How to play Riftbound
A fan-made guide in plain words: the deck, the turn, the chain, and how you score the points that win.
Build your deck
Choose a Legend. It sets your domains, and every card you add has to fit them. Next, build a main deck of 40 cards or more. Your chosen champion unit goes in it, and no name may appear more than three times. Add a rune deck of 12 runes and three battlefields; one of them is played each game.
Start your turn
The start of your turn runs by itself. Everything you control gets ready, you score each battlefield you still hold from your last turn, you channel two runes, and you draw a card.
Play your turn
The main part of the turn has no fixed order. Spend the Energy and Power your runes make to play units, gear and spells, send units out to a battlefield, and fight there if an enemy stands on it. When you have done what you want, end the turn.
Answer on the chain
When a card or an ability is played, it goes onto the chain, a short waiting line, instead of happening at once. Before it does, the players take turns putting quick responses on top of it, and the newest item resolves first. When the chain is empty, the turn carries on.
Score battlefields
You score a battlefield in two ways: you conquer it when you take control of one you have not scored this turn, and you hold it when you still control it as your next turn begins. Each battlefield can score for you once a turn, and each score gives you a point.
Win with the last point
The first player to 8 points wins. The last point has a catch: if a conquer would give you the winning point, you get it only when you have scored every battlefield that turn, and otherwise you draw a card instead. Holding at the start of your turn has no such catch.
Now try it on a table
Reading is the slow way. The lessons play each of these steps on the real table, with a coach, in about 20 minutes and with no account.
