When do units heal?

Units in Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game have no health points that wear down over a game. Damage is marked on a unit instead, and the unit dies as soon as the damage on it reaches its Might. That damage never stays for long: the game clears it from every unit after each combat and again at the end of each turn, and a few cards heal units at other moments.

How does damage work on a unit?

Damage stays marked on a unit until the unit heals. When Incinerate, a spell from Proving Grounds, deals 2 to a unit at a battlefield, that unit carries 2 damage until it heals, and you track it with coins, dice or other markers, or simply remember it. Only units take damage. Gear, runes, Legends and battlefields never do, and players have no health at all.

A unit dies when the damage marked on it is at least as high as its Might. It is killed and put in its owner's trash the next time the game checks the board, which happens after every spell, ability and move. A unit with 0 Might dies to a single point of damage. Damage does not lower a unit's Might, so a unit with 6 Might and 5 damage on it still deals 6 damage in combat.

Since damage is compared with the unit's Might as it is now, lowering the Might can kill a damaged unit without dealing any more damage. The Core Rules give the example of a unit with 5 Might and 3 damage: Frigid Touch, a Reaction spell from Spiritforged, gives it -2 Might this turn, and with 3 Might and 3 damage the unit dies. The same happens after a hit from Incinerate: a unit with 4 Might and 2 damage marked on it dies as soon as it loses 2 Might. Elder Dragon from Unleashed changes the rule itself: while it is in play, any amount of damage you deal is enough to kill an enemy unit.

At which moments do units heal?

Units heal at two fixed moments, and at both of them every unit on the board heals at once, wherever it stands.

• After every combat. When the combat damage has been dealt, the game runs a combat cleanup. Units with lethal damage die first, and then all units heal: the ones that fought, the ones at every other battlefield and the ones in every base.
• At the end of every turn. In the Ending Phase of each player's turn, after the abilities that happen at the end of the turn, all units heal again. Damage dealt during your opponent's turn is gone before your own turn begins.

A heal always removes all the damage on a unit, not part of it. Healing never saves a unit that already has lethal damage, because the cleanup kills such units before it heals the rest. Players cannot heal their units whenever they like either: the Core Rules allow it only at these two moments and when a card says so.

The order works in favor of units whose Might was raised for a while. A unit with 3 Might that gets +2 Might this turn from Discipline survives 4 damage from a spell, and it does not die when the boost runs out, because the end of the turn heals it first.

Does moving a unit away heal it?

No. Moving a unit, even back to your base, leaves its damage on it, and so does a recall, when a card sends a unit to base without moving it. A showdown does not heal either: when your units take an empty battlefield, no combat takes place, so no damage comes off.

A unit that leaves the board altogether is a different case. When a unit goes to a hand, a deck, the trash or banishment, its damage is cleared, and if it returns, it returns as a new card. Portal Rescue, a spell from Origins, uses this: it banishes a friendly unit, then its owner plays it again to their base, free of its damage.

Which cards heal units?

Only a handful of cards heal units at other moments, and most of them do it to save a unit from dying.

• Janna, Savior, a Reaction unit from Spiritforged, heals your units at the place you play her, then may move one enemy unit from there to its base.
• Tactical Retreat, a Reaction spell from Unleashed, picks a friendly unit. The next time that unit would die this turn, it is healed, exhausted and recalled to base instead.
• Guardian Angel, an Equipment from Spiritforged, does the same for the unit it is attached to and is killed in that unit's place.
• Mordekaiser, Twice Slain from Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, can save himself the same way once each turn, if you kill a friendly unit to pay for it.

The heal is the part that keeps such a unit alive. A recall on its own would bring the unit to base with its lethal damage still marked, and the next check of the board would kill it. Because the unit never dies, abilities that trigger on its death, such as Deathknell, do not trigger either.

As printed, Zhonya's Hourglass from Origins and Highlander from Proving Grounds only recall the unit exhausted. Riot corrected both cards with errata, published in its Origins card errata of 28 October 2025: they now heal, exhaust and recall the unit, the same as the newer cards.

How do you make the most of damage before it heals?

Damage lasts only until the next combat or the end of the turn, so deal it and use it in the same turn.

• Weaken a defender, then attack it. Hextech Ray, an Action spell from Origins, deals 3 to a unit at a battlefield. A defender with 5 Might that took those 3 needs only 2 more damage in the combat, and the attacking player can send the rest of the combat damage to the other defenders.
• Fight where the damage is. A combat at one battlefield heals the units at the other battlefields too, so damage on a unit elsewhere is wasted if that combat ends before you attack it. Combat damage never carries over to the next combat either, so a defender with more Might than all your attackers together has to take damage from spells or abilities before that combat ends.
• Play cards that reward damage. Warwick, Hunter kills every damaged enemy unit at his battlefield when he attacks. Morgana, Vindictive deals damage to a unit equal to the damage already on it, so a unit with 3 damage takes 3 more.

Spells like Hextech Ray only pay off when the combat damage that follows is split well, so how combat damage is assigned decides how far the damage of a spell goes. Damage that an ability deals at the end of a turn still counts in full, because units heal only after those abilities have taken place, an order that the end of a turn goes through step by step. The spells page holds many more damage spells, and the full wording of these rules is in the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub.