12 mistakes new Riftbound players make

I made every one of these in my first month of Riftbound, and I have watched most of them happen to other people since. None of them are about knowing an obscure card. They are all about the basic shape of the game.

1. Playing for cards instead of for ground

The instinct from most card games is to build a board, kill their stuff, and win from advantage. Riftbound does not score any of that. Points come from battlefields and nowhere else.

A board full of your units in your base is a board scoring zero. If you are winning every fight and losing on points, this is why.

2. Not knowing the winning point rule

The big one. At