What is a rune card?

Every unit, spell and gear in Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game has a cost, and rune cards pay it. Runes never go into your hand and are never played the way a unit or a spell is. They wait face down in a deck of their own, the Rune Deck, and come onto the board when you channel them. A rune on the board stays in your base and makes the Energy and Power that your other cards cost.

What is printed on a rune card?

Apart from the set code and the artist at its foot, a rune card shows only its name, the word Rune on its type line and a large symbol of its domain. It has no cost, no Might and no text box. The Core Rules give every basic rune the same two abilities instead: you can exhaust it to add 1 Energy, or recycle it to add 1 Power of its domain. Both abilities work as Reactions, so a rune can pay for a card on your opponent's turn as well as on your own.

There are six basic runes, one for each domain: the Fury Rune, the Calm Rune, the Mind Rune, the Body Rune, the Chaos Rune and the Order Rune. Every rune printed so far is one of these six. The back of a rune card has a pattern of its own, so a rune is easy to tell apart from a Main Deck card.

What does a rune do during a game?

A rune pays for your cards. You start the game with no runes on the board and channel two from the top of your Rune Deck in the Channel Phase of each of your turns, and a third in your first turn if you go last. A rune you exhaust adds 1 Energy, which pays the Energy cost, the number in the top left corner of a card, and it readies again in your next Awaken Phase. A rune you recycle goes to the bottom of your Rune Deck and adds 1 Power of its domain, which pays the Power cost, the domain symbols under that number. A Fury Rune gives Fury Power, and no rune gives Power of another domain, so a card with two Fury Power in its cost usually needs two Fury Runes recycled to pay for it.

Which runes go into a deck?

A deck brings exactly 12 runes, and every one of them has to match one of the two domains of the deck's Legend. The Rune Deck is shuffled on its own and kept apart from the Main Deck for the whole game. The limit of three copies of a card applies only to the Main Deck, so a deck may bring any mix of runes of its two domains, as long as there are 12.

Eye of Twilight, the Legend of Shen, is Calm and Order, so a Shen deck can bring Calm Runes and Order Runes and no others. Riot's decklist for the Shen deck in the Showdown Decks of Vendetta holds six of each, and the Zed deck beside it brings six Fury Runes and six Chaos Runes for Master of Shadows. The How to Play booklet of the Proving Grounds box calls an even split a good place to start. A deck whose cards ask mostly for Power of one domain does better with more runes of that domain, and how many runes of each domain to bring comes down to counting the Power symbols of its cards.

Why does a rune not count as a card?

When the text of a card says "card", it means a Main Deck card. The Core Rules say that runes, Legends and battlefields are not cards for the abilities and effects of the game, so drawing a card never draws a rune. Karma, Channeler buffs a friendly unit when you recycle cards to your Main Deck, and her text adds that runes are not cards, so recycling a rune for Power does not count. Party Favors makes each other player choose between Cards and Runes: a card drawn by both of you, or a rune channeled exhausted by both of you.

A rune is not a permanent either. It stays on the board like a unit or a gear, but cards that kill units or gear cannot touch it. A rune usually leaves the board only when it is recycled, by you to pay Power or by a card such as the battlefield Sigil of the Storm, which makes you recycle one of your runes when you conquer it.

Which cards care about your runes?

Many cards count your runes, ready them or look at their domains. Here are four from different sets.

• Sona, Harmonious, a Calm champion unit from Origins, readies up to four of your runes at the end of your turn if she is at a battlefield. Those runes can then pay for Reactions on your opponent's turn.
• Master Yi, Meditative from Proving Grounds has +4 Might while you have 8 or more runes, which you reach by your fourth turn if you recycle none.
• Forsaken Baccai, a Fury unit from Vendetta, gets +1 Might for the turn when you control fewer runes than an opponent at the start of your Beginning Phase.
• Twisted Fate, Gambler, a Chaos champion unit from Origins, reveals and recycles the top rune of your Rune Deck when he attacks. A Fury Rune deals damage to the enemy units at his battlefield, a Mind Rune draws a card and an Order Rune stuns an enemy unit, but a Chaos Rune does nothing. He works best in a deck whose second domain is Fury, Mind or Order.

Do alternate art and foil runes play differently?

No. A Fury Rune works the same in a game whichever set, art or finish it comes from, and a deck can mix printings freely.

• Standard runes. Origins numbered its runes among the other cards of the set, so its Fury Rune is OGN 007/298. Later printings are numbered apart, from R01 to R06, so the Vendetta Fury Rune is VEN R01.
• Runes from packs. Riot says that the last slot of an Origins pack, the one for a token or a rune, occasionally holds a foil rune and very rarely an alternate art rune, such as the Fury Rune OGN 007a/298. Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, has alternate art runes with a musical theme: its Fury Rune RAD R01a stands in front of an electric guitar. Both carry the gold Showcase gem.
• Promo runes. The promo packs of Nexus Night have held alternate art runes in several seasons, such as the Spiritforged runes with falling petals, like the Spiritforged Fury Rune R01b, and a new set of six in the Vendetta season, like the Vendetta Fury Rune R01b. The Nexus Night promo cards page shows the runes of every season.

Where do you get runes?

Most players get their first runes in a ready-made deck. Every Champion Deck holds a full Rune Deck of 12 runes in the domains of its Legend, and so do the Proving Grounds decks and the Showdown Decks. For more, a Vault holds 36 basic runes, six of each, with six booster packs and a storage box, at a launch price of $34.99. Unleashed and Vendetta each have a Vault, and the Radiance Vault comes with the release of Radiance on 23 October 2026. A Vault is the simplest way to cover several decks in different domains. A booster pack holds at most one rune, in the last slot it shares with the tokens.

Single runes come from local game stores and from online marketplaces: Cardmarket in Europe, TCGplayer in the United States and CardTrader on both sides of the Atlantic. Today the Origins Fury Rune sells for $0.10 and its alternate art printing, the Fury Rune 007a/298, for $2.34. UVS Games also lists Bulk Runes, a reusable box of 324 basic runes, 54 of each, with a launch price of $19.99.

At Sealed and Draft events you never need runes from the packs you open. The Tournament Rules let every player use any number of the six basic runes from any source, as long as they match the domains of the deck, and Riot makes Rune Kits for stores so that players can take the runes they need.

The runes page lists every rune printing by domain, and the deck builder checks that your 12 runes fit your Legend. The rules for runes are rules 160 to 168 of the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub.