What makes a legal Riftbound deck?

A deck for Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game is more than one pile of cards. The Core Rules count four parts as your deck: the Champion Legend, the Main Deck, the Rune Deck and your battlefields. A deck is legal when each part holds the right number of cards, when every card fits the Legend, and when no card in it is banned in the format you play.

Which parts does a Riftbound deck have?

A Riftbound deck has four parts, and each part has a fixed size.

• The Champion Legend. A deck has one Legend, which starts the game in the Legend Zone and decides the domains and the champion of the deck.
• The Main Deck. The Main Deck holds at least 40 units, gear and spells, and exactly 40 at a tournament. The chosen champion is one of those cards, although it starts the game in the Champion Zone.
• The Rune Deck. The Rune Deck holds exactly 12 runes, kept apart from the Main Deck.
• The battlefields. Every mode Riot sanctions, from the one-on-one Duel to the two-versus-two Magma Chamber, asks each player for three battlefields with different names. At most one of a player's three is used in any one game.

How does the Legend decide which cards fit?

Every card in the deck has to fit the two domains of the Legend, which the rules call the Domain Identity of the deck. A card with one domain fits when the Legend has that domain. A card with two domains fits only when the Legend has both. A Colorless card fits every deck, and since every battlefield is Colorless, any battlefield fits any deck. The 12 runes follow the same rule and can be any mix of the Legend's two domains.

Unforgiven, the Legend of Yasuo, is Calm and Chaos. A Yasuo deck can play Calm cards, Chaos cards, Colorless cards, Calm Runes and Chaos Runes, and Last Breath, the signature spell of Yasuo, which is Calm and Chaos itself. A card that is Calm and Mind does not fit, even though the deck plays Calm.

The Legend also decides the chosen champion: a unit with the Champion supertype whose tag names the Legend's champion. Unforgiven can choose Yasuo, Remorseful or Yasuo, Windrider. A signature card never qualifies, even with the right name: Last Breath carries the tag Yasuo but is a spell, and Tibbers carries the tag Annie but is a signature unit, so an Annie deck cannot choose it.

How many copies of one card can a deck hold?

A Main Deck holds at most three copies of a card with the same name, and the chosen champion counts as one of the three. A Yasuo deck that chose Yasuo, Windrider can hold two more copies of it. The name of a card includes its subtitle, so Yasuo, Remorseful and Yasuo, Windrider are different cards, and a deck may hold three of each. One card lifts the limit: Spiderling, a Chaos unit from Vendetta, says that a deck can have any number of cards with its own name.

The limit counts names, not printings. An overnumbered printing, a Nexus Night promo and a copy printed in another language are all the same card as the standard printing, so together they still count to three. Two kinds of card have tighter limits.

• Signature cards. A deck holds at most three signature cards in all, whatever their names, and only those of its own Legend's champion.
• Unique cards. A card with the Unique keyword can be in a deck only once. Ornn's three signature equipment cards from Spiritforged are Unique, so a deck led by Fire Below the Mountain, the Legend of Ornn, that wants three signature cards plays one Forgefire Cape, one Rabadon's Deathcrown and one Shurelya's Requiem.

Which cards are banned?

A banned card cannot be in a Constructed deck at all, not even in the sideboard. Riot keeps the banned list on its Rules Hub and changes it through ban updates. The list was last changed on 18 September 2026, and it holds seven cards and five battlefields.

• Cards: Called Shot, Draven, Vanquisher, Ekko, Recurrent, Fight or Flight, Scrapheap, Stacked Deck and Stealthy Pursuer.
• Battlefields: Aspirant's Climb, Obelisk of Power, Reaver's Row, The Arena's Greatest and The Dreaming Tree.

Two-versus-two Constructed bans the same cards and battlefields, and the Legend Wuju Bladesman of Master Yi as well.

One exception helps new players. At casual events such as Nexus Night, a deck that matches the exact contents of a ready-made Riftbound deck may keep its banned cards. The Origins Champion Deck: Jinx holds three Fight or Flight, three Scrapheap and Reaver's Row, and it may be played there exactly as it comes in the box. Once a single card changes, or a sideboard is added, the banned cards have to go.

Every set printed so far is legal in Standard, the main Constructed format: Origins with the Proving Grounds cards, Spiritforged, Unleashed and Vendetta. Radiance joins them with its release on 23 October 2026. Riot plans to start rotating older sets out of Standard in 2028.

What does a tournament check on top of the deck rules?

A tournament holds a deck to exact sizes, with exactly 40 cards in the Main Deck, and the Tournament Rules check four more things.

• The decklist. At Competitive and Professional events you register the whole deck, sideboard included, before the first round, and the list cannot change after that. At casual events the head judge may ask for a decklist, and players are expected to keep the same deck all event.
• The sideboard. Where an event allows one, a sideboard holds up to 10 more cards, and the copy limits count the Main Deck and the sideboard together. Between games you swap cards one for one and may change the chosen champion, but the Legend, the runes and the battlefields stay as registered.
• Extra choices. Radiance, with its release on 23 October 2026, brings the first card that adds a choice to deckbuilding: a deck that holds Neeko, Blending In chooses up to three more Legends while it is built. At a tournament those Legends go on the decklist.
• Real cards in matching sleeves. Proxies are not allowed at a tournament of any level, except a replacement the head judge hands out for a card that has become unusable. Sleeves have to be identical with opaque backs, and Competitive and Professional events require them.

Do Sealed and Draft decks follow the same rules?

No. In Sealed and Draft every player builds from the cards opened at the event, so the deck rules are looser. A Sealed Main Deck needs at least 25 cards from six booster packs, and a Draft Main Deck at least 20 cards from three. The deck may use any three domains, the copy limits and Unique do not apply, and a card banned in Constructed may be played unless that format bans it too. A deck may even go without a Legend or a chosen champion, in which case its player draws one card at the start of their first Beginning Phase in each game.

How can you check a deck before you play it?

The deck builder checks the sizes, the domains, the chosen champion, the copies, the signature cards, the battlefields and the banned list while you build. Before a two-versus-two event, check the Legend against that format's own banned list as well. The shared decks show complete decks other players have built, with a filter for each Legend, champion and domain.

The sizes of the four parts are the rules every deck is built around. How many cards are in a Riftbound deck goes through them one by one, and how to build your first Riftbound deck puts them to use, starting from a Legend or a ready-made deck and ending with the 12 runes and the three battlefields.