Learn the Game
Your First Game, Step by Step
The 30-Second Version
You and your opponent both bring decks. Each turn, you get resources, draw a card, and play units onto battlefields. When you move your units into a battlefield where the enemy already has units, you fight. Win the fight, take the battlefield, score a point. First to 8 points wins.
That's it. Everything else on this page is just the "how." If you forget everything else, remember this: take battlefields, hold them, get to 8.
Setting Up
Before you play, each player lays out their side of the table. Starter decks come pre-built, so you just open the box and arrange things:
Put your Legend face-up
This is your leader. It sits in the Legend Zone where both players can see it. Your Legend decides which domains (colors) your deck uses and gives you special abilities.
Place your Chosen Champion face-up
This is a champion unit that matches your Legend. It goes in the Champion Zone next to your Legend during setup, but you'll still need to play it during the game like any other unit. Think of it as your ace in the hole.
Set aside your 3 Battlefields
These are the locations you'll be fighting over. Each player picks 1 of their 3 Battlefields and places it face-up, so a standard 1v1 game is played across 2 Battlefields.
Separate your Rune Deck
Your 12 Runes sit in their own pile, separate from everything else. You'll use them every turn to pay for cards.
Shuffle your Main Deck and draw 4 cards
Your Main Deck has 39 cards in it (the 40th is your Chosen Champion). Draw 4 for your opening hand. Don't love it? You can recycle up to 2 cards (put them on the bottom of your deck) and draw that many replacements.
What a Turn Looks Like
Every turn follows the same rhythm. After a couple of games this becomes second nature, but here's the full breakdown:
A. Awaken Phase
All your exhausted cards (turned sideways) get readied (turned upright). Units, runes and your Legend get a fresh start.
B. Beginning Phase
Any "start of turn" abilities trigger here. Then you score +1 point for each battlefield you already control. This is called Holding, and it's how winning positions snowball.
C. Channel Phase
Take the top 2 Runes from your Rune Deck and put them on the board, readied. These are how you pay for things.
D. Draw Phase
Draw 1 card from your Main Deck. There's no maximum hand size, so hold onto whatever you want.
Action Phase
This is where the game happens. You can play units, cast spells, move to battlefields, and pick fights in any order you want, and there's no limit on how many actions you can take as long as you can afford them. When you're out of resources or out of ideas, pass and let your opponent go.
End of Turn
Any "end of turn" abilities trigger here, and then all units heal back to full health because damage doesn't carry between turns. After that, the next player starts their turn.
Paying for Things (Runes)
In a lot of card games, getting stuck with no resources feels terrible. Riftbound sidesteps that entirely. Your 12 Runes live in a separate deck, and you channel 2 every turn, guaranteed. No luck involved.
Cards have up to two types of cost, and your Runes can pay for both:
Energy (the number)
Exhaust (turn sideways) a Rune to get 1 Energy. This pays for the number in the top-left corner of a card. The Rune stays on the table and readies next turn.
Power (the color symbols)
Recycle (send to the bottom of your Rune Deck) a Rune to get 1 Power of that Rune's domain. This pays for the colored symbols on cards, and you'll draw that Rune again later.
Here's the neat part: you can recycle a Rune that's already exhausted. So one Rune can pay for both Energy and Power on the same turn. If a card costs 3 Energy and 1 Fury Power, you could exhaust 3 Runes for Energy, then recycle one of those same exhausted Runes for the Fury Power. You'll pick this up fast.
Last Player Gets a Bonus
The player who goes last channels an extra Rune on their first turn, so 3 Runes instead of 2. Since the first player gets to act earlier, this extra fuel helps the last player keep pace.
Playing Cards
During your Action Phase, you can play cards from your hand (or your Chosen Champion from its zone). There are three types of Main Deck cards, and each works a little differently:
Your fighters. Units enter the board exhausted (turned sideways), so they can't move or attack the turn you play them. You can play them to your Base or directly to a battlefield you control.
One-time effects. They do their thing and go straight to the Trash. They never stay on the board.
