Trading card games are as popular as they have ever been, with names like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and Disney Lorcana currently leading the charge. Riot Games has recognized this, and since it happens to have a massively popular franchise called League of Legends at the ready, it’s entering the arena with Riftbound, its own spin on a trading card game set in the LoL universe.

We recently visited Riot Games to check out this new game, learn the rules straight from the source, and see four trial decks in action with the creators of the game. We also have three new cards to exclusively unveil, which you’ll see as you read through the preview.

The current TCG giants will be hard to topple, but Riot hopes to champion a successful challenge with Riftbound. Based on what we played, the fundamentals are enough to get Riftbound into the Arena; now it’s up to Riot to prove it can go the distance.

Entering the rift

Riftbound takes a slightly different approach from Magic or Pokemon in that, instead of focusing on dealing direct damage, either to an opponent or their Pokemon, the focus is conquering “battlefields”–two location cards that sit in the middle of the table, one played by each player. Every time a player moves a unit (AKA a creature, in MTG speak) to a location and conquers it, the player gets a point. Battlefields are contested in combat, meaning they can be conquered and re-conquered as the game progresses.

First player to eight points wins, but it’s not as simple as “conquer eight battlefields.” In order to score the final point, one player must conquer or hold both battlefields at once. If the opposing player holds both battlefields and you take one of them while at seven points, you still have a little more work to do.

Battlefields are also more important than just “a place to be conquered.” Each player chooses which battlefield they want to use with their deck, as each battlefield also comes with some sort of power bestowed on the player currently holding it. For example, the Viktor trial deck’s theme is to create as many Recruit tokens as possible, and his battlefield, Altar to Unity, allows the player holding it to create a Recruit token in their base.

Speaking of “bases,” each player’s playing area is broken up into multiple “zones.” A brief overview of each zone is below:

• Base: This is where each player holds their units before sending them into a battlefield. It acts as a “safe” zone where they cannot be attacked.
• Battlefield: This is where each assigned battlefield lies, and it is an active zone where any units within can be destroyed. Battlefield cards have black card backs.
• Legend: Each deck will assign a “Legend,” or a card that stays in this zone and offers a power to the deck, usually once per turn. Legend cards also have black card backs.
• Champion/Leader: This zone is where players can place a single copy of their Leader card, so that they are guaranteed to be able to summon their Leader at least once per game. More copies are allowed in the main deck; this is more of a “first one’s free to find” scenario. Champion cards have blue card backs.
• Main Deck Zone: The Main Deck consists of a player’s main deck. These are units, gear, and action cards with blue card backs, and these are what players will use in-game.
• Rune Zone: The Rune Deck consists of 12 resource cards, built around the colored runes represented in the Main Deck. Players will gain two Runes every turn, which are used to pay costs for playing cards. Rune cards have white card backs.

It sounds like a lot to consider, but once the playing field is laid out and everything is in its proper place, it’s surprisingly easy to follow. Each zone was neatly laid out on the playmats provided for the match, so learning where each card was supposed to go took very little time to pick up.

Channel the Runes

One of Riftbound’s interesting twists on popular TCG formulas is how its resource system works. As explained before, Rune cards are drawn two at a time from the Rune Deck at the beginning of each turn, and they can be both “spent” and “recycled” in order to pay card costs. There are six colors in Riftbound, and decks will be allowed to include up to two colors.

To be spent, once they’re on the field, they are turned sideways to add one Rune (AKA “mana” for Magic fans) to the resource pool. However, while most cards have only a number designating how many runes need to be spent to cast the spell, some also have colored nodes under the cost number. For each of those colored nodes, one Rune card must be “recycled”–or returned to the bottom of the Rune Deck–in order to play the card.

For example, here’s one of the exclusive cards we’re revealing today, Heimerdinger, Inventor:

Note that under the “3” on the top left is a blue node; this means that while the player will spend three Runes of any color to pay that cost, you’ll also need to recycle one blue Rune to the bottom of your Rune Deck to complete casting parameters. Compare it to Dangerous Duo earlier in the article; it has no node under its cost.

