How many copies of a card can a Riftbound deck hold?

Every deck for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game is built from cards you pick one at a time, and the Core Rules cap how often one card can appear. The cap counts names, not pieces of cardboard. A Main Deck may hold three cards that share a name, whichever printing, language or rarity each of them is, and the chosen champion is one of those three.

A few cards change that number, and sideboards, Sealed and Draft each treat the limit in their own way.

What counts as the same card?

Two cards are the same card for the copy limit when they have the same name, and the name includes the subtitle (rule 132.4). Kai'Sa, Survivor and Kai'Sa, Evolutionary share the short name Kai'Sa, but their full names differ, so a deck may hold three of each (rule 103.3.b.2). A deck led by Daughter of the Void, the Legend of Kai'Sa in Fury and Mind, can therefore run six Kai'Sa units. Radiance, with its release on 23 October 2026, adds Kai'Sa, Rebel as a third name with three copies of its own.

The chosen champion counts as one of the three (rule 103.3.b.1). A Kai'Sa deck that chooses Kai'Sa, Survivor starts the game with one copy in the Champion Zone and may keep two more in the Main Deck.

Do alternate art, overnumbered and promo printings count apart?

No. Every printing of a card carries the same name, so all of them count toward the same three. Pouty Poro is a Common of Origins. Unleashed printed it again as an overnumbered card, the Pouty Poro numbered 220/219, and a promo printing of it came in the Nexus Night packs of the Origins season. One copy of each makes three Pouty Poro, and a fourth copy of any printing is one too many.

Language does not split a card either. The Core Rules treat an English card and its Chinese counterpart as the same card, even though the names on them read differently (rule 132.3), so two English copies and one Chinese copy of a card fill the limit. The rule covers every language Riftbound is printed in.

Which cards have a lower limit than three?

• Unique cards. A deck may hold only one card of a given name when that card has the keyword Unique (rule 825.3.a). Unique does nothing during a game; it only limits deckbuilding.
• Signature cards. A deck may hold three signature cards in all, whatever their names, and each of them has to carry the champion tag of the deck's Legend (rule 103.3.d). Three copies of one signature spell use up the whole allowance of the signature limit.
• Banned cards. A card on Riot's banned list, which changes through ban updates, may not be in a Constructed deck at all.

So far the only Unique cards are the three signature equipment cards of Ornn from Spiritforged. A deck led by Fire Below the Mountain, the Legend of Ornn, may hold three signature cards, but since each of them is Unique, those three can only be one Forgefire Cape, one Rabadon's Deathcrown and one Shurelya's Requiem (rule 825.3.b).

Can a card allow more than three copies?

Yes, and so far one card does. Spiderling, a Common Chaos unit from Vendetta, says that your deck can have any number of cards named Spiderling. Card text wins whenever it contradicts the rules, which is the Golden Rule at the very start of the Core Rules (rule 002), so a deck may run four, eight or more Spiderlings.

The card is made for it. Spiderling costs 3 Energy for 1 Might and gets +1 Might for each other unit with its name that you control in the same place, a base or a battlefield, so one copy on its own is small while a group of them grows quickly. Spiderling is still a Chaos card, so it follows the domain rule like any other: only a deck whose Legend has Chaos can play it.

Do runes and battlefields have a copy limit?

The limit of three copies applies to the Main Deck only (rule 103.3.b). The Rune Deck holds exactly 12 runes in any mix of the Legend's two domains, so the same rune appears many times: the Origins Champion Deck: Jinx comes with six Fury Runes and six Chaos Runes. The rules do not fix the split between the two domains, and how many runes of each domain a deck should bring is a deckbuilding choice of its own.

Battlefields have the strictest rule. A deck brings three battlefields, and no two of them may share a name (rule 103.5.c).

How do tournaments and Sealed events count copies?

At a Constructed tournament with sideboards, the limit covers the Main Deck and the sideboard together (Tournament Rules 601.1.c.3). A player with two copies of a card in the Main Deck may keep one more in the sideboard, not three. A registered decklist with more than three copies of a card between the two is a Decklist Error, and the penalty is a Game Loss (Tournament Rules 703.3).

Sealed and Draft drop the limit. Every player builds from the cards opened or picked at the event, so the limits on copies and on signature cards do not apply, and neither does Unique. The Tournament Rules give the example of a player who plays ten Pouty Poro because their card pool held ten (rules 602.4.a.6 and 602.4.b.7).

Should a deck play three copies of every card?

Not of every card, but of the cards the deck cannot do without. A tournament Main Deck of 40 cards puts 39 into the shuffled deck, because the chosen champion starts in the Champion Zone, and each player draws four to start. With three copies of a card, the chance that at least one is among those four is about 28 percent before the mulligan. With two copies it falls to about 20 percent, and with one copy to about 10 percent.

Riot's ready-made decks show two ways of building. Each of the four decks in the Proving Grounds starter box holds 15 different cards, ten of them three times and five twice, so its games play out in a similar way, which suits a new player. The Unleashed Champion Deck: Vi spreads its 40 cards over 24 names with only one card at three copies, so it changes more from game to game. For a deck of your own, a good rule is three copies of the cards that make the deck work and one or two of the cards it needs only in some games.

The deck builder checks the copies of each name while you build, the chosen champion included, together with the other rules of a legal Riftbound deck. The shared decks of other players show how many copies they run of each card.