I have been obsessed with TCGs for the last few years. From my intro to Magic: The Gathering, to dabbling with Flesh and Blood and Star Wars Unlimited, through to my love for Lorcana. It is rare that I go a week without playing a TCG down at my LGS. So with Riftbound having heaps of hype, I checked it out at a launch event to see if it could claim second place for my main TCG or if by some miracle it could replace my weekly MTG sessions.
What is Riftbound?
It is the latest TCG, which is based on League of Legends. It has been out in Asia for a few months but has been released worldwide. The game has many similarities with other TCGs but has a distinct League of Legends flavour.
You have two main decks; one is the runes deck, and the other is your main deck. Runes are the resources you pay for spells and units. Each turn you flip over two runes to use, which fixes one of the issues that plagues many TCGs: the chance you don’t get to play anything because you don’t have lands/ unthinkable cards. The other deck fills your hand with cards to play.
One cool thing about the way runes are designed is that some cards have a cost to play but also a cost to recycle a card to the bottom of the rune pile. So you may play a strong four-cost card that has you put two runes back, meaning you can’t play that sweet six-rune card on your next turn. It’s a super cool strategic element to the game.
You play creatures to your base initially, and they enter exhausted. Once they are readied, you can then move them to one of the battlefield zones. This is where the League of Legends flavour kicks in. You gain a point every time you claim a battlefield and for every turn you hold a battlefield. Each player brings a battlefield in and so there are two battlefields to try and claim and hold. This alone makes the game initially fun.
Combat happens at the battlefield, where you can move as many readied units as you want to the battlefield, and if someone is holding the battlefield a showdown occurs. Here, the power of the units is exchanged, and units die or survive. Whoever comes out of the showdown on top conquers or holds the battlefield.
You can do as many showdowns as you want on a turn, and damage is immediately healed post-showdown, but moving units to a battlefield or base exhausts them, so you have to make your choices wisely.
To actually win, you need to get to eight points first. Conquer a battlefield, get a point. Hold a battlefield, get a point. The kicker is the final point can only be claimed by either capturing both battlefields or by holding a battlefield until your next turn.
Sounds easy!
In some ways it is; the ideas are relatively simple, but the game is anything but. The strategy comes in deep, quickly. Do you conquer a couple of battlefields early to get points while leaving the troops thin and easy to beat? Do you load one battlefield up to try holding it for the game? Both are valid strategies depending on your deck and how you play.
There are also heaps of keywords and effects. Some have ganking, which means they can move from one battlefield to another without returning to your base. Some characters can enter readied, or you can use effects to give them effects. Some are big and costly; some create tokens so you can get quantity over quality.
It may only be the first set, but there are already heaps of depth to the game to implement and execute your own strategies.
The biggest thing is that the game has you choosing a champion. That champion sits off to the side and has some kind of ability. The other thing this does is decide what cards you can play, as a champion has two colours, and all of your cards must be in that colour identity. There are also some spells that can only be played with a specific champion. It’s a fun flavour aspect that also helps focus the way you build your decks.
What was the first experience like?
Initially signing up for an event was painful. You have to create a Riot account if you don’t have one, and you have to create a UVS account if you don’t have one. Then the two can be linked so you can sign in to a paper event. I watched so many people struggle with this, like I did, as many accidentally made the wrong type of UVS account. There were lots of stressed-out players before they had even opened a pack.
The good news is after that, it got better fast. The community at my LGS is always exceptional, and this was much on show with the Riftbound launch event. The release packs come with a deck that is built to play out of the box. Then the box comes with a booster in it, and you get two extra boosters to crack and modify your deck with. Then it was time to play. A small tournament took place where everyone was reading the rule books as we played our way through our first matches.
The little rule book in the deck was pretty good, but not fantastic, so rule questions were regular. Fortunately the judge was knowledgeable at Bea DnD and was able to answer heaps of questions. The issue was he was only one person, and so lots of misplays occurred even in the final round. The final round was when I discovered I could play units straight to a battlefield if I controlled it. Some people learnt that when I told them after the final game. But it’s a new game; we were all new, and Bea DnD is a fantastic LGS for learning and playing games, as it always has a friendly and welcoming vibe. Seriously, if you are near Te Whanganui-a-Tara, I can’t recommend Bea DnD enough. It’s my favourite place to play, for so many reasons.
Multiplayer formats already?
Straight out of the gate there are predefined rules for 1v1, three-player, and four-player matchups. A few of us jam a three-player match to get a vibe for it, and it’s good, albeit chaotic. In three-player matches the first player doesn’t draw a card on turn one, and the third player gets to channel another rune on their first turn. This is pretty good, as sometimes going first gets you the tempo advantage, but going third can let you drop bigger units faster. Even that one rune in 1v1 could be the difference between success and failure depending on your deck. In some matches it was useful going third.
So should you play Riftbound?
After the annoyance of trying to sign up, there was nobody in that room that didn’t have a great time. It’s a brilliantly designed TCG that has a good chance at becoming one of the success stories where so many TCGs start strong and fail. I am working on some constructed decks, now as I suspect it’s only going to get better from here.
There will be a full review of the first set soon, once we have tried enough of the off the shelf products that are avilable.
