Welcome to Riftbound’s first official Rules Update Patch! This will be a big one—not necessarily because of the volume of changes or shifts in how players playing already are going to be interacting with the game, but because it is the first time we are changing our Official Rules Documents (ORD)! This patch is specifically updating the Core Rules (CR) and not the Tournament Rules (TR), and the following changes will go over the broad areas of interest in more detail.

These notes are not comprehensive or exhaustive, but meant to draw attention to the most broad areas of focus so we have a stage to discuss intent and clarify the point of the largest and most sweeping changes in the document. If we had a line item for every comma and other punctuation change, this article would begin to rival some sections of the rules themselves.

Before diving in: It may seem odd for us to be delivering changes to a card game as “Patch Notes.” We get it. However we wanted to keep you, our players, informed and up to date on our intentions and thinking about the game. Given that we already do things a little differently, and a patch note format is something we have experience writing, why not format things this way?

Origins has already had the initial rules release, the FAQ, and now this update. That’s because it’s the first set and we’re still getting our rules situated. We anticipate a more regular rules update cadence in the future.

You may have already seen the [FAQ] we posted a few weeks ago. A lot of that information is repeated in these notes, as the Core Rules now reflect the rules that inform those answers. A very small amount of that information is explicitly contradicted in these notes and in the new rules, as our continuing work on the rules led us to different conclusions. We’ll point it out explicitly when that’s the case.

Contents of this Patch

As previously mentioned,  these notes are not a comprehensive changelog, but instead the grouping of major points of change to the rules players should be aware of.

Many rules have changed their number as a result of this. Some rules are new, and are numbered for the first time. Some entire sections may have moved. For the most part, changes of this nature are not mentioned here.

The rules updates and clarifications from our recent [FAQ] are present and iterated in these notes, such as the addition of pending chain items, triggered abilities evaluating their conditions based on the destination of the triggering game object, the implications of individual card errata, and more.

However there are also new clarifications and changes that were not mentioned in the FAQ that are important to go over! Those are detailed below. These changes have been detailed to the community directly in some cases. In other cases they are rules interactions and cases we caught ourselves and wanted to make crystal clear. 

Patch Notes

New Silver Rules

Our Silver Rules are where we want to express broad rules and concepts across the game that are nearly always true. Considering cards often supersede them, and exceptions are very common, Silver Rules are where we keep the concepts that have vanishingly few exceptions. Not zero, but few. We have two more to add because of how often we found ourselves repeating them.

• NEW RULE: Can’t beats can.
• NEW RULE: “Do as much as you can”, otherwise known as DAMAYC.

Adjustments to Foundational Definitions

We have some housekeeping to get out of the way, mostly consisting of us clarifying existing rules and making sure implied rules were written out explicitly. 

• Clarified: You cannot ready something that is already ready. It can be targeted with an effect that will ready it, but it will not become ready for the sake of triggers or other game effects. This was already spelled out for exhaust, so ready should match.
• Clarified: Domain Identity is keyed off of Champion Legend.
• Clarified: Corrected vague language in the rules regarding Domain.
• Clarified: A player’s Chosen Champion is not one specific piece of cardboard, but any Champion Unit with the same name as the Chosen Champion that began the game in the Champion Zone.
• Clarified: The Champion Zone has a maximum occupancy of 1.
• Clarified: The Main Deck is secret information.
  • It is a secret to everyone.
• Clarified: When cards are returned to players’ hands, they are returned to their owners’ hands only. 
  • You might be friends enough to share, but that isn’t a game mechanic.
• Clarified: When cards are recycled, they are only recycled by their owner, regardless of which player is instructed to recycle them.

Minor Deckbuilding Clarification

• Clarified: Players cannot have duplicate battlefields among their 3 battlefields.
• New Rule: In 2v2, partners cannot include the same battlefield across both of their decks.

This is something many players intuited, but it wasn’t made directly clear. We want battlefields to be a source of variance and expression, and that is undermined if both players bring the same battlefield—worse if they each bring three of the same battlefield. We played it this way internally and simply overlooked its definition in the rules. So it is now clear and outlined as intent.

Speaking of 2v2 rules…

2v2 Adjustments

There are a few clarifications and new rules for 2v2. We want players on teams to act as one unit, and to that end we want them to consider things in a combined and intentional way when approaching this way of playing.

• NEW RULE: Allied players cannot repeat battlefields in their decks.
  • Already said this, but it bore repeating
• NEW RULE: Players cannot have the same Champion Legend as their partner.
  • This was how we tested and played internally, and is a key thought behind the intent of how players approach this format.
• CLARIFIED: Partners win or lose together. This means one player conceding has their partner lose as well.
• Rule 650: No change
• Card Details
  • CLARIFIED: Cards with subtitles have the subtitles as part of their name.
  • CLARIFIED: References to cards’ costs always mean their base cost.
  • NEW RULE: Defined Tags, Domains, Types, and Supertypes.
  • CLARIFIED: More clearly defined details about shorthands for Exhaust and Might.
  • CLARIFIED: Clearly defined shorthand for Domains.

We made a bunch of definitions more easy to find, and less needed to intuit. Now it is easy to follow along with the way we write out cards in plaintext without needing to know the arcane secrets of letters and brackets. We just let everyone in on the Card Cant.

Damage, Deal, and Heal

• NEW RULE: Damage is now defined.
  • It is really weird we didn’t do this before. Seems like we all might be a little bit game-rotted.
• NEW RULE: Deal is now defined as a game action.
• NEW RULE: Heal is now defined as a game action.
  • Also weird that these weren’t defined, but now they are!

Bonus Damage

• CLARIFIED: Bonus Damage is now properly defined.
• CLARIFIED: More clearly defined how Bonus Damage interacts with the Deal action.

Bonus Damage for the most part was an easily understood fantasy. If Void Seeker normally deals 4 damage and is dealing 1 Bonus Damage, now it deals 5. However we needed more explicit and detailed rules about how it should interact with our more complex spells and abilities, and the rules were vague in those sections. So we clarified the intent here.

Removal of Relevant Players and the Invite Mechanic in FFA 

Please put down the torches and pitchforks. We get to the first intentionally functional change and it is one that will be divisive but bear with us. This was not an easy decision for us, as every time we explained the “Relevant Player” system for Free-For-All, players’ eyes would light up with the potential. The idea of being invited to betray their friends, or the decisions for table politics—they obviously felt all that was exciting and interesting, and we agree!

However, in practice these rules instead created situations where players were powerless to defend themselves in FFA games, and that is a worse situation. We are removing the system wholesale because, as we are fond of saying, the juice is not worth the squeeze. 

• REMOVAL: Concept of “Relevant Players” has been stricken from the Core Rules.
• CLARIFIED: All players always have agency to act during Showdowns and Chains in all modes.

Basic Rune Abilities

• CLARIFIED: Basic rune abilities have Reaction.
  • They always did.
  • We forgot.

Pending and Finalizing

This is a topic we discussed in our recent FAQ, but now we have the full rules available for perusal. The process is detailed as well as the result. The process has its own acronym, FEPR, and the outcome, pending and finalizing, has helped us sequence and control our unique method of card effects and sequencing consistently.

One thing to note is that there is one functional change amidst this new system that has a notable impact on players already familiar with the existing rules: Players can now refuse Deflect costs incurred by triggered abilities. This will result in the triggered ability failing to finalize on the chain. 

• NEW SYSTEM: Pending and finalizing have been added and detailed. For a more detailed explanation, please see the [FAQ].
• NEW SYSTEM: FEPR: Finalize, Execute, Pass, Resolve. This is the process through which chains are resolved and has been detailed.
  • Felicia Fifer FEPR’d a Flute of Fixin’s
• NEW RULE: Triggered abilities that incur a cost when put on the chain may be refused. This will cause them to fail to be finalized.

Reflexive Triggers

Reflexive triggers are now clearly communicated. These were also discussed in our recent [FAQ]. Notable is that we have clarified when triggered abilities from spells are still part of the spell—and when they are not.

• NEW RULE: Defined reflexive triggers and how to identify them.
• NEW RULE: Defined how reflexive triggers interact with Bonus Damage.
• CLARIFIED: Made more clear that triggered abilities originating from spells are part of the spell for considerations of kill attribution, but are still abilities for the sake of effects such as “Counter a spell.”

Numbering sections

Many sections have had numbers appended to the text of their rules to clarify that they are sequentially processed:

• Steps of playing a card
• Cleanups
• Layers
• Steps of combat

The Steps of Combat

• CLARIFIED: Initial Chain population sequence (Attacker, Everyone Else, Defender)
• CLARIFIED: Focus does not pass at the end of the initial chain.
  • This is so that who gets to play first in a showdown is not reliant on whether or not there was an initial chain.
• CLARIFIED: Defined more clearly when and how the Attacker and Defender designations are gained.
• CLARIFIED: Spelled out the end of combat sequence.
• CLARIFIED: Assigning and dealing combat damage are now clearly and separately defined.
• CLARIFIED: Combat Cleanup defined as a Special Cleanup.

