How to Play: Get Started Now

Welcome to Riftbound! 

Riftbound is the League of Legends trading card game, a game for 2-4 players where you choose your champion and send them alongside your army and your spells to take control of battlefields and win!

How do you play Riftbound?

If you’re familiar with TCGs already and want to jump right in, you can find instructions on how to play here.

If you’re new to this type of game, don’t worry—Riftbound is easy to learn and you’ll be ready to battle in no time.

Choose Your Champion

To play Riftbound, you’ll need a deck. (You can build one from scratch, or you can start with a preconstructed deck and swap out cards as you collect more, learn more, and develop your own strategy.)

The most important card in your deck is your champion legend. This is the card you build your deck around—it determines your options for the chosen champion who starts faceup on the board and who you’ll send to fight for you, and it defines the domains (colors) of your deck’s cards. (In Origins, all Legends have two domains to build around.)

Your legend and your chosen champion define your strategy. Maybe your plan is quick strikes, maybe it's to build up an unstoppable huge army, or maybe it’s to use one incredibly powerful and mobile fighter. You’ll have additional units (and other champion units) to send to fight, spells to help them win, and even gear to empower your team.

Win Battlefields to Win the Game

Each player brings a battlefield as part of their deck, but once the game starts they are all up for grabs. You’ll move your champion and other units to take control of battlefields over the course of the game. Each time you do, you’ll score a point, and if you can keep control, each new turn you’ll score another one. When you get to 8 points (or 11 in a team game), you win!

Of course, it isn’t always easy to take control of a battlefield. If your opponent already controls it, then your army and theirs fight! Units use their might (or combat strength) to deal damage to opposing units. If you’re the only one with units standing at the end of the fight, you win the battle and take control of the battlefield.

Fuel Your Power with Runes

All of these powerful cards don’t come for free. Each of the cards in your deck have a cost that you pay with resource cards called runes that come from a separate side deck. 

Each turn, you’ll get two new runes, and they can be used in two ways: You can turn them sideways and use them up temporarily to pay for normal costs, or you can use them up completely by returning them to your rune deck to pay for more powerful cards. (Don’t worry, they’ll be back!)

The Journey’s Just Begun

This has just been a taste of how to play Riftbound. Are you hungry for more details, maybe a deeper explanation?

To continue your Riftbound journey, take a look here to get the full download. 

See you on the Rift!