Riftbound Core Rules: Unleashed Patch Notes

Welcome to the Patch Notes for Riftbound, Unleashed edition. Included in today’s update are system clarifications and expansions, fixes to many logical or procedural errors, and the new rules required to play with the mechanics included in the Unleashed expansion.

This rules update has three key goals: 

1. To support the new expansion’s cards and mechanics with rules that will explain how they function.

2. To provide some clarity on rules changes and why we make them.

3. To shore up some of our rules foundations that were unclear or in need of updating.

Our first goal for this update is to ensure that all the new cards in Unleashed work when they’re released in China on April 8th. That has involved adding new rules systems, new keywords and individual rules, as well as modifying some extant rules to support new cards and systems introduced in Unleashed. Thankfully the work done in the Spiritforged rules update allowed us to streamline some of these rules by reusing the systems introduced then.

Our second goal with the update is to explain some of the decision making being done on what rules are changed and why. The team is looking at some changes to card templating in future sets that will make cards significantly easier to understand at a glance, and we want the introduction of those changes to be a relatively smooth transition for players. In order to facilitate that, we’re starting to introduce some of the necessary rules machinery in this update. Another reason for rules changes you’ll see in this update is to manage interactions introduced with cards printed in Spiritforged that the rules were not equipped to handle. Many changes in this update were made to clarify how those interactions function and to preemptively clarify interactions with Unleashed cards.

We can’t catch every rules edge case, but the good news is that as we apply these improvements to the rules, these types of fixes will become fewer and fewer as sets go on. We are still in Riftbound’s infancy and many of the pains felt around rules and templating are a normal part of games growing and changing, ours has simply been accelerated due to the attention and the immediate growth of our competitive scene.

And although the changes you’ll see might seem big at first, the goals when the team changes our rules are the following: to make the rules more intuitive for players, and to set up future changes that will improve the game overall. We have no plans to change the rules in order to manage the power level of cards, only to make the rules more intuitive and to align them with our design goals. Some cards will receive functional changes with these rules updates, but that isn’t the goal or the reason for the change. With each update, our hope is that fewer and fewer systems will be updated or changed in a functional way.

Now, let's take a look at the changes in this update:

• Unleashed Addition: XP, Hunt, Level
  • XP is the marquee mechanic for Unleashed—players can now gain XP and unit abilities can reference that XP. 
  • XP is a resource that spells and abilities will add and spend. XP comes with a few related keywords that you will see on cards: Hunt and Level.
  • Hunt is an ability that gives its controller 1 XP when a unit with Hunt conquers or holds. Higher Hunt Value means more XP gained.
  • Some cards allow players to spend XP just like players spend energy, power, or buffs—to spend XP, reduce your XP by that much.
  • Level is a dependent keyword (more on that in a second) that becomes active when its controller has a certain amount of XP. [Level 6] means it and its dependent ability will be active when its controller has 6 XP.
  • Some Unleashed booster packs will have a card in the token slot that is designed to help players keep track of their XP.
    • NEW SYSTEM: XP
    • NEW RULE: Hunt as a keyword was added
    • NEW RULE: Level as a keyword was added

• Unleashed Addition: [>] Symbols
  • Since the Legion keyword was introduced in Origins, activated abilities with Legion have been a point of confusion. Does the Legion text only include the parts after the keyword appears? Can you activate the ability if you haven’t played a card this turn? Honestly, this has been a bit of a templating nightmare.
  • In order to better clarify how this works, and to support Level and future keywords with a similar effect, we’re adding a bit of templating magic to make things easier to understand. This is going to take the form of a small arrow pointing from the word backer of dependent and permissive keywords like Reaction, Action, Deathknell, Level, and Legion, which themselves will now come before the ability at the very start of the line. The arrowed backer indicates the ability that these keywords are associated with. That ability has those permissive keywords, or is the dependent ability of those dependent keywords. Outside of card text, this symbol will be expressed as “[>]”.
    • NEW SYSTEM: [>] Symbol added.

