How do you choose the battlefields for a deck?

Every deck for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game brings three battlefields beside its Legend, its Main Deck and its Rune Deck. Both players fight over the battlefields in the middle of the table, and almost every point in a game is scored at one of them.

The rules leave the choice wide open, so what makes one battlefield better than another is how its ability works for your deck, and for your opponent once they take it from you.

What do the rules ask of the three battlefields?

The rules ask for three battlefields with different names, in every mode Riot sanctions, as one of the four parts of a legal deck, and they do not count toward the 40 cards of the Main Deck. Every battlefield is Colorless, so the Legend's domains never rule one out.

The one real limit is the banned list that Riot keeps on its Rules Hub for Constructed play, whose update of 18 September 2026 names five battlefields from Origins, Reaver's Row among them. The Origins Champion Deck: Jinx comes with Reaver's Row, which may stay in the deck only at casual events such as Nexus Night and only while the deck matches the box exactly. In Magma Chamber, the two-versus-two mode, teammates may not use the same battlefields, so partners compare their picks first.

Why can a battlefield you bring help your opponent?

A battlefield works for the player who controls it, not for the player who brought it. When its text says "you", it means its controller, so every battlefield in your deck is one your opponent can take and use against you.

For this reason Dave Guskin, the Game Director of Riftbound, suggests three questions in Riot's Deckbuilding Primer of 28 July 2025.

• Which battlefields do the most for your plan? These reward what your deck already does, as the ready-made decks below show.
• Which would be a disaster in your opponent's hands? The Grand Plaza wins the game for a player who holds it with seven or more units there. In a deck that fills the board with small units it is a second way to win, but a deck of a few big units seldom gets seven units anywhere, so it mostly hands the opponent a way to win.
• Which would be slightly better for you than for your opponent? Trifarian War Camp gives +1 Might to every unit there, on both sides. The player with more units there gains more, so it favors a deck that fights with many small units.

How do you find battlefields that suit your deck?

Start from your Legend and from what your deck does most often, then look for battlefields that reward the same thing, as the ready-made decks do.

The Origins Champion Deck: Viktor is built around Herald of the Arcane, a Legend that makes 1 Might Recruit unit tokens, and all three of its battlefields reward a board full of units. Altar to Unity plays one more Recruit when you hold it, The Grand Plaza wins the game with seven units, and Trifarian War Camp turns each Recruit there into a 2 Might unit.

Each of the four Proving Grounds decks, sold together in the Proving Grounds box, comes with one battlefield that fits its Legend. The Lux deck brings Startipped Peak, which lets you channel an extra rune, exhausted, when you hold it, and its Legend, Lady of Luminosity, draws a card whenever you play a spell that costs 5 Energy or more.

Players who build their own decks do the same. At the Regional Qualifier in Los Angeles, the last of 2026, the Ornn deck in the top eight brought Ornn's Forge, which makes the first non-token gear you play each turn cost 1 Energy less, and Veiled Temple, which lets you ready a gear when you conquer it. Its Legend, Fire Below the Mountain, adds Power for gear as well.

Should your battlefields reward attacking or defending?

Your battlefields should reward the way your deck wins its fights, since each kind of ability helps a different player.

• Conquer abilities reward the player who takes the battlefield, so they suit a fast deck that attacks every turn. The Jinx Champion Deck brings Targon's Peak, which readies up to two runes at the end of a turn in which you conquer it.
• Defend abilities help the player whose units are attacked there in combat, so they suit a deck that waits for the opponent. Fortified Position lets you give a unit Shield 2 for that combat, and the Proving Grounds Master Yi deck pairs it with Wuju Bladesman, a Legend that gives a unit +2 Might while it defends alone.
• Hold abilities pay out at the start of your turn, for the player who kept the battlefield through the opponent's whole turn. Grove of the God-Willow draws a card that way.

A fast deck that trades units every turn rarely holds a battlefield for long, so a hold ability it brings may help the opponent more than its owner.

Can a battlefield work against your opponent's deck?

Yes, some battlefields hurt one kind of deck. Their abilities apply to both players, so bring one only when your own deck shrugs it off.

• Forgotten Monument lets no player score there before their third turn, which costs a fast deck the early points it was counting on.
• Frozen Fortress deals 1 to every unit there at the start of each player's Beginning Phase, before scoring. A unit with 1 Might dies there before it can hold it, so a Viktor deck full of Recruits would never bring it.
• Forbidding Waste gives a unit 2 less Might while it defends there alone, which cancels the +2 Might of Wuju Bladesman on that battlefield.

Does it matter whether you play a Duel or a Match?

The mode decides how the battlefields reach the table. In a Duel, and at tournaments played as best of one, each player picks one of their three battlefields at random. Any of them can come up against any opponent, so each one has to be good for your deck in every game.

In a Match, the best of three games, each player chooses one battlefield for each game, after both Legends and both chosen champions are face up. Once a game is won, both battlefields used in it are out for the rest of the Match, so a third game leaves no choice at all. A Match rewards a mix: one battlefield that is good against anything, and narrower ones to save for the opponents they hurt most. At a tournament the loser of each game decides who starts the next one. Each player chooses a battlefield before that is settled, but from the second game on both players know who will decide, so you can choose for the seat you expect.

At a Constructed tournament the three battlefields stay the same all event. At Competitive and Professional events they go on the decklist you register before the first round, and unlike Main Deck cards, which a sideboard can swap between games, they cannot be swapped, so choose them for the decks you expect to meet.

To test your three, play a few games, watch who scores at each battlefield and swap the one that keeps helping your opponent. Every battlefield is on the battlefields page, the shared decks show the three that other players bring with each Legend, and the deck builder checks that your three differ and that none is banned. Once the battlefields are set, the other part of the deck that the Legend's domains shape is the Rune Deck, and how many runes of each domain a deck should bring decides how often it has the Power for its cards.