What happens when your deck runs out of cards?

In some card games, a player who cannot draw a card loses on the spot. Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game works differently. An empty Main Deck never ends your game by itself, but it is not free either: the cards in your trash become your deck again, and an opponent moves one point closer to the Victory Score. Riftbound calls this burning out.

Few games last long enough for a deck to run out on one draw a turn. Burning out matters most in long games, in decks that draw many cards, and in decks built around Burn, the action from Vendetta that puts the top cards of a Main Deck into the trash.

What happens, step by step, when you burn out?

You burn out when you have to take more cards from your Main Deck than it still holds. The Core Rules then have you do four things in this order.

1. You draw, or move, as many cards as your Main Deck still has.
2. You recycle your whole trash into your Main Deck in a random order, so the trash becomes your new deck.
3. You choose an opponent, and that opponent gains 1 point.
4. You finish what you were doing, taking the rest of the cards from your new deck.

The most common case is the Draw Phase. If your Main Deck is empty when you have to draw your card for the turn, you recycle your trash, your opponent gains 1 point, and then you draw as usual. The same happens in the middle of an effect: with one card left and a spell that says draw 2, you draw the last card, burn out, and draw the second card from the refilled deck.

Drawing your last card costs nothing, because you burn out only at the moment you need a card that is not there. You also cannot burn out by choice, only when a draw or another effect forces it.

Can the point from burning out win the game?

Yes. The point counts like any other, so an opponent who reaches the Victory Score with more points than every other player wins, even when it is your turn. In a Duel played to 8 points, an opponent on 7 points wins the game when you burn out.

The final point rule does not stop this. That rule limits only the last point scored by conquering a battlefield, and the Core Rules say plainly that points from other sources are not held to it.

Which cards come back into your deck?

Only the cards in your trash come back: the units and gear that were killed, the spells you played and the cards you discarded or burned. Cards in your hand and on the board stay where they are, and banished cards stay banished. Runes have a deck of their own, and tokens stop existing as soon as they leave the board, so neither ends up in your new Main Deck.

Your second deck is therefore smaller than your first, and a second burn out can come quickly. Cards that banish from your trash shrink it further. A spell with Flow, the Vendetta keyword, is banished after you play it from the trash, and the gear Endless Riches banishes your whole hand and trash when you play it.

If your trash is empty as well, your Main Deck stays empty after you burn out, and the draw you still owe makes you burn out again. This repeats, with an opponent gaining 1 point each time, until an opponent reaches the Victory Score and wins.

Can anything other than a draw make you burn out?

Yes. Any effect that moves more cards out of your Main Deck than it holds makes you burn out, in the same four steps. The most common one is Burn: to Burn 3, you put the top three cards of your Main Deck into your trash. If you have to burn more cards than you have, you burn what you can, burn out, and then burn the rest from your new deck.

Death Mark, Kennen, Storm of Shuriken and the battlefield Shadow Temple make you burn your own deck. Older cards do the same without the word, such as the Spiritforged battlefield Minefield, which puts the top two cards of your Main Deck into your trash when you conquer it. Blade Twirler makes a player of your choice Burn 1 the first time it moves each turn, and Kharox makes an opponent Burn 3 when it becomes Empowered.

Riot's Vendetta patch notes for the Core Rules describe the trade: burning cards can bring you closer to burning out, but it can also fill your trash with Flow cards you can play from there.

Looking at cards is different. When an effect only has you look at or reveal cards, as Vision and Predict do, you look at as many as your deck has and carry on without burning out. Clairvoyance shows the difference: its Predict 5 never makes you burn out, but the Draw 2 that follows does when your deck is empty.

Who gets the point when three or four players are playing?

The player who burns out chooses. In Skirmish for three players and War for four, you pick any one of your opponents to gain the point, so you will usually give it to the player furthest from winning. In Magma Chamber, the two-versus-two mode, each team shares one score, so the point goes to the other team whichever of its two players you pick.

How do you keep your deck from running out?

A Main Deck of exactly 40 cards has 35 left after the setup, since one card is the chosen champion in the Champion Zone and four make the opening hand. In a Duel the Draw Phase alone takes 35 of your own turns to empty it. The real risk comes from cards that draw several cards at once or burn your own deck.

The number of cards in each Main Deck is public, and so is every trash, so count your deck before you play a card that draws or burns several cards. Cards that recycle from your trash put cards back on the bottom of your Main Deck. Dr. Mundo, Expert recycles three cards from your trash at the start of each of your Beginning Phases, Garbage Grabber recycles three as part of the cost of drawing a card, and Vi, Destructive gets +1 Might for the turn for each card you recycle from your trash with her ability.

The rule works for you as well. When an opponent's deck is nearly empty, a card such as Blade Twirler can make them burn out, and in a Duel the point has to go to you, since you are their only opponent.

Does running out of runes cost you anything?

No. When your Rune Deck holds fewer than two runes in your Channel Phase, you channel as many as there are, and nothing else happens. The battlefield Cosmic Vista, from Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, even rewards an empty Rune Deck: when you hold it with no runes left in your Rune Deck, you score 1 point.

Burning out is one of the few points that does not come from a battlefield, which is why how long a game lasts decides whether a deck ever runs dry. The full rule is rule 432 of the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub, and the cards that burn are on the Vendetta card list.