The steps of combat needed some attention for clarity. The sequence of how things started and ended were just vague enough to cause some confusion, and with this, and some work mentioned later to clarify around the contested status, we believe this will make the systems easier to follow for the more rules-ingrained among our players.

What’s a “Special Cleanup,” you ask? An excellent segue to the next section…

Cleanups

• CLARIFIED: Made the cleanup step as a whole much more robust—when they occur, what happens during them (and what doesn’t), and what order those things happen in.
  • They now happen all the time. Figuratively.
• NEW RULE: Cleanups occur repeatedly until a cleanup occurs with nothing of note occurring.
• NEW RULE: Introduced the concept of Special Cleanups. A Special Cleanup has unique steps inserted, and if it repeats, a normal cleanup is what repeats until nothing of note occurs.

We wanted our cleanup step to do a lot of things. Some of those things only need to happen under very specific circumstances, but others needed to happen repeatedly, almost constantly. Rather than create situations with awkward reminders or exceptions, we created the Special Cleanups with a simpler rule of thumb for players to remember: Cleanups repeat, and Special Cleanups happen once. If a Special Cleanup needs to repeat, it repeats into a normal cleanup.

Contested Status and Control

• CLARIFIED: Made more clear the process of contesting battlefields.
  • Related to Attacker and Defender designations.
• NEW RULE: Players now can’t lose control of battlefields while a battlefield is contested, even if they have no units there.
• CLARIFIED: Spelled out how control is established, and when specifically the contested status is removed from battlefields.
• CLARIFIED: Made clear that if a player moves units into a battlefield that a differing player had moved to, and opened a showdown for, the current showdown will end and a second showdown will begin alongside combat beginning.
  • We call this “surprise defense.”
• CLARIFIED: Control of a battlefield establishes control of its abilities.
• NEW RULE: Defined the concept of neutral abilities and how to handle them.
• CLARIFIED: Made it clear that control is established at the end of a non-combat showdown.

The concept of contested status is a key part of the state machine that keeps control and conquering flowing in our game. This helps make clear the logic of that machinery. We also defined a few interactions that we answered directly to the community but that weren’t entirely written in black-and-white in the CR—namely the concept of “surprise defense” and “conquering on defense,” both of which are now well documented in the rules.

Showdowns and Combat Staging

• EDIT: Combat is now “staged” instead of “pending.”
• CLARIFIED: Showdowns are now marked as staged.

This is a lexicon change to ensure ongoing clarity. Pending means more for the pending and finalize systems, so combat and showdowns are Staged going forward. Showdowns weren’t previously marked as pending but were handled similarly to pending combats, so we brought them along in the new terminology.

Targeting and Choosing

• CLARIFIED: Targeting has clear definitions.
• CLARIFIED: “Valid target” has a rote definition.
• NEW RULE: Move destinations are a required choice. This means they are required to be made at time of putting a spell or ability on the chain. It also means that you cannot choose destinations that are not valid to satisfy the conditions of a spell or ability. 

Targeting in our game is complex. This is partially because we have so many moving parts and partially because we have opted to write our cards in a way that nine times out of ten are in plain conversational language. However, this means that getting to the nitty gritty interpretation can get hairy sometimes. We can’t put a Riftbound designer in every game store to answer your targeting questions, so now the rules answer them instead.

Null Isn’t Zero 

• CLARIFIED: Clarified that unavailable numerical information always resolves to a null value rather than to 0.

This is an odd sentiment, but it can be easily understood with Baited Hook. If you target a unit with Baited Hook, and before the effect resolves that unit gets returned to your hand, then its Might is treated as null—a value that cannot be figured out. So you can’t compute Baited Hook’s ability successfully, because null + 1 is null, and no unit has null as a Might. You’ll reveal the top 5 cards of your Main Deck, but you won’t get to play any of them.

Layers

Layers! Everyone’s favorite topic. In addition to numbering these, as previously mentioned, we have done something rather radical to them. Our layers loop now! Layers in Riftbound apply repeatedly until each effect has been applied (or removed) once and layers have been evaluated with no objects changing. Loopy Layers! This helps Fiora actually work without being a paradox. Notably, we are keeping an eye on this. 

• NEW RULE: Layers apply repeatedly until all applicable effects are applied or disqualified a single time and no objects have changed during one sequence of application.
• CLARIFIED: Dependencies have been more clearly defined.
• CLARIFIED: Method of resolving dependencies have been more clearly defined.
  • These are vanishingly rare, but forearmed is forewarned.

Triggered Ability Updates

• CLARIFIED: Made clear how to identify triggered abilities, including “Nth time” abilities.
  • Notably, the terms that identify triggered abilities don’t have to appear at the start of the ability’s sentence. Sona. 
• CLARIFIED: In the case of “Nth time” triggers, when the triggering event occurs at the specified N but more than one qualifying event occurs simultaneously, the “Nth Time” trigger will only trigger once.
• CLARIFIED: Triggered abilities evaluate conditions from the destination of their object.
  • See our [FAQ] for more information on this—specifically the entries for Immortal Phoenix and Viktor, Leader.
• NEW RULE: Several common trigger shapes have been defined: Play, Conquer, Hold, Attack, and Defend abilities.
• NEW RULE: Attack and Defend triggers can happen once per combat, specifically the first time something gains the attacker or defender designation during that combat.
  • Note that this is a CHANGE from the FAQ as we further tested and iterated on the rules!

We had feedback from the community that our triggered abilities were sometimes hard to identify, so the rules now help with that. And by grouping things like “play effects” and “conquer effects,” we make it easier for rules and cards to refer to them and for players to understand what we mean (and don’t mean) when they do.

We also had some work that came out of the recent [FAQ]. We knew we wanted Attack and Defend triggers to be able to trigger even if a unit joined combat “late.” When we wrote the FAQ, we expected the rules update to allow those those triggers to potentially go off multiple times. After all, to quote our past selves, “moving a unit at Action speed isn’t easy to do, and doing it twice is even harder.” Since then, though, we decided that triggering Attack and Defend triggers multiple times didn’t feel right, and moving units repeatedly in and out of combat wasn’t something we wanted to reward. (We won’t stop you, though.)

Delayed Abilities

• NEW RULE: Defined the concept of a delayed ability and how to identify them. 
• NEW RULE: Any type of ability can be delayed. Added rules to clarify how those operate with delay.

A tool that was undefined but utilized can now be easily identified and understood.

Costs

• CLARIFIED: Made clear that replaced costs are still paid costs.

Scoring

• CLARIFIED: Conquering on defense has been clarified through the concept of contested status.

Burn Out

• CLARIFIED: Made the conditions to Burn Out more clear.
• CLARIFIED: Made the conditions to repeatedly Burn Out more clear.

Added more language to make clear the intention for Burn Out and when players should be triggering the situation. Also added examples and logistics to make clear when and how, specifically, players would hypothetically infinitely Burn Out. 

Add

• CLARIFIED: ‘Add’ abilities finalize immediately like Units and Gear.
• CLARIFIED: Focus and Priority do not pass on resolution of Add abilities.

Kill

• CLARIFIED: Kill effect definition clarified.
• CLARIFIED: Kill attribution rules clarified.

Hide/Hidden

• CLARIFIED: Cards in the Champion Zone can now use their Hidden abilities.
• CLARIFIED: Hidden costs [A], not [C].
• CLARIFIED: Hidden’s targeting restrictions have been rearticulated as part of the broader targeting changes. 
• CLARIFIED: Hidden cards gain Reaction when played from facedown—they aren’t just played as though they have it.

Hidden is one of our most complex mechanics. It allows you to hide, which is a specific action, but Hidden itself is a keyword, not an action. That is neither here nor there for this update, though, as the things most worth mentioning are related to things that occur after the card is facedown.

Of particular focus, hidden cards now gain Reaction, and the restrictions on targeting for cards played from facedown have been altered. The former is a minor change, and will not have a tangible impact on most players, but as outlined in the FAQ, the latter has a material impact to the way Zhonya’s Hourglass plays. This targeting change and change to hidden means that the card no longer restricts its replacement effect to the battlefield it was hidden at.

More details about the change are in the complete CR. This marks us trying to zero in on making Hidden play intuitively, and we anticipate authoring content in the future that leans in to the intuition as opposed to requiring players to know every gotcha and pitfall. 

Legion

• CLARIFIED: Made clear the specific differences in Legion as a spell ability, play effect, and activated ability.

Accelerate

• CLARIFIED: The cost of the ability always matches the domain of the unit that has the ability.
• CLARIFIED: If the ability is ever on a unit with no domain or more than one domain, it becomes [A].

Recall

• CLARIFIED: Recalls are only to the object’s base.
• CLARIFIED: Recalls do not affect the state of the object.
• CLARIFIED: Recalls are not moves.