Halloween's Going to be Fun!
So Riftbound is a new TCG based off the game League of Legends, and I am so incredibly hype. I'm not a League fan, mind you, the game's just that cool. I heard about the rules sometime early to mid 2025 (this is being written the week before it releases on Halloween 2025), and played it with folks at my local game store when the demo decks come in. And let me tell you, I've only gottne more excited each time I've played.
What's The Deal?
So you're probably wondering what makes Riftbound so great, including for someone like me who hasn't played League or watched Arcane. First off, it's different! While a lot (and I mean a lot) of TCGs are about taking down your opponent or their partners to win, Riftbound isn't! Instead, you have to take and hold control of different battlefields to earn points. This is a fun difference, and I am always down to shake things up.
That's The Big Thing, but honestly the game has several things going for it. First off, let's talk resources. When I say that, I'm referring to the things you use to get to play or use your cards. Think lands in Magic or energy in Pokémon. In Riftbound, we've got runes. They're part of a separate 12 card deck, and you bring out 2 per turn. This isn't revolutionary by itself, reminding me of One Piece's don (almost the same, edxcept there's 1 type of resource instead of Riftbound's 6). What's sick is how they're used. So you can exhaust (turn em to the side) runes to make Energy to pay for numerical costs for cards and such. Some cards and abilities, however, have symbols in their costs. That's Power, and is made by recycling (putting on the bottom of the deck) runes. So it's a game of undoing your own ramp at the right moments. You don't get mana screwed unless you jump the gun, and you can recycle a rune you already exhausted for Energy to get Power out of it too!! This is my favorite resource system in any TCG.
Of course, having good resources wouldn't matter if the cards aren't fun to play. They're solid, having an amount of card types that feels solid. Each deck has a Legend that has some ability you can use throughout the game and determines which colors (or domains) of cards you can use in your deck, units to move around, gear to have abilities not on a body, spells to do something just once, and of course the battlefields. That's right, the battlefields you're vying for are what you bring!
Each battlefield has its own ability, and each player brings a battlefield. This is huge. Each game will differ because of the players bringing their own battlefields, and you don't necessarily know what to expect! They apply for everyone, but of course you can get ahead by picking battlefields suited to your deck. The demo decks do this wonderfully. Viktor has a go wide tokens deck and a battlefield that lets you win the game by starting your turn with a bunch of units on it. Volibear, on the other hand, has a deck that relies on ramp and big cost cards and has a battlefield that makes you recycle a rune when you conquer it. I'm in love with how these work. It's like if you got to bring the tumult cards for Altered (this would have. wild implications there so don't think on this too hard).
It is taking me time to get used to the timing, admittedly. The timing tl;dr is that everything's done at "sorcery speed" (on your turn when nothing's going on, just using magic phrasing for convenience), but some cards and abilities have Action (can be done at a designated time when you're facing off against someone at a battlefield) or Reaction (can be done in response to anything). For those other timings, they also can be played at the times before them. I do dig it, I'm just used to Magic timing and expect someone to be able to use abilities whenever lol.
Final Thoughts
Overall, the game's very solid! It scratches an itch by being so different and using things I've seen elsewhere in such fulfilling ways. I really look forward to playing the game more and being able to build my own paper decks. I'm considering going for the judge program too, since a friend recommended it and I had a solid grasp on the rules (I've since read them front to back, the Core Rules doc is formatted well). My wallet's sobbing, but I'm happy!
If this interested you, you can check out the official site here, which is where I got the images. The rules can be found on this news article, and ideally they'll have their own page someday soon. And while I'm throwing out links, shoutout to Piltover Archive, a fan-made card database and deck builder.