How many cards are in a Riftbound deck?

A deck for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game is not one pile of cards but four, and together they hold 56 cards. Only 40 of them are the units, spells and gear you draw and play. The other 16 are your Legend, the runes that pay for your cards and the battlefields the players fight over.

Fifty-six is the size of every Champion Deck and of every deck in a Showdown Decks box. For a Constructed deck the rules leave room in one place only: away from organized events, the Main Deck may hold more than 40 cards.

How are the 56 cards of a deck split up?

A Riftbound deck has four parts, and the Core Rules give each part its own size.

The Unleashed Champion Deck: Vi shows the split. Its Legend is Piltover Enforcer. Its Main Deck of 40 cards includes four Vi champion units to pick the chosen champion from: one Vi, Destructive, one Vi, Hotheaded and two Vi, Peacekeeper. Its Rune Deck holds six Fury Runes and six Order Runes, and its three battlefields are Trapping Grounds, Star Spring and Valley of Idols.

Every mode Riot sanctions asks each player for three battlefields, although at most one of them is used in any one game.

Does the Main Deck have to hold exactly 40 cards?

Only at a Constructed event. The Core Rules ask for a Main Deck of at least 40 cards, so a deck of 41 or 50 is legal for a game at home. The Tournament Rules ask for exactly 40 at every Constructed event, from a casual Nexus Night at a local store to the largest tournaments.

Almost every deck plays exactly 40 anyway, as every Champion Deck, Showdown deck and Proving Grounds deck does, and that is the best choice for a deck of your own as well. Every card over 40 makes your best cards a little less likely to turn up. Take a card of which you shuffle three copies into the deck: without a mulligan, at least one copy is among the first ten cards you draw about 60 percent of the time when the Main Deck holds 40 cards, and about 55 percent of the time when it holds 45. A bigger deck takes longer to run out, but few games last long enough for a deck to burn out.

Does the chosen champion count toward the 40 cards?

Yes. The chosen champion is one of the 40 cards of the Main Deck, even though it starts the game outside it. During the setup it goes to the Champion Zone beside your Legend, so you shuffle 39 cards, and once you have drawn your opening hand of four, 35 cards remain. A mulligan leaves that number alone, because the cards you set aside are recycled to the bottom of the Main Deck.

The chosen champion also counts toward the copy limit, the three copies a deck may hold of a card with the same name. A Vi deck that chooses Vi, Peacekeeper can hold two more copies of it in the Main Deck.

How long does a Rune Deck of 12 runes last?

A Rune Deck of 12 runes is empty by your sixth turn if you channel no extra runes and recycle none, because you channel two runes in every Channel Phase. The Rune Deck has to hold exactly 12 runes, never more and never fewer, in any mix of the two domains of your Legend.

Running out of runes costs nothing: with fewer than two runes left, you channel what is there. Runes you recycle to pay for Power go back to the bottom of the Rune Deck, so you channel them again later. The How to Play booklet of Proving Grounds calls an even split of six and six a good place to start. A deck whose cards of one domain ask for clearly more Power than its cards of the other should bring more runes of that domain, as the article on how many runes of each domain to bring works out.

Which cards come on top of the 56?

Tokens and the sideboard do not count toward the deck. The rules do not treat tokens as cards at all: they are created during play, and anything can stand in for one. The four double-faced tokens in the box of the Unleashed Champion Deck: Vi, with a Bird on one side and Gold on the other, come on top of its 56 cards.

A sideboard is a set of up to 10 extra cards that some Constructed events allow. Between the games of a match you swap sideboard cards one for one with cards of the Main Deck, so the Main Deck stays at 40, and the copy limit counts the Main Deck and the sideboard together.

Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, adds one more case. A deck that holds Neeko, Blending In chooses up to three more Legends while it is built. Legends are never part of the Main Deck, so these come on top of the 56, and at a tournament they are written on the decklist.

Are ready-made, Sealed and Draft decks the same size?

Most ready-made decks are, and Sealed and Draft decks may be smaller. Every Champion Deck holds the full 56 cards, and so do the two decks of the Vendetta Showdown Decks box. UVS Games lists two full 56-card decks for the Radiance Showdown Decks box as well, with its release on 23 October 2026. The four decks of the Proving Grounds starter box hold 54 cards each: a Legend, a Main Deck of 40 and 12 runes, but only one battlefield, printed as an oversized card. To play a Proving Grounds deck in a Duel by the full rules, add two more battlefields with different names.

Sealed and Draft decks are built at the event from booster packs. A Sealed Main Deck needs at least 25 cards from six booster packs, and a Draft Main Deck at least 20 cards from the 39 cards each player drafts from three packs. The Rune Deck still holds 12 runes, and basic runes may come from any source, even when they were not in your packs.

How can you check the size of your own deck?

The deck builder counts each part while you build and holds a deck to the tournament sizes: exactly 40 cards in the Main Deck, 12 runes and three different battlefields. The shared decks show complete decks that other players have built, and the decks from the boxes are there as well.

Size is only the first of the deck rules, set out in rule 103 of the Core Rules and in rules 601 and 602 of the Tournament Rules, which are on Riot's Rules Hub. A legal deck also keeps to the copy limit of three cards with the same name, to the domains of its Legend and to the banned list, and what makes a legal Riftbound deck brings all of these together.