Luckily, any Rune on the board can be returned to the deck, whether it’s been spent or not, so the player can feel free to recycle one of the Runes used for the initial three-Rune cost.

This creates an extra level of strategy when it comes to resource management, as you’ll have to account not only for how many Runes each card costs, but also how many you’ll be placing back in the deck for those cards. As only two Runes are added to the board each turn, playing too many cards that recycle Runes back into the deck will leave players low on Runes in subsequent turns.

Bound for battle

Each player’s turn starts with what the Riftbound team has dubbed the “ABCD” sequence:

• Awaken phase, or turning all cards to the ready position
• Beginning phase, or resolving any “beginning of turn” effects and scoring points for conquered battlefields
• Channel phase, or drawing two Rune Cards from the Rune Deck and placing them in the Rune Zone
• Draw phase, or drawing a card from the Main Deck

From there, the player can play units, attack battlefields, or perform other actions in any sequence they choose. There are no set “phases” outside of the “ABCD” sequence; whatever works most strategically for the player is what can be done, in the order they choose. Note that units played during a turn can’t challenge a Battlefield the turn they hit a player’s board, similar to “summoning sickness” in Magic or “drying ink” in Lorcana.

Some units have special mechanics that impact play before or during a challenge on a battlefield. For one example, here’s one of the cards we’re exclusively revealing today: Ekko, Recurrent:

Ekko has Accelerate, which increases his play cost by one generic Rune and one extra recycled Blue rune, but it allows him to enter ready to challenge a battlefield, as opposed to having to wait a turn. He also has Deathknell, which is a special ability that triggers when Ekko dies; in this case, Ekko returns to the bottom of the player’s Main Deck while readying all of their Runes.

Other examples of special mechanics include:

• Hidden: Pay a cost to play a card facedown, and then pay the additional cost to activate the card when needed.
• Legion: This ability activates if another card of any kind is played during that turn.

When it’s time to challenge a battlefield, a player will assign units to the location they hope to capture. If the opponent has a unit there, the game enters combat, in which each player can play Action and Reaction cards to modify units in combat before damage resolves. The defending player plays the first Action, the attacking player can then use a Reaction, and so on.

After all actions have been completed, the damage each unit can deal is tallied based on the number in the top-right corner of the unit card, plus all modifiers from Actions and Reactions. If the attacker deals more damage, all defending units die and that player conquers the battlefield and scores a point. If the defender deals more damage, they successfully hold the battlefield, the attacking units die, and the defender will score a point at the beginning of their next turn.

One other note: The losing player in a combat scenario chooses how the damage they deal is applied to the winning player’s units. Say, for example, one player has a total of seven damage across two units–one with five power and one with two power–and the other has six total power with three units, two power apiece. The losing player can choose to send all three units at the winning player’s five-power unit, killing it and weakening the winner’s hold on the battlefield for the next turn’s combat.

From there, turns go back and forth between players until one reaches the eight-point mark, and once the eighth point is scored, that player immediately wins the game.

The back-and-forth, push-and-pull feeling of each match was thrilling, as both matches we played during our time at Riot went down to the wire. I was victorious with the token-based Viktor deck against the Riot player’s mobility-focused Yasuo build, but my efforts with the ramp-centric Volibear deck were thwarted by a potent Jinx build focused on discarding cards and bringing them back to the battlefield without paying their costs.

I left Riot feeling good about what I saw with Riftbound. The mechanics are sound, the flow of the game is easy to understand, and the new twists on familiar card game ideas–channeling Runes, capturing Battlefields to score points–add some interesting wrinkles to the strategic elements of the game.

Riot has another potential hit on its hands here with Riftbound, which it hopes can be added to its pantheon of success stories–its “League of Legends,” if you will. After playing for a while, we think those who check the game out when it launches later this year will be happy with their journey.

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