April 2026 Tournament Rules Update & Changelog

Updates to Riftbound’s tournament rules explained.
Announcements

Hey Riftbounders, Vriss back again with another Tournament Rules Update!

Today’s update is a little lighter, focused mostly on cleaning up rough edges and clarifying points of confusion. As always, we’ve been monitoring events of all levels so we can adjust the Tournament Rules to make them the best they can be. We have really appreciated everyone’s feedback and investment in the inner workings that make our events tick; we couldn’t do it without you! Let’s dive in:

View the newest Tournament Rules document.

Clarifying 2v2 Information Sharing

As more players team up and get involved in 2v2 Riftbound, we’ve noticed some confusion around what information you can share with your teammate during gameplay. As defined in the Core Rules, you are allowed to share private information, including directly showing the cards from your hand, to your teammate (or any player for that matter!) We think it is important for teammates to be able to effectively communicate and work together, and we’ve added language to the tournament rules to further enforce that.

What to do When a Game is a Draw

While naturally drawing games in Riftbound is very unlikely, we wanted to add some more information just in case. This applies to both intentional and unintentional draws for individual games. For the next game:

  • Reuse the same Main Deck/Sideboard configuration as the previous game.
  • Reuse the same Battlefields as the previous game.
  • Reuse the same turn order as the previous game.

Banned Cards and Preconstructed Decks

Riftbound’s last series of updates introduced our first banned list. While these bans were made for the overall health of the Constructed metagame, they also impacted Jinx’s preconstructed Riftbound Champion Deck. We think it is extremely important for a new player interested in Riftbound to be able to buy a Champion Deck and be able to use it immediately to participate in Nexus Nights.

To facilitate this, at Casual organized play level, players using the exact deck list of a preconstructed Riftbound product will be permitted to use any banned cards in those decks. Once a player wants to make a change to cards in the deck, including adding a sideboard, they must remove the banned cards.

General Cleanup

With each iteration of the tournament rules, we look to upgrade the clarity and consistency of our infraction/penalty system. This update improves upon:

  • Penalties at Low OPL
    • Choices that need to be made by an opponent for a remedy are now always made randomly by the judge instead.
  • Looking at Extra Cards
    • Reworked this penalty to be more distinct from Looking at Secret Information and have clearer use cases/remedies.
  • Deck Presentation Error
    • Added additional language to cover more situations where a player’s deck size is incorrect. This error now also includes when a player stores cards in their deck box that should not be there.
  • Outside Assistance
    • Extended this infraction to the player providing the assistance if they are also a competitor in the event.
  • Unsporting Major
    • Reworded language and added examples of zero tolerance behavior.

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Changelog

  • Clarifying 2v2 information sharing
    • Added 502.11. to clarifying information sharing in 2v2 and direct to the relevant part of the Core Rules.
  • Slight change to remedies at low OPL
    • Changed 702.1.c.1. to be mandatorily random by a judge at low OPL.
  • Clarifying Gameplay Decisions
    • Removed “a judge allows it” from 509.4. As ultimately judge approval is implicit if players disagree and having this language was more confusing than helpful.
  • Clarifying Draws
    • Added/fixed 403.9.-403.11. to cover restricting sideboarding after a drawn game or game skipped by a penalty.
    • Added reference to sideboard section in 406.1.a.
    • Added new 406.1.b. to clarify using the same battlefield after a drawn game, renumbered the rest of the section to compensate.
    • Updated reference in 406.1.g.7. to reflect numbering updates, 406.1.c.-406.1.e.3.
  • Ban Updates
    • Added 601.2.d.1. to link to banlist.
    • Added 601.2.d.2. and 601.2.d.2.a. to allow precons with banned cards to be used at low OPL.
  • Looking at extra cards rework
    • Updated this error to be clearer where it applies and how to remedy it.
    • Reworded 702.5., 702.5.a., 702.5.b. And 702.5.c.1.
    • Added sub bullets 702.5.b.1., 702.5.c.1.a. and 702.5.c.2.
  • Deck Presentation Error
    • Expanded examples in 703.4.a.4.
    • Added 703.4.a.5. and 703.4.a.5.a. to cover having extra cards not on your deck list stored in your deck box.
  • Outside Assistance
    • Added new 703.9.c. to extend this penalty to the assistance giver if they are also in the event, renumbered following bullets to compensate.
  • Unsporting Major
    • Reworded 704.3.a.1. - 704.3.a.3.
    • Added 704.3.a.4.
  • Correcting numbering error
    • Renumbered 509.4.c.1. from mistaken numbering 509.4.c.1.1.