How does the mulligan work?

Every game of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game starts with a hand of only four cards. Four cards that all cost too much can leave you with nothing to play for the first few turns, so the rules give each player one chance to fix a bad start. That chance is called the mulligan, and it lets you swap up to two of your four cards for new ones.

The mulligan is the last step of the setup. It comes after the Legends, chosen champions and battlefields are in place, the decks are shuffled, the first player is known and everyone has drawn four cards.

What are the steps of a mulligan?

A mulligan has three steps, which the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub set out in rule 117.

1. Choose. You pick up to two cards from your hand and set them aside.
2. Draw. You draw as many cards from your main deck as you set aside.
3. Recycle. You put the cards you set aside on the bottom of your main deck. Two cards go there in a random order.

You choose before you see the new cards, and each player gets one mulligan only. If the new cards are no better, you keep them anyway. You may also choose no cards at all and keep the hand you drew. Either way, you start the game with four cards in hand.

Because you draw before the cards you set aside go back into the deck, you can never draw the same card straight back. The How to Play booklet in the Proving Grounds box names the recycling first, but the Core Rules, which are the complete rules, put the draw first.

Who takes their mulligan first?

Players take their mulligans one after another in turn order, so the player who goes first decides first. Turn order is settled before anyone draws a card, so you always know whether you go first or second when you choose what to keep.

That is worth knowing, because the first turn is not the same for everyone. In a one-on-one game, the player who goes second channels three runes instead of two on their first turn, so a card that costs 3 Energy can be played right away. In Skirmish for three players and in War and Magma Chamber for four, the player who goes first does not draw a card on their first turn. The mulligan itself works the same way in every game mode.

Is your chosen champion part of the opening hand?

No. Your chosen champion starts the game face up in the Champion Zone, and you can play it from there just like a card in your hand. It never has to be drawn, and it cannot be sent back with a mulligan. Your Legend starts the game in play in the Legend Zone, so it is not part of the hand either.

This means you can count the champion as a fifth card when you judge your opening hand. A deck led by Loose Cannon, the Legend of Jinx, might choose Jinx, Demolitionist, which costs 3 Energy and one Power of the Fury domain and is there to be played as soon as the runes allow. The Core Rules allow that choice because a chosen champion must be a champion unit whose tag matches the tag of the Legend, and both cards have the tag Jinx (rule 103.3.a.2).

Where do the cards you send back go?

The cards you send back go to the bottom of your main deck, and the deck is not shuffled again before play begins. A main deck has at least 40 cards, one of them the chosen champion, so a deck of exactly 40 cards has 39 cards to shuffle. After you draw four and replace two, the two cards you sent back lie under 33 others, and you reach them only after drawing all 33.

Sending back a card your deck badly needs therefore means playing most of the game without it, unless another copy turns up.

Which cards should you keep in an opening hand?

As a rule of thumb, keep the cards you can play in your first two or three turns and send back the ones you cannot. You start the game with no runes and channel two on each of your turns, so if you go first you have two runes on your first turn, four on your second and six on your third. Units matter most early on, because almost every point comes from a battlefield and a unit is what takes and holds one.

Here is an example for a deck led by Loose Cannon, which plays Fury and Chaos cards. The opening hand holds Pouty Poro, Treasure Hunter, Magma Wurm and Eclipse Dragon.

Pouty Poro and Treasure Hunter cost 2 Energy each, so you can play one on your first turn and the other on your second. Magma Wurm and Eclipse Dragon cost 8 Energy each, and with two new runes a turn a deck cannot pay 8 Energy before its fourth turn without help from other cards. The usual choice is to keep the two small units and send the two big ones back.

Not every hand is that clear. A spell that deals damage to a unit is often worth keeping as well, because you will need it once enemy units reach the battlefields. A mulligan cannot find cheap cards that a deck does not have, so a deck with plenty of them, as a good Energy curve has, leaves you fewer hard choices.

What happens if you get the mulligan wrong at an event?

The Tournament Rules dated 9 October 2026, which apply from 16 October 2026 and are on the Rules Hub, call a wrong mulligan a Mulligan Procedure Error, with a Warning as its penalty (rule 702.14). If a player replaced more than two cards, the next opponent in turn order looks at that player's hand and may pick up to one card for each card replaced beyond the two allowed. The player then recycles the picked cards and draws new ones. If the mistake comes to light only after the game has started, play simply goes on.

The same version lets players read the notes they made before the match between games, during sideboarding and after the battlefields are revealed, but they must stop once the opening hands are drawn, before anyone takes a mulligan (rule 416.5).

What comes after the mulligan?

As soon as every player has finished their mulligan, the first player takes the first turn (rule 118). Every turn begins with the Awaken, Beginning, Channel and Draw Phases, so in a one-on-one game the first player channels two runes and draws a fifth card before they can play anything. To plan your own opening hands, the units page can be sorted by Energy cost, and the deck builder draws the Energy curve of a deck while you build it.