine more. The Proving Grounds starter box added four of its own for Annie, Master Yi, Lux and Garen.

Every Legend is the Legend of a different champion, with one exception so far: Master Yi has two, Wuju Bladesman from Proving Grounds and Wuju Master from Unleashed. Both are Calm and Body, but they ask for very different decks. Every Legend in the game is on the Legends page, the newest set first, with a filter for each domain. The champions page shows each champion with their Legend, their champion units and their signature cards together.

Do special printings of a Legend play differently?

No. A Legend is printed at Rare, and many Legends come again as showcase printings with the gold Showcase gem: an overnumbered printing with a number above the size of the set, and sometimes a printing signed by the artist. Loose Cannon has both. These printings are made for collectors, and in a game they play exactly like the standard card. Today the standard card sells for $0.32 and the overnumbered printing, number 301/298, for $150.70. The overnumbered cards page lists every overnumbered printing, Legends included.

How do you choose a Legend for your first deck?

Start with a champion you like, because you will see that card in every game. After that, a Legend whose ability works on its own, like Nine-Tailed Fox, is easier to learn with than one that asks you to plan a few turns ahead, like Starry-Eyed Songstress. The ready-made decks are a good way in as well, since each one is built around a Legend and is ready to play out of the box.

Once you have a few champions in mind, comparing what the ability of each Legend rewards, as in how to pick a Legend, narrows the choice. The deck builder then checks the domains, the chosen champion and the signature cards for you while you build.