How do you build a strong deck on a budget?

A strong deck for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game does not have to cost much. Most of the cards in a deck are Commons and Uncommons, which fill most of every booster pack, and what a deck costs comes down to the few Rares and Epics it plays. Building on a budget means knowing which cards those are, getting the core of Commons and Uncommons right first and adding the Epics and Rares one at a time, once you know the deck needs them.

Where does the money in a strong deck go?

Most of the money goes into a handful of cards, even in a deck that wins tournaments. The deck that won the last Regional Qualifier of 2026, held in Los Angeles from 25 to 27 September, shows how. Its Legend is Pridestalker, the Legend of Rengar in Fury and Body. Its Main Deck of 40 cards holds 18 Commons and two Uncommons, its three battlefields are Uncommons and its 12 runes are Commons.

The deck led by Pridestalker gets its price from ten cards, all of them Epics or Rares: three Kai'Sa, Survivor, three Sabotage, the chosen champion Rengar, Trophy Hunter, two copies of the Rengar signature spell Thrill of the Hunt and one Pyke, Dockside Butcher. Kai'Sa, Survivor is a champion unit of Kai'Sa, but the Rengar deck plays it as an ordinary Fury unit, which any deck with Fury may do. Riot lists the whole deck in its report on the top decks of Los Angeles.

Why is a ready-made deck the best place to start?

A ready-made deck gives you a complete legal deck for one launch price, and most of its cards are Commons and Uncommons. A Champion Deck has a launch price of $19.99 and holds 56 cards: a Legend, a Main Deck of 40 cards, 12 runes and three battlefields. The Unleashed Champion Deck: Vi holds 20 Commons, 12 Uncommons, six Rares and two Epics in its Main Deck. Today the box sells for $15.60, and its 56 cards bought one by one come to $12.93.

Riot's deckbuilding primer gives new players the same advice: start from a ready-made deck and change it card by card. Each card you add then replaces one you already own, so you pay for one card at a time instead of for a whole deck. Upgrading a Champion Deck starts with more copies of its chosen champion and its signature card, and what it costs to start depends on which box you pick first.

How do you keep the champion cards affordable?

Pick a chosen champion printed at Rare, and add signature cards as the budget allows. Every deck needs a chosen champion, a champion unit with its Legend's champion tag, and almost every champion with a Legend has such a unit at Rare as well as one at Epic. A deck led by Pridestalker can choose Rengar, Unseen or Rengar, Pouncing, both Rares, in place of the Epic Rengar, Trophy Hunter. Today Rengar, Trophy Hunter sells for $29.23, Rengar, Unseen for $0.32 and Rengar, Pouncing for $0.46. The three play differently, so pick the one that suits your plan rather than the one with the lowest price.

Every signature card is an Epic. A deck may hold up to three of them, all for its own champion, as the signature limit sets out, but it needs none to be legal. Riot's primer advises playing three unless you have a good reason to play fewer. A tight budget is a fair reason for a while: start with one or two copies and add the rest once the core of the deck is complete.

Which cards are worth paying for first?

Pay first for the cards you will play in every game, then for cards that will serve your next deck as well. A card in three copies turns up far more often than a card in one, so the Commons and Uncommons that carry the deck's plan deserve all three copies before any Epic does. What makes a core of such cards work is the mix of units, spells and gear and a good Energy curve, so settle those before you spend on a single Epic.

After the core, the best value lies in cards that fit more than one deck.

• Battlefields. Every battlefield in a deck is Colorless and the standard printing of each is an Uncommon, so any battlefield fits any deck, apart from the five banned in Constructed. Seat of Power and Star Spring from the Los Angeles deck fit your next deck whatever its Legend.
• Runes. Basic runes are Commons. A Vault, with a launch price of $34.99, holds 36 of them, six of each domain, along with six booster packs. Today the Unleashed Vault sells for $67.36 and a single Fury Rune for $0.10.
• Cards of one domain. A card with a single domain fits every Legend with that domain, as the domain rule sets out. The Seals of Origins are Epic gear that add one Power of their domain when exhausted, and the primer suggests them for a deck with many Power costs in one domain. Seal of Strength serves every Body deck you build, and Seal of Rage every Fury deck. Today Seal of Strength sells for $10.65 and Seal of Rage for $22.93.

The Epics come last, the Seals among them. Before you pay for one, ask what it does for your deck and whether a Common or an Uncommon in your domains does a similar job. If one does, play that card first and replace it later, once you know the Epic is worth it to you.

Which printing of a card should you get?

Get the standard printing, and the plain one where there is a choice. Alternate art, overnumbered and signed printings play exactly like the standard card and count toward the same three copies, so they give a deck nothing the standard printing does not, whatever they cost. Commons and Uncommons come in plain and in foil, and the two have prices of their own: today a plain copy of Pit Rookie sells for $0.17 and a foil copy for $1.69. Rares and Epics from booster packs are always foil.

The language of a card does not matter for play either. The Tournament Rules allow official cards of any language in a deck (rule 420.1), and the Core Rules treat a card and its counterpart in another language as the same card (rule 132.3). Home-made stand-ins, called proxies, are not allowed at events of any level (Tournament Rules 419.2), so every card you take to a store has to be real. The least expensive copy in a language you can play with is therefore the one to get, and whether Chinese and French cards are worth more or less than English ones depends on who wants them.

How can you see what a deck will cost before you start?

Look the deck up on the site before you get a single card. The page of every shared deck on the decks page shows what its cards are worth, so you can compare a few decks for the same Legend. The Create copy button opens any of them in the deck builder, which shows the value of the deck as you swap cards.

With an account, add the cards you own to your collection. A deck page then lists the cards you still need and about what they cost, and the builder can limit its cards to the ones you own. Single cards come from local game stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides of the Atlantic. For a particular card they are usually a quicker route than opening booster packs, since a pack gives random cards and a deck needs particular ones.

Before you pay for an Epic, play the deck a few times: testing a deck shows which of its expensive cards it really needs.