Gear cards are persistent items that sit in your Base and enter readied (upright). They have abilities that affect the game, but they have no Might and cannot fight in combat.
Fighting (Showdowns)
During your Action Phase, you can exhaust a unit to move it from your Base to a battlefield or from a battlefield back to your Base. If you move a unit to a battlefield where the enemy already has units, a Showdown starts and that's how combat works.
Here's how a Showdown plays out. "When I defend" abilities resolve first, followed by "When I attack" abilities, and either player can use Reactions during those triggers. After that, both players involved in the combat can play Actions or cards that are Hidden at that battlefield. Whenever a spell or ability is used, either player can respond with a Reaction before it resolves. Once both players pass without playing anything, the remaining units fight.
Once both sides are done playing cards, the fight happens. Each side totals up the Might of their units and deals that much damage to the other side. All damage is simultaneous. You choose how to distribute your damage across enemy units, but you have to finish off one unit before moving damage to the next. Units with the Tank keyword have to take damage first. After the fight resolves, all units at all locations heal back to full health, so damage does not carry over between Showdowns. Units also heal again at the end of each turn, which means you need to time your direct damage spells carefully because any damage that doesn't kill a unit will be erased at both of those checkpoints.
You conquer the battlefield and score 1 point. Your units stay put.
No conquer happens. Your surviving attackers get sent back to Base. The defenders hold the line.
A unit dies when it takes damage equal to or greater than its Might. But damage doesn't reduce a unit's Might. A 6-Might unit with 5 damage on it still swings for 6 in combat. It's not dead until that last point of damage lands.
After the fight, all surviving units everywhere heal back to full. Damage doesn't carry between turns.
Scoring Points
Two ways to score, both worth 1 point:
Conquer
Win a Showdown and wipe out all defending units. You take the battlefield and immediately score 1 point.
Hold
At the start of your turn (Beginning Phase), you score 1 point for each battlefield you already control. This is how leads snowball.
The Winning Point
When you need just 1 more point to win, there's a catch. Your final point has to come from Holding a battlefield, or you have to score every single battlefield in that turn (through any combination of Holding and Conquering). If you'd score the winning point but don't meet either condition, you draw a card instead of getting the point. This stops someone from lucking into the final point with a single lucky attack.
Timing: When You Can Play Your Cards
By default, you can only play cards and use abilities on your own turn when nothing else is happening. But some cards have timing keywords that let them break that rule:
Playable on your turn normally, but also during Showdowns. Both players can throw down Actions during combat to swing the fight.
Reactions are the fastest speed in the game and can be played on your turn, during Showdowns, and even in response to any spell or ability on your opponent's turn. When you play a Reaction, it resolves before the thing it was responding to, which makes them the go-to for combat tricks.
On your turn, you can pay 1 Power (any color) to place a card from your hand face-down at a battlefield you control, and you can only have one hidden card per battlefield. Later, you can flip it and play it as a Reaction for free.
The Six Domains
Every card belongs to one or two domains (colors). Your Legend decides which domains you can play, and most Legends use two. Think of them like playstyles:
The aggressive domain. Wants to end games fast.
Ramp and sustain. Plays the long game.
Disruption and card advantage. Makes opponents miserable.
Raw stats. Biggest units in the game.
Weird stuff. Hard to predict, harder to plan against.
Teamwork. Buffs your board and punishes sloppy play.
A Few More Things
Ganking. Most units have to go back to Base before they can move to a different battlefield, but units with the Ganking keyword can jump directly from one battlefield to another without returning to Base first, which makes them great for surprise attacks.
Signature Cards. Some cards are tied to a specific Legend. You can run up to 3 copies of your Legend's signature card in your deck, and they tend to be some of the strongest effects available to you.
Moving to empty battlefields. If a battlefield has no enemy units on it, you can just move a unit there and conquer it without triggering a Showdown.
Deck limits. Your Main Deck can have a maximum of 3 copies of any card. Your Rune Deck needs exactly 12 Runes in any combination of your Legend's domains.
Next Step
Pick Your Legend
You know how the game works. Now pick a Legend that fits your playstyle and grab their starter deck.
Browse Legends →