What is in the Proving Grounds box?

Proving Grounds is the starter box of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game. It is made for two to four people who have never played, and it holds what they need for a first game: four decks that are ready to shuffle, a booklet that teaches the rules and the pieces to lay out on the table. Proving Grounds came out in English on 31 October 2025, the same day as Origins, the first set.

What comes in the Proving Grounds box?

The box holds four decks and the pieces to play them with. Every box holds the same four decks, and there are no booster packs in it.

How is each Proving Grounds deck put together?

Every deck in the box follows the plan of any Riftbound deck: one Legend, a Main Deck of 40 cards and a Rune Deck of 12 runes. The Legend decides the two domains of the deck, and the runes are split six and six between those two domains. Each deck plays with one battlefield, and the box holds those four battlefields as oversized cards.

• The Annie deck is Fury and Chaos. Its Legend is Dark Child and its battlefield is Void Gate.
• The Garen deck is Body and Order. Its Legend is Might of Demacia and its battlefield is Trifarian War Camp.
• The Lux deck is Mind and Order. Its Legend is Lady of Luminosity and its battlefield is Startipped Peak.
• The Master Yi deck is Calm and Body. Its Legend is Wuju Bladesman and its battlefield is Fortified Position.

Each Main Deck holds two copies of each of its champion's two champion units, so the player can pick either one as the Chosen Champion, and two copies of the champion's signature card. The booklet recommends a Chosen Champion for every deck, such as Annie, Fiery for the Annie deck.

The decks differ from a tournament deck in one way. In a Duel under the official rules (Core Rules, rule 487.4), each player brings three battlefields with different names and one of them is picked at random, while each Proving Grounds deck brings one. Riot designed the four decks for balanced matchups, but the four Proving Grounds decks do not play alike: the Garen deck floods the battlefields with units, the Master Yi deck holds them with one strong defender, the Lux deck wins the long game with costly spells, and the Annie deck burns units with cheap spells.

Which cards are only in Proving Grounds?

Proving Grounds has 24 cards of its own, with the set code OGS and the numbers 001 to 024. They are the four Starter Legends, two champion units for each of the four champions, one signature card for each champion and eight more units and spells, such as Incinerate and Zephyr Sage. Every other card in the decks is an Origins card with its Origins number, such as Gust, Back to Back and the runes.

The four signature cards are Tibbers for Annie, Highlander for Master Yi, Final Spark for Lux and Decisive Strike for Garen.

The 24 Proving Grounds cards in the box are not foil. For their first months the 24 cards were found nowhere else. In the Spiritforged season of Nexus Night, the weekly store event, from February to May 2026, the sixteen Rares and Epics among them also came as foil promo cards in Nexus Night packs.

The Proving Grounds cards are legal in Standard, the constructed format of organized play, just like the cards of Origins (Tournament Rules 601.3.c.1). A deck may hold up to three copies of a card with the same name (Core Rules 103.3.b), a champion unit included, but the box gives two of each. A player who wants a third copy needs a second box or a single card. Single cards come from local game stores and from online marketplaces: Cardmarket in Europe, TCGplayer in the United States and CardTrader on both sides of the Atlantic. Today a single Annie, Fiery sells for $4.09.

What are the figures, game boards and battlefields for?

The four acrylic figures show Annie, Master Yi, Lux and Garen, and Riot made them to keep track of who is winning. Each figure has two faces: a happy one for when its champion is ahead and a grumpy one for when it is not.

The four game boards are playmats, one for each player, so a first game can be laid out without a mat of your own. The four oversized battlefields are the battlefields the decks play with, printed larger than the other cards. They are Fortified Position for the Master Yi deck, Startipped Peak for the Lux deck, Trifarian War Camp for the Garen deck and Void Gate for the Annie deck, and they carry the same text as the battlefields of the same names in Origins.

What does the How to Play booklet teach?

The How to Play booklet has 24 pages and teaches the game from the goal to the end of a fight: the parts of a deck, the setup, the steps of a turn, moving and conquering, and combat. It explains how to play with two, three or four players, including a game of two teams of two played to 11 points. Its last pages hold the four decklists with a recommended strategy for each Legend. A part called Beyond Proving Grounds covers the rules the four decks leave out, such as gear, Hidden, stun and buffs.

The booklet calls the main part of a turn the Action Phase. The official Core Rules call it the Main Phase, which is the name used everywhere else, including in this guide. The full Core Rules are on Riot's Rules Hub.

What does Proving Grounds cost, and is it still made?

Riot reprinted Proving Grounds in 2026, and it counts the box among its ancillary products, which are sold in stores and can be reprinted when Riot sees the need (State of the Game of 3 August 2026). The box had a launch price of $29.99, and the launch price of the reprint, which a different printer made, is $39.99. Today the box sells for $53.13. In its merch store update of 8 January 2026, Riot said that the cards of the reprint can look slightly different from those of the first printing, but that its own developers could not reliably tell them apart once the cards were sleeved.

Riot has announced a second box, Proving Grounds, 2nd Edition, with its release on 19 February 2027. It holds four new decks built around Heimerdinger, Karma, Vladimir and Illaoi, champions of Legacy, the sixth set, with its release on 29 January 2027. It comes with four oversized battlefields, four paper playmats, four chibi score trackers and a rulebook. Riot has announced it at $40 and has said that it will hold no card that cannot also be found in booster packs.

Is Proving Grounds a good first product?

Proving Grounds is the easiest first product for two to four people who want to learn together. Nobody has to build a deck, the four decks are made to be even against each other, and the booklet teaches the rules in the order a game needs them. A single player who only needs one deck to play against friends who already have one may be better served by a Champion Deck, one complete deck at a launch price of $19.99.

The Proving Grounds page in the products guide shows the box with each of its decks card for card, and the Proving Grounds card list holds all 24 of its own cards.