Eyes On Houston - What to Know

We’re only days away from our first English Regional Qualifier taking place in Houston, Texas! With more than 1,300 players signed up to compete in the main event, and many more battling in side events, we wanted to share more about the weekend, the tournament, rules for the game and the event, and how you can tune-in from home! We know there’s been frustrations as we take this exciting step for Riftbound, we hear you and we’ll be working to ensure it only gets better from here.

With that in mind, let’s start with a TL;DR:

• There are a lot of awesome and exciting things for players to chase as part of the Regional Qualifier main event, from the prize pool to the Best-Of Prizing!
• We’ve brought in a great line-up of talented casters to cover this event, which will be streamed on Riftbound’s Twitch & YouTube channels.
• We’re also launching @RiftboundOP on X as a new social account dedicated to Riftbound’s Organized Play!
• Judges will be at the event to help handle any gameplay issues you have during the weekend!
• We have modified the Missed Trigger policy for Riftbound starting with this event.

If you leave with those five key points in your mind, we’ll have at least accomplished some of our goals. But we hope you’ll keep reading… otherwise the Poro we assigned to write this might start worrying.

But first, a message for Houston competitors! Watch your inboxes for further communication from UVS about the event and what you need to know. The article will still be useful to you, but we won’t be covering registration and other aspects of competing this weekend.

What’s At Stake

As Lee Sin would say, “Endless trials await!”

There's a $25,000 prize pool for this first event, and the winner will take home a whopping $6,000! If you finish through 32nd place, you’ve also got a prize payout coming your way. 

And there’s more than just prize money on the line! There’s also glory. When you score a place in the Houston Regional Qualifier, you etch your name in Riftbound History and help define this game's new meta. 
Competing in a Regional Qualifier is also your first step to Riftbound’s competitive scene, with top finishers qualifying (see what we did there with the event name?) for the Regional Championship, and then top finishers from there qualifying for the first ever Riftbound World Championship!

Best-Of Prizing

There’s more than one way to make history at Houston. Even if you don’t finish first, we are celebrating every player who gets the furthest with each of Riftbound’s champions. That’s why we’re excited to have “Best-Of Prizing” at Riftbound events. Recognizing each player who is the best of their champion.
For each of the 16 Champion Legends from Riftbound: Origins and Proving Grounds that are legal in this event, the competitor who finishes highest using that champion receives a unique holographic metal version of their Champion’s Legend card, (which is also tournament playable!)

Coverage Information

We’re thrilled to bring this amazing lineup of casters, analysts, and Riftbound designers, to provide coverage for RQ Houston.

Coverage for both days will stream starting at 11am Central / 9am Pacific / 5pm GMT / 1am CST on Riftbound’s YouTube and Twitch channels. Be sure to follow the channels so you know when the stream is happening!

Launching @RiftboundOP on X

Along with the streamed coverage, we are also excited to introduce @RiftboundOP as the primary social channel for coverage and content out of these weekends. It will be managed by the team at UVS.

Follow it for updates, results, player interviews, and more behind-the-scenes content from the event! But, in addition to that, @RiftboundOP will be a source for news and updates regarding, well, Riftbound Organized Play! From Nexus Nights to Skirmish Series to Regional Qualifiers and even Worlds!

Lastly, we’re asking fans to post on social media using #RQHouston for posts relating to this event to help the community follow the conversations!

Tournament Procedures & Integrity

Riftbound is a new game and we have seen many questions about card interactions, rules, text, and the tournament rules. We love seeing how many of you are diving into competitive Riftbound play and we’re dedicated to building out and supporting it in many ways. One way we’re doing so is giving more transparency around, and more updates for, the tournament rules of the game. 

In case you missed it, there was a new release for the game’s rules today. Those updates were written to align with Spiritforged’s upcoming release. However, we’re not going to stick to just updating the rules with set releases for the next while.

Starting in January, we will be aiming to release updates to the Tournament rules on a roughly monthly cadence. Some updates may extend to six weeks, while others may be as short as three weeks, and some months we may not feel the need to make any updates, but we want to set expectations now that Riftbound’s rules documents are living resources as we work to be the best stewards of the game. And, as Riftbound grows, and the competitive scene matures, we will evaluate whether to slow this cadence down or not.

Our goal is that these new tournament rules updates will always roll out at least two weeks before they go into effect, to try and minimize the risk of players not being aware of these updates before attending an event.

That said, sometimes we need to move quicker than is ideal, and sometimes in tandem with what else is going on. Such as today and that Spiritforged rules update.

We’ve seen the conversations going on regarding the missed trigger rules and penalties, we’ve also heard directly from players and judges; so we’re going to have an example of Riftbound’s rules agility this weekend for Houston with an update to how they are handled. This update is not reflected in the rules updates which were also posted today along with this article, as that rules update document was handed off prior to the holidays here in the US.

However, we will get the tournament rules document updated ahead of the January update to reflect the below changes and bring us back into sync.

Missed Trigger Policy

Something which will be officially reflected in the January Tournament rules update is a change to the rules for missing triggers, however we aren’t waiting until then to put this change into action. This will be in effect for RQ Houston. There are a few elements to this change, but the short version of it is that the rules regarding announcing triggers are being modified to be slightly more lenient.

Rule 506.3 currently states that “Players must announce their triggers when they occur.” This is going to be updated that “Players must announce their triggers when it has an observable impact on the game.”
An “observable impact” refers to any known change to the game’s board state (e.g. buffing a unit or exhausting a rune) or contents of a zone (e.g. drawing a card), etc. 

We know this may be confusing for players, so here are a few examples:

• Ravenbloom Student receiving the +1 - This trigger does not need to be called out until it matters, combat, taking damage, etc.
• Thousand-Tailed Watcher’s Play effect giving minuses to enemy unites - Also does not need to be called out until it matters.
• The battlefield The Arena’s Greatest giving each player a point on their first beginning phase does need to be called out as gaining a point is an impact on the game.
• The rune channeling ability from the battlefield Obelisk of Power is also an observable trigger that impacts the game and you must identify the trigger.

We’ll review how the tournament proceeds with this change, what issues judges report as ones players face, and take those learnings into the January update for our tournament rules.

Now Let’s Talk About Houston

That said, we have an event coming in just a few days, so let’s dive into discussions more directly pertinent for this weekend’s event.

We treat competitive integrity with the utmost importance and expect players to do the same. This means that this is a competitive event and players are expected to understand the rules and how their decks operate.

It’s important to know that not every mistake in a game will result in a game loss or match loss, many of them will simply receive ‘Warnings’ from judges. Warnings are simply records of mistakes having taken place. For low level mistakes, only after a player receives multiple warnings for a mistake will it be upgraded to a game loss, as is defined in Riftbound’s tournament rules.

As many of you know, our partners at UVS have been in the earliest phases of rolling out the Riftbound judging program. We’re incredibly excited that the very first fruits of this will be seen in Houston as judges work the event.

These judges will not only be on the floor of the tournament, but there will also be judges assigned to monitor the Feature match area in Houston. Mistakes will still happen, but when they’re caught, they will be adjudicated by the Regional Qualifier judge staff.

With all of that said, here are a few things that we felt reminding players about would offer outsized impacts to avoid issues this weekend:

1. Be careful, be precise, and be communicative. Exhausting cards sloppily on messy board states, moving cards between areas, and not announcing triggers, are the majority of the mistakes we have observed in competitive play up to this point. Communication is key; ensuring that both players clearly understand what is going on throughout the game solves many issues.
2. Pay costs first, and be clear about your targets and decisions. When playing a card, make sure the costs are all paid before going into targeting or resolution for the card. Announcing your costs verbally also helps make explicit what you’re doing to your opponent. “I'll exhaust four runes and recycle a Body rune to play Qiyana.”
3. Maintain a proper pace of play. As we said above, we know it is both a young game and a nascent competitive scene, meaning that many players are still learning the rules and also may not have experience playing at competitive Riftbound events. As such, there will be some leeway here for the RQ in Houston, but players must act in a reasonable time. If you feel your opponent is not maintaining the proper pace of play then call a judge.
4. Call a judge and be understanding if your opponent calls a judge. Judges are here to help an event run smoothly. If something has gone awry in a game then the best thing to do is to immediately stop play and call a judge to check it out and, if needed, issue a ruling regarding an issue.

Call a judge and be understanding if your opponent calls a judge. Judges are here to help an event run smoothly. If something has gone awry in a game then the best thing to do is to immediately stop play and call a judge to check it out and, if needed, issue a ruling regarding an issue.

Frequently Asked Rules Questions

We’ve collected some answers to commonly asked questions about the Core Game Rules and the Tournament Rules, to help players going into this weekend’s event.

In Closing

There’s a lot here. We’re so incredibly excited to see the Riftbound community come together this weekend in Houston, but we know many of you aren’t able to join us. You can follow along on coverage and plan to get involved at some of our future events. We announced the next two RQs at PAX Unplugged (Bologna, February 20-22nd, 2026 & Las Vegas, February 27-March 1st, 2026), stay tuned for when those badges will go on sale and for more information on the entire RQ slate reveal next year. 

We can’t wait to see what the community cooks up with their decks for this weekend’s RQ. We’ll take our learnings from this show and be eager to bring the next iteration of our rules to you all in January.

We are eager to hear your thoughts and feedback about the game. Many Rioters and UVS Staff will be at the event in Houston, come talk to us if you’re going to be there, or if not then come talk to us in the community Discord, or on Reddit, or elsewhere on Social media! We are eager to hear your thoughts on how to make this game even better!

Lastly, we just want to finish by saying thank you for being part of our amazing community. The energy, excitement, and creativity we’re already seeing are a huge source of motivation for us and we couldn’t do this without you. So, whether we’ll see you in Houston, or in your LGS - thank you! 

GLHF!