Considering I hadn’t been conceived until six years after Magic: The Gathering first released, I wasn’t on the ground floor when the trading card game experienced its first burst of popularity. I was, however, a day-one player of Valve’s short-lived Artifact card game, but that time investment didn’t pay off, as you can imagine.
There’s always been a desire within me to play a competitive game from the very beginning — before the knowledge barrier and average skill becomes too great for a new player to overcome. As a 12-year League of Legends veteran, I was immediately ready to jump on Riftbound when Riot announced its physical TCG, eager to play from the very beginning instead of being lost in the noise years later.
A friend and I decided to attend a launch event at our local game store. For a fee, you get a preconstructed (precon) deck and three booster packs. The format was sort of a mini booster draft — we were allowed to swap cards from our precon for cards we pulled in our booster packs as well.
It’s surreal playing a card game on day one. As you’d expect, there were a lot of questions about rules and the nuances of card interactions. Everyone made an effort to educate themselves before the tournament, but there’s only so much information you can absorb without actively playing a couple of games.
Riftbound was released in China in August and internationally on Halloween. Those couple months of Chinese exclusivity informed the meta of our day-one tournament, which was comical. We were asked to select our pre-con (Viktor, Jinx or Lee Sin), and at least 85 percent of attendees chose Viktor (myself included) because the conventional wisdom was that Viktor was the best of the three available decks. We must have all watched the same videos.
The Internet can be a double-edged sword in this regard. It’s a great equaliser of knowledge, but perfect information can stifle creativity in situations like this. If everyone is net-decking, no one is theorycrafting. In my case, I’ve always had a terrible mind for creating decks, so a pool of existing knowledge to draw upon suited me just fine.
While I had done some research the night before, some of my opponents went above and beyond — reviewing nearly every Chinese VOD from the various regional tournaments held in the region. Ironically, I was already at a knowledge disadvantage despite playing a couple of days after the game was released.
Another one of my opponents began rifling off statistics of winning decks from Chinese tournaments, which I found amusing. Kai’Sa has quickly become a dominant force in the meta, winning the majority of tournaments. From what I’ve read, weekly locals across the world have been inundated with Kai’Sa players.
Netdecking Starts Early
It quickly became clear to me that the tier list culture of competitive multiplayer games also applies to trading card games. I’m not necessarily against it—everyone wants to be the best player they can be—but the rapid conformity among players of a new game was interesting to witness first-hand.
During my first game, I immediately realised Riftbound’s skill ceiling comes from the balancing act between playing for both battlefields. You can rush a battlefield for easy points, but you have to be prepared to contest your opponent’s powerful mid-range units, or you’ll never have enough manpower to contest their battlefield control.
I fell 0-2 in my first Riftbound outing, and then I also lost the first game of my second series. However, after three games of playing against Viktor, I started to pick up on some of the nuances of the mirror matchup and managed to win my next game, tying the series (we didn’t have time to finish the series before the next round).
My third and final game was against Lee Sin, a deck I had never seen before. I made the mistake of playing too fast while my opponent buffed up his cards, and then found myself unable to win the mid-game against massive cards. I ended 0-1-2 in my first Riftbound tournament, and realised I had a lot to learn about the game.
I also realised that Viktor probably isn’t the deck for me long-term. In my heart, I’m a zoo player. I don’t like spending several turns setting up a perfect combo. I want to get points on the board early, and I want to keep the pressure on my opponent from the very first turn. I got a couple of good pulls for this kind of playstyle in my booster deck, such as Warwick and Miss Fortune.
Riftbound is a fun game, and I’m excited to see how I improve over the coming months.
- Original Release Date
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2025
- Designer(s)
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Dave Guskin (Game Director)