• Unleashed Addition: Dependent Keywords, Updated Legion
  • As mentioned above, dependent keywords are being clarified and supported in this update. We already had one dependent keyword that was printed on cards in Origins (the aforementioned Legion) and with the addition of Level it only made sense to give those keywords a bit more structure in our rules. Additionally, the Spiritforged Rules Update gave us the machinery needed to make these abilities significantly easier to understand with the concept of inactive text.
  • A dependent keyword is made up of two parts: the keyword itself, which is short for a condition, and the dependent ability that is active while the condition is fulfilled. So long as the condition is not fulfilled, the ability is inactive meaning the ability’s effect will not apply and it can’t be triggered or activated.
  • This probably sounds familiar, because that is already how Legion works. Legion is being updated using the new dependent keyword rules.
    • NEW SYSTEM: Dependent Keywords
    • CLARIFIED: Legion is a dependent keyword.

• Unleashed Addition: Ambush, Conditional Action and Reaction
  • The bot gank lives on in the Ambush keyword appearing on some units in Unleashed. Units with Ambush have two passive abilities: the first reads “I may be played to a battlefield where you control Units” while the second reads “I have [Reaction] as long as I’m being played to a battlefield where you control Units.” Fortunately, in Riftbound, you have the ability to control when your jungle shows up to a team fight.
  • In order to support the conditional Reaction keyword in this ability, a new rule has been added clarifying how and when cards with conditional permissive abilities can be played to the chain, and what happens if they lose those abilities while on the chain.
    • NEW RULE: Ambush as a keyword was added.
    • NEW RULE: Conditional permissive abilities might only be fulfilled while the card or ability with them is on the chain. In such a case, it can still be played or activated at the appropriate timing as long as doing so could fulfill the conditions.
    • NEW RULE: If the chain item does not fulfill the conditions by the time “step 5: check legality” has been reached, the actions taken while playing or activating the chain item are undone and it is returned to the zone it was played from if it is a card.

• Rules Update: Winning the Game
  • Previously, there were two conflicting rules for winning the game: a player would win if they had points equal to the Victory Score in a cleanup, or they would win immediately if they accrued points equal to the Victory Score without needing to wait for a cleanup. We went back and forth on how to fix this, and ended up on the changes below. This should relegate unintentionally drawn games to a marginal occurrence and make it clear precisely when players win.
    • CLARIFIED: A player will win the game if, during a cleanup, they have accrued points greater than or equal to the Victory Score and greater than any opponent. Both must be true.
    • NEW RULE:  If a player gains two or more points as result of burn outs processed in sequence and fulfills the above conditions, they win the game immediately without needing to wait for a cleanup.

• Rules Update: Combats and Showdowns
  • The vast majority of players intuit that a showdown should be able to transition to a combat when units controlled by different players become present there, but the rules procedurally required the current showdown to end before a combat could begin. Although there were positives to that structure, it ultimately led to problems in card design long term.
  • Now, a showdown will open as long as the battlefield is contested and there is a unit there whose controller doesn’t control the battlefield. If there are units controlled by different players at that battlefield, it will open as a combat showdown. Otherwise, it will be a non-combat showdown. If a non-combat showdown is ongoing and a combat becomes staged at the same battlefield, the non-combat showdown will become a combat showdown in the next cleanup and the normal procedures for opening a combat will begin.
    • NEW RULE: Showdowns are staged at battlefields that are contested.
    • NEW RULE: Combats are staged at battlefields that are contested and have units controlled by different players occupying them
    • NEW RULE: If the turn player would initiate a showdown at a battlefield where a combat is staged, it opens as a combat showdown.
    • NEW RULE: If the turn is in a showdown open state and combat is staged at a battlefield with an ongoing showdown, a cleanup will cause the showdown to become a combat showdown.

• Rules Update: The Resolution Step of Combat
  • To support the “winning combat” rules introduced in Spiritforged, we’ve updated the Resolution Step procedures for combat using the new HOT FEPR system (more on that below). The first thing you’ll notice has changed is the Combat Cleanup: units are healed and attacking units are recalled. After the Combat Cleanup, we’ll determine the winner and loser of the combat. If there are still units remaining controlled by different players, or if there are no units at the battlefield, then the combat will have “no result”. Otherwise, the player who has units remaining at the battlefield wins. Then, if applicable, a player will conquer the battlefield. Finally players and units lose the attacker or defender designation and any “this combat” effects expire.
    • CLARIFIED: The Resolution Step has been reorganized. 

• Rules Update: “May” Triggered Abilities and Extra Conditions
  • Triggered abilities that say “may” are now optional to place on the chain, and triggered abilities that say “[do X] to [do Y]” (costs within instructions) will have the cost (“[do X]”) be incurred when placing the triggered ability on the chain.
  • We know this is a big change, but it’s for a good reason: this is part of a larger development to templating and card layout that will be happening in a future set and by all accounts it is a massive upgrade to card readability. For now, this is being introduced to align the rules with player intuition and to set the stage for those upcoming changes.
    • CLARIFIED: If a triggered ability says “you may” as the first part of its effect, the controller of its source will choose whether or not to place the triggered ability on the chain when its trigger condition is fulfilled.
    • CLARIFIED: If a triggered ability contains a cost within instructions, that cost is treated as the base cost of the triggered ability. The cost must be paid in order to finalize the ability to the chain.

• Replace
  • Replace is a game action that already has appeared once in the Core Rules Document sans rules for how it works (try to find it if you can!). Cards printed in Unleashed gave us the opportunity to give rules to how objects are replaced and where the replaced objects go. In short, they go to the same zone that banished cards go. Whatever token replaces that object will inherit all effects and statuses that that object had. Some effects may allow the replaced object to be swapped back, so don’t worry about it being lost forever.
    • NEW RULE: Replace action added
    • NEW RULE: Swapping back defined

• Create
  • When a token is created, it is immediately generated in the appropriate zone without using the chain. This is a new game action added primarily to support the replace action outlined above. The tokens you’re replacing a game object with have to come from somewhere, and our current mechanism for generating tokens doesn’t make sense for this context. This game action may have some interesting uses, so expect to see it in future rules updates.
    • NEW RULE: Create action added

• Predict and Word Backers
  • A common theme in this rules update is codifying instructions and abilities that have existed since Origins. In this case, we’re codifying instructions that say “look at the top card of your main deck. You may recycle it” into the game action Predict. Predicting is the act of looking at some number of cards from the top of your main deck and choosing to recycle any number of them and placing the remaining ones back in any order of the predicting player’s choosing. As part of Predict being codified into a game action, we’ve added word backers to several game actions that frequently appear in card text, similar to the ones we use for keywords. You’ll see those appear starting with cards printed in Unleashed, with backers for Stun and Buff joining Predict.
    • NEW RULE: Predict action added.
    • NEW SYSTEM: Action Word Backers added.

• Copy Effects
  • In Unleashed, we get to see our first true copy effect, though the spectre of Svellsongur has long been hanging over Spiritforged. In order to support these copy effects, rules have been implemented clarifying what traits a copy effect is allowed to copy and how those traits are applied.
    • CLARIFIED: Copy effects will copy the “copyable traits” of a game object. Those traits are all of the printed or copied traits of that game object, including Rules Text. Nothing appended or granted will be seen by the copy effect.
    • CLARIFIED: Copy effects that copy only a specific set of traits from a game object will specify those traits, and only the specified traits will be copied.
    • NEW RULE: When a game object or some of its traits become a copy of another game object, all of the copied traits become the game object’s new copyable traits.
      • If you copy a copy, the new copy becomes a copy of the originally copied object. Copy copy copy.

• Spicy HOT FEPR
  • In one of the most exciting changes for the rules experts in the audience, the FEPR process is being updated and expanded to manage more procedures of the game. The HOT FEPR acronym stands for Handle Outstanding Tasks; then Finalize Execute Pass Resolve. Tasks are the various procedures that the game requires players to perform during their turn: things like cleanups, the start of turn procedures, the procedures of combat, and the end of turn procedures. It was previously unclear when precisely the procedures of the turn paused items on the chain undergoing the FEPR process, but with tasks we can now say very clearly: when tasks are outstanding, pause the FEPR process until those outstanding tasks have been handled, and then perform the FEPR process on any pending chain items. Note in the change to cleanups below, pending items on the chain are no longer finalized during cleanups.
    • NEW SYSTEM: HOT FEPR

• Cleaned Up Cleanups
  • Finalization was removed from the cleanup and made part of the HOT FEPR process—it being part of the cleanup was a vestigial rule from before the FEPR process was introduced,which led to some serious strangeness. Additionally, to support player understandings of what it means for a unit to be “in combat,” combat designations are removed or added earlier in the cleanup.
    • CLARIFIED: Combat designations are removed or added before units die to marked damage in a normal cleanup.
    • CLARIFIED: A unit is “in combat” if it occupies a battlefield where combat is ongoing and if it has an appropriate combat designation.
    • CLARIFIED: Finalization is no longer managed by the cleanup and instead happens after any outstanding tasks occur if there are pending items on the chain.

• Loopy Expiration Step
  • This is secretly two changes in one: the first, is that we’re renaming the end of turn phase to the ending phase. The second, now that we have the machinery of HOT FEPR, is to make the expiration step properly loop. In Spiritforged we saw the first instance of a triggered ability triggering in the expiration step, and it produced some very unintuitive results: things like “this turn” effects applied in reaction to an expiration step trigger lasting until the next turn, and damage applied in the expiration step carrying over to the next turn. To avoid things getting even weirder going forward, the expiration step will now repeat if any items underwent the FEPR process during it.
    • CLARIFIED: The End of Turn Phase is now the Ending Phase.
    • CLARIFIED: The End of Turn Cleanup has been folded into the Expiration Step.
    • NEW RULE: If any items underwent the FEPR process during the Expiration Step, return to the start of the Expiration Step.

• Replacement Effects
  • There have been a number of points of confusion with replacement effects—what happens if multiple events occur simultaneously that a replacement effect would apply to? What happens if the event being replaced is modified by another game action or game effect? Who controls a replacement effect? How the heck do Soraka and an equipped Guardian Angel work?
  • In order to answer these questions and more, the replacement effects section has been beefed up with additional rules and examples. Primarily, we’re aligning the rules with how players already apply replacement effects—if multiple units die simultaneously while their controller has a Zhonya’s Hourglass in play, players are already choosing the order they apply their replacement effects when they pick one of those units to save. We wanted to make the rules more explicit for how these situations are handled. In a few cases, we’re clarifying how to apply replacement effects to pretty complicated interactions—see the examples in the Core Rules Document itself for more information. Finally, some cards printed in Unleashed require rules on how replacement effects interact with modified events.
    • CLARIFIED: If multiple simultaneous events are able to be replaced by a replacement effect, the controller of the replacement effect decides the order in which it is applied to those events.
    • CLARIFIED: When applying replacement effects to simultaneous events, each replacement effect can only be applied in one sequence—one uninterrupted series of applications. 
    • NEW RULE: The controller of a replacement effect is the player who controls the source of the replacement effect.
    • NEW RULE: If an event replaced by a replacement effect would be modified by a game effect or a game action, the replacement effect inherits those modifications.

• Control of Battlefields
  • As mentioned in the Spiritforged FAQ, there were issues with how control of battlefields was handled in the cleanup, specifically in control being locked with contested status and cards like Hostile Takeover and Stormbringer causing the game to reach an ambiguous state. In order to fix those bugs, the solution that made the most sense was to have control locked by the presence of a combat or showdown at the battlefield instead. Although the timings are quite similar, this allows Hostile Takeover, Stormbringer, and similar effects to exit the strange interstitial state between showdown and combat that they were stuck in.
  • Additionally, a small but functional change to how cleanups manage control is that control of a battlefield cannot be lost while there is an item on the chain. This is to support cards printed in Unleashed.
    • CLARIFIED: If a player has no units at a battlefield and the turn is in an open state, they lose control of that battlefield in the following cleanup, unless there is a combat or showdown ongoing there.

• Responsibility for Game Actions
  • Certain card effects will care about who performs a game action—in order to help square those effects, the concept of responsibility has been added to the rules. A player is responsible for a game action if they are the player who performed the game action, or if they have been assigned responsibility (usually if they were responsible for a deal action that was attributed a kill action). Even if they did not control the effect that instructed them to perform the game action, they and only they will maintain responsibility for it. This is important for cards printed in Unleashed, and also for shoring up the rules for Immortal Phoenix. In order to fulfill a condition that reads “when you kill a unit with a spell”, a player must be responsible for the kill action, control the spell that instructed it, and the spell itself must have attribution for the kill action.
    • NEW RULE: Responsibility

• Linking
  • Linking is a new concept that we’re using to clarify two sets of rules objects: linked instructions and linked abilities. Instructions or abilities are linked when they reference or are referenced by another instruction or ability. Linked instructions are especially important for spells that have been granted the repeat keyword, as in the case of repeated Hidden Blade. Linked abilities, on a similar note, are useful for clarifying how abilities function when they reference other abilities, and what game objects they are allowed to affect.
    • NEW RULE: Instructions that reference Game Objects affected by, or Game Actions performed in, other instructions are “linked instructions.”
    • NEW RULE: In order for a later linked instruction to execute, its earlier linked instruction must have executed. If the earlier linked instruction was ignored for any reason, the later linked instruction will also be ignored.
    • NEW RULE: If a game action in an earlier linked instruction was replaced, this will not affect the later linked instruction.
    • NEW RULE: Linked Abilities added 

• Referents
  • Ignore the fancy word, what’s important here is that we are codifying a rules concept that players are already well aware of—if a spell, triggered ability, or activated ability says “here”, “my”, “its”, or similar referential word, that information is checked when the spell or ability resolves. Some new effects will also reference the trigger condition in their text—those abilities will check that information when they trigger and are placed on the chain, not on resolution.
    • NEW RULE: Referents

• Additional Turn Effects
  • Time Warp has been the subject of debate since it was printed in Origins. We’re here to settle the matter and clarify how exactly additional turns work.
    • NEW SYSTEM: Additional Turns
    • CLARIFIED: When an additional turn is created, it is owned by the player instructed to take it and inserted directly after the current turn into the repeating queue of turns generated at the start of the game.
    • CLARIFIED: Turn order remains unaffected by any additional turns.
    • CLARIFIED: After an additional turn is finished, it is removed from the queue.

• Preventing Damage
  • Several cards were printed in Origins and Spiritforged that instructed a player to “prevent” damage, but the precise mechanism for how damage is prevented did not exist at the time. Well, it exists now! Prevent is a game action and also a delayed replacement effect—it creates a pool of prevented damage that acts as a shield on the affected units.
    • NEW RULE: Prevent action added

• Discounts to Cost Components
  • The discount rules in the section for the Process of Play were fairly vague about how discounts that only affect a component of the cost work—they’re applied with other discounts, but by that point the total cost has been summed. How can we identify which component is which in order to apply the appropriate discounts?
  • Now, discounts that only affect a component of a cost will be applied when that component is added, before any other discounts are applied. This will make interactions like Vex and Ezreal where multiple discounts of different types apply to the same card more intuitive to players.
    • CLARIFIED: Discounts that only affect a specific component of a cost will apply as soon as that component is added to the total cost when finalizing a card or ability.

• Main Phase Renamed
  • The action phase has been a bit of a sore thumb name, especially with the prevalence of terms with the word “action” in them: game actions, discretionary actions, limited actions, and the action keyword muddle the meaning of the action phase. This is especially true of the action keyword, the only of these terms that is actually printed on cards. In order to make these concepts more distinct, we’ve moved to rename the action phase to something more aligned with how players experience it. The main phase is the main part of your turn, where you play most of your cards and spend most of your time.
    • CLARIFIED: The action phase has been renamed the main phase.

• Unique
  • Unique already existed on three cards in Spiritforged, but never received a corresponding part of the keywords section of the Core Rules Document. That is no longer an issue.
    • NEW RULE: Unique as a keyword was added

• Backline
  • Backline is the keyword version of the ability that both Caitlyn, Patrolling and Soraka, Wanderer feature that requires them to be assigned combat damage last. There were some points of confusion with how this ability worked (especially in multiples), and now that cards in Unleashed are being printed with the same ability we took the opportunity to give them a bit of love in the rules. Units with Backline must be assigned damage during the Combat Damage Step after any other unit with the same controller that doesn’t have Backline.
    • NEW RULE: Backline as a keyword was added

• Attaching Again
  • Attaching as a game action was missing a rule that prevented an attached equipment from attaching to the unit it’s already attached to. This was unintuitive, and such a rule has been added to align the game action with ready, stun, and exhaust.
    • CLARIFIED: Attaching a card to a new Top-Most Card will cause it to Detach from the card to which it is currently Attached.
    • NEW RULE: Attaching a card to its current Top-Most Card  will not have any effect.
    • NEW RULE: If a Game Effect instructs a player to Attach a card to its current Top-Most Card, nothing additional happens.