What should you bring to your first Riftbound event?

Your first event of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game will most likely be a Nexus Night or a Pre-Rift event at a local game store, and neither asks for much. What you pack depends on the format. At a Constructed event you bring a deck of your own, and at a Sealed event the store hands out the cards.

Which deck should you bring to a Constructed event?

At a Constructed event you bring one complete, legal deck: a Champion Legend, a Main Deck of exactly 40 cards with the chosen champion among them, 12 runes and 3 battlefields with different names (Tournament Rules 402.1). Each card has to fit the domains of the Legend, no card may be banned, and every card has to be a real Riftbound card, because proxies are not allowed at events of any level, but official cards in any language are fine.

A ready-made deck is the easiest choice for a first event. Every Champion Deck so far holds exactly 56 cards in that shape, and so do the two decks of the Showdown Decks box of Vendetta, so they are ready for an event straight out of the box. A Champion Deck had a launch price of $19.99, and the Vendetta box with its two decks had one of $34.99 and sells for $15.14 today. Local game stores sell these decks, and single cards for a deck of your own come from the same stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides of the ocean.

The four decks of Proving Grounds bring one battlefield each, so a player who takes one of them to an event needs two more battlefields. Among the Champion Decks and Showdown Decks, the Jinx Champion Deck from Origins is the one exception, with three cards that are now banned: Fight or Flight, Scrapheap and Reaver's Row. Casual events such as Nexus Night allow the deck exactly as boxed, but at a Competitive event those cards have to come out.

Do you need sleeves at a Riftbound event?

Sleeves are optional at a casual event, unless the head judge asks for them. At Competitive events, such as a Summoner Skirmish, the Main Deck, the Rune Deck and the battlefields all have to be sleeved. Sleeves are worth bringing to a first Nexus Night anyway, because your opponent may shuffle your deck before every game.

Every sleeve in a deck has to be identical, with an opaque back, and every card has to sit in its sleeve the same way. Bring a deck box too, and at an event with decklists keep only the registered deck in it: other cards stored with the deck can count as a deck error, although tokens and the promo cards handed out at the event may stay. No rule asks for a playmat, and any sleeves that meet these rules are allowed, so the official sleeves and playmats Riot makes are a matter of taste.

How do you keep track of the score, damage and tokens?

A few dice or coins, a pen and a small notepad cover everything. A game has numbers that no card shows, and at an event both players are responsible for keeping them clear.

• The score. Both players track both scores and announce each new point. At Competitive events the score has to be kept in writing, while dice or a phone are enough at casual events. A phone may not be used during a match for anything else, and a note sheet has to be blank at the start of each match.
• XP and unspent Energy or Power. Each player keeps their own XP and unspent Energy or Power clearly visible, such as with dice or counters.
• Damage. Damage is healed after every combat and at the end of every turn, and coins or dice keep track of it in between.
• Tokens and buffs. At home anything can stand in for a token, but at Competitive events a token has to be a card that can be turned sideways to show it is exhausted, and a buff needs a marker that clearly reads as a buff.
• Who goes first. A die or a coin decides which player chooses whether to go first in the first game of a match.

Riot also prints token cards such as Recruit, Gold and Sprite, which the rules allow in the deck box with your deck, and reminder cards such as Buff, which marks a buff, and XP Tracker, which counts your XP.

What do you need to sign up and get in?

You need a Riot account. Official Riftbound events take sign-ups on their own pages at playriftbound.com, Riot's Riftbound site, where you sign in with that account. Register before the day, because every event has a set number of seats. On the day, ask the organizer where the pairings of each round are shown, because every player has to find out their opponent and their seat before a round starts (Tournament Rules 405.1).

Bring the entry fee as well. Each store sets its own, and some hold their Nexus Night for free. The event finder shows the format, the entry fee and the seats left of every event near you. Players under 13 need the permission of a parent or guardian to take part.

At Competitive Constructed events every player registers a decklist before the first round, and a head judge may ask for one at a casual event too. The list names every card of the deck and any sideboard, and it cannot be changed once it is handed in. Every deck page on this site has an As text button that shows the deck as plain text, which makes the list quick to write out. Even without a decklist, you are expected to play the same deck all event unless the organizer allows a change.

What do you bring to a Sealed or Pre-Rift event?

A Sealed event asks for the least, since every card you play with is handed out at the event. At a Radiance Pre-Rift event, with events dated 16 to 22 October 2026 and the set's release on 23 October 2026, each player gets a kit with a 15-card pack built around one champion, five Radiance booster packs and a promo card, and builds a Main Deck of at least 25 cards from it at the table (Tournament Rules 602.4.a.2). Riot's guide to the Radiance Pre-Rift says that the promo card, Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor, cannot go into the Sealed deck.

The Tournament Rules let every player use basic runes from any source, and the same guide says the organizer provides additional runes, so you need no runes of your own to fill a Rune Deck of 12 in the domains your deck ends up with. The six basic runes are Fury Rune, Calm Rune, Mind Rune, Body Rune, Chaos Rune and Order Rune. A Sealed deck may also play "blank" battlefields without rules text, and at a casual event the players may agree on anything to stand in for them, such as a facedown card. Sleeves, a pen and a deck box are worth packing as well, because the cards from the kit go home with you.

What should you do once you arrive?

Arrive before the first round. Players have to be in their seats when a round begins, and a player who misses a match is dropped unless they report to the scorekeeper. Tell the organizer and your opponent that it is your first event. Nexus Night and Pre-Rift events are played at the Casual level of the Tournament Rules, where judges care more about teaching and good manners than about precise play, so call a judge whenever a card or a ruling is unclear. The Tournament Rules suggest rounds of 60 minutes at competitive events, so an event of a few rounds can fill an afternoon, and a drink and a snack belong in the bag.

If you have not picked an event yet, finding a Riftbound event near you comes down to comparing the kind of event, the format, the entry fee and the seats left. A weekly Nexus Night is the usual first event, and the rules that apply at a Riftbound tournament only get stricter as the rewards of an event grow.