Riftbound is sure to be a massive TCG coming from Riot Games with an Organized Play strategy that will be taking players from their local game store all the way to Regional and Global Championships. To get there, you’ve got to build a deck that will help you take on a variety of opponents.
In this Deckbuilding guide we’ll go over the rules for creating a deck, outline some of the known mechanics of decks, and go over the styles of play of each of the different colors of Riftbound.
Riftbound Deck Creation Rules
A standard Riftbound Deck contains 55 different cards. These are split between your main deck, your Rune Deck, and your three battlefields. The breakdown of these is as follows:
- Main Deck (40 Cards)
- 1 Legend – This is your chosen League of Legends hero such as Jinx, Lee Sin, or Darius
- 1 Champion Unit – This must match your chosen Legend
- 39 other Main Deck cards
- Rune Deck (12 Cards)
- Choose six of each of the Runes of your Champion’s colors
- Battlefields (3 Cards)
- If you’re playing competitively in a Best-Of-3 scenario you’ll also be able to have a Sideboard of 8 cards to swap in/out
When selecting cards for your main deck you can only pick within the colors of your chosen Legend and you can only include up to three copies of any card.
Another limitation to be aware of is that a Signature Spell can only be used in a deck of the Legend whose name is on the Signature Spell Card. You can locate the Signature Spell’s Legend by looking for their name above the name of the card.
Are there any Deckbuilding differences for 1v1 play in comparison to multiplayer?
No, there are no explicit rules for building a 1v1 deck as opposed to a multiplayer deck (2v2 or free for all). It was noted by Riftbound Executive Producer, Chengran Chai, that there are reasons that he can imagine for wanting to build a deck differently like if you want to win in a 1v1 but if you want to troll your friends while playing multiplayer.
Riftbound Colors And Their Play Styles
There are six different colors in Riftbound, each not only has a color but also a title that can help give you a bit of a hint as to what kinds of cards you can expect to see.
- Blue – Mind
- Blue/Mind cards are about setting up triggers for events to occur. Triggering a Blue card might make an enemy weaker, cause you to draw a card, or even wipe the board of all enemies.
- Green – Calm
- Green/Calm cards are for buffing your cards, whether that be granting them extra might, letting them move or attack additionally, or it could even lead you to draw additional cards.
- Orange – Body
- Orange/Body cards are representative of powerful Units and Spells with high Mana costs and high Might. These cards also help ramp up Mana generation.
- Purple – Chaos
- Purple/Chaos cards are about shifting the tides of battle and creating odd effects. You’ll be drawing cards, discarding them, and forcing your opponent to fulfill different effects.
- Red – Fury
- Red/Fury cards are designed to be aggressive moving quickly and dealing moderate damage to always try being in the right place at the right time
- Yellow – Order
- Yellow/Order cards are about setting up Units in large quantities, while individually they might not be the strongest with abilities to generate recruits you’ll be able to create an oppressive wave of troops.
Riftbound Legend Color Combinations And Their Gameplay
In Riftbound, the deck you create has colors that consist of the Legend that you’ve selected to be the figurehead of your deck. There are some Legends that we know the color for already, based on their promotional boxes but there are also a number of Legends that can only be obtained out of Booster Packs that we only know the general playstyle of.
Listed below are all of the currently known pre-con decks along with the Legends that will be part of Riftbound Set 1: Origins:
- Pre-Launch Trial Decks
- Jinx – Red/Purple
- Viktor – Blue/Yellow
- Volibear – Red/Orange
- Yasuo – Green/Purple
- Set One: Origins Champions Decks (pre-con decks)
- Jinx – Red/Purple – Discard for fun and profit, comboing an army of aggressive attackers
- Lee Sin – Orange/Green – Buff your forces and use them to dominate
- Viktor – Blue/Yellow – Tokens deck that will recruit a lot
- Set One Booster Legends
- Ahri – Take over the battlefield, draw in unsuspecting enemies to crush them
- Darius – Raises an army of the Noxus Legion, powering them up by playing two cards a turn
- Kai’Sa – Spell slinging deck, retreating and blasting them with spells
- Leona – Control the battle with Stun
- Sett – Buffs units and spends the buff to get advantages
- Teemo – Trap deck with direct hidden cards, including Teemo himself
- Volibear – Ramp up resources to summon enormous monsters and smash battlefields.
- Yasuo – Uses mobility mechanics and can attack multiple turns at once
At the moment all decks are two color, that being said at the Pre-Launch Summit we did hear from the game’s designers that they were investigating not only Mono-Color decks but also Triple-Color decks. It’s not known at this time when we could even start to see hints of those.
