How the Riftbound Riot store drawings work

Most of the Riftbound products people actually want from Riot, booster displays at store price and special editions like the T1 collection, are not sold first come first served. They are sold by drawing. You enter, Riot picks names at random, and the people picked get to buy.

I have entered a few of these now, lost most of them, and watched the T1 one go badly wrong. This is how they work, and what I do before every one.

How a drawing works

Riot has explained the process in its drawing FAQ:

1. There is a sign-up window. Usually it is 48 hours. For Radiance it is longer, from 25 to 30 September.
2. Entering is free. You sign up on the Riot Merch Store with your Riot account.
3. Riot draws at random, with several checks along the way to make sure each chosen account is a real person and not a bot.
4. Winners get an email a few days later, with a link to buy.
5. You have 24 hours to check out. If you do not, someone else is drawn in your place.

Displays are usually limited to one per person, and so far the booster display drawings have been open to North America and Europe.

For a sense of price, the Vendetta display was $119.99 or €127.99 plus shipping, which is well under what boxes sell for in the first weeks after a release.

The drawings so far, and what is next

• Earlier displays went the same way. Spiritforged had its own drawing, and Vendetta had a second one in September.
• The T1 Signature Edition drawing in August, which I wrote about at length.
• Radiance displays: sign up from 25 to 30 September, winners from 5 October. The details are in my Radiance post.
• The T1 Player Bundle: October, dates not announced yet. See my T1 Player Bundle post.

What went wrong with T1, and why it matters for you

The T1 Signature Edition sold for hundreds and resold for thousands, so bots flooded the draw. Riot removed more than half the entries before drawing, then did a second sweep after winners were announced and cancelled suspicious orders.

That second sweep also caught some real players, who had won, paid and been cancelled anyway. Riot apologised and put it right, but it cost those people a stressful day.

The lesson I took from it is simple: a drawing is looking for reasons to distrust an account, so do not give it any.

My checklist before every drawing

A few days before:

• Log into your Riot account on the merch store and make sure it works. If you need to recover it, do it now. Account recovery can take longer than a 24-hour purchase window.
• Add riotgames.com to your safe senders, and check your spam and promotions folders.
• Make sure your shipping address and a payment method are ready.

When the window opens:

• Enter once, with one account. Several accounts from one household or one card is exactly the pattern the bot checks are built to catch.
• Put a reminder in your calendar for the day the winner emails start.

If you win:

• Buy within the 24 hours. Do not sit on it.
• Only trust emails that come from Riot, and check that the link goes to the Riot Merch Store before you type anything in. Every high-profile drawing brings fake "you won" emails with it.

Time zones

Riot runs these on Pacific time, and 9am PT catches people out. In late September and early October that is:

If you lose

Most people lose. There are far more entries than boxes. Displays do come back through second drawings sometimes, as Vendetta's did, and local game stores sell them too, often with a Pre-Rift event attached.

And whatever you end up opening, you can track it in a free binder and see what the chase cards are worth on the most valuable cards page. For every upcoming date in one place, there is my Riftbound release calendar.