How does a game of Riftbound work?

Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game is played face to face, and its standard form is a game for two players that the Core Rules call a Duel. Each player brings a deck built around a League of Legends champion, and two battlefields lie on the table between them. The players take turns sending units to those battlefields, and every battlefield a player takes or keeps is worth a point.

This article follows one Duel from setup to the winning point, with a link to the full rule at every step.

What does each player bring to the table?

Each player brings a deck of their own in four parts. The Champion Legend leads the deck and sets the domains its other cards must come from. The Main Deck holds at least 40 units, spells and gear, and one of its champion units is set aside as the chosen champion. The Rune Deck holds exactly 12 runes, which pay for everything else. The last part is three battlefields with different names.

The Annie deck from the Proving Grounds box shows the parts. Its Legend is Dark Child, which is Fury and Chaos, its booklet recommends Annie, Fiery as the chosen champion, and its Rune Deck holds six Fury Runes and six Chaos Runes. Inside the box each deck brings one battlefield, Void Gate for Annie, while a deck for any other game must bring three to be a legal deck.

How does a game begin?

The setup of a Duel starts with each player putting their Legend in the Legend Zone and their chosen champion face up in the Champion Zone beside it, where the champion waits until you play it. Each player then picks one of their three battlefields at random and puts it in the middle, so a Duel is fought over two battlefields, one from each player. Both players shuffle their Main Deck and their Rune Deck, each on its own.

The players decide who goes first in any fair random way they agree on. Each player draws four cards and may take one mulligan: you set aside up to two cards, draw as many new ones, and put the set-aside cards on the bottom of your Main Deck. The player who goes second channels three runes instead of two on their first turn.

What happens during a turn?

Every turn runs through the same six phases in a fixed order. The first four make up the start of the turn, then come the Main Phase, where you make your choices, and the Ending Phase.

1. Awaken Phase. You ready everything you control.
2. Beginning Phase. Start-of-turn effects happen, then you score one point for each battlefield you control, which is called holding.
3. Channel Phase. You put the top two runes of your Rune Deck onto the board.
4. Draw Phase. You draw one card.
5. Main Phase. You play cards, use abilities and move units, in any order and as often as you can pay for it, until you choose to end your turn.
6. Ending Phase. Every unit heals, and anything that lasted "this turn" ends.

Then the other player takes a turn, and play goes back and forth until one player wins.

How do runes pay for your cards?

The cost of a card has up to two parts, and runes pay for both. The number in the top left corner is the Energy cost: you exhaust one rune, turning it sideways, for each point of Energy. The domain symbols under that number are the Power cost: for each symbol you recycle a rune of that domain, which puts it on the bottom of your Rune Deck. One rune can do both in the same turn.

Annie, Fiery costs 5 Energy and 1 Fury Power. To play her, you exhaust five runes and recycle one Fury Rune, which may be one of the five. With two new runes each turn, the player who goes first has six runes on their third turn if none has been recycled, which is enough for Annie, Fiery.

How do units fight for a battlefield?

A unit enters play exhausted, at your base or at a battlefield you already control, so a unit you play this turn usually moves on your next turn. To move a unit, you exhaust it and send it from your base to a battlefield or back again.

When your units move to an empty battlefield, a showdown opens: a short window in which the players take turns, starting with you, to play cards with Action or Reaction. If your units are still the only ones there when it closes, you conquer the battlefield. When enemy units stand there, a combat starts instead. It opens with a showdown as well, and then each side deals damage equal to the total Might of its units there. A unit dies when the damage on it reaches its Might. If only your units are left, you conquer the battlefield. If any defender survives, your surviving attackers go back to your base.

The How to Play booklet of Proving Grounds uses one fight as its example. Zephyr Sage, with 6 Might, moves to Startipped Peak, where an enemy Vanguard Attendant with 5 Might stands. Vanguard Attendant takes 6 damage and dies, while Zephyr Sage takes 5 and survives. Only the attacker is left, so its player conquers Startipped Peak and scores a point.

Every unit heals after each combat and again at the end of every turn, so the damage of one fight never carries over to the next.

Can your opponent act during your turn?

Your opponent can act during your turn, but only with certain cards. By default you can play a card only on your own turn, while nothing else is happening. A card with Action can also be played during a showdown, on either player's turn. A card with Reaction can be played at those moments too, and also in answer to a card or ability that has just been played and waits on the Chain, so that the Reaction resolves first.

When your opponent plays Incinerate, a spell that deals 2 damage to a unit at a battlefield, you can answer with Flash, a Reaction spell that moves up to two of your units to your base. Flash resolves first, and Incinerate deals no damage, because the unit is no longer at a battlefield. Runes can be used at these moments too, so the runes you leave ready when you end your turn are the ones you can spend on your opponent's turn.

How does the game end?

A player wins on reaching the Victory Score, 8 points in a Duel, with more points than the opponent. Nearly every point comes from a battlefield: one when you conquer it, and one when you hold it at the start of your turn. Each player can score each battlefield only once per turn.

Under the final point rule, the last point is harder to get. When you are one point from winning, a conquer gives you the final point only if you have scored every battlefield that turn, and otherwise you draw a card instead. In a Duel you therefore win by holding a battlefield as your turn begins, or by scoring both battlefields in one turn. A player who has to draw from an empty Main Deck burns out: their trash is shuffled back into their Main Deck and their opponent gains a point.

What is the best way to play a first game?

A first game is easiest with ready-made decks, which let both players learn the turn before deck building. The Proving Grounds box suits it well: it holds four decks that are ready to play, the Annie deck among them, and a How to Play booklet that teaches the game from the setup to the winning point. The quickest way to learn the rules is to play a first game with ready-made decks and to look up the rest when a card asks for it.

Riftbound can also be played by three or four players, in game modes that use three battlefields instead of two and change the first turn. When you are ready for a deck of your own, the units page and the battlefields page show the cards that do the fighting and the places they fight over, and the deck builder checks your deck as you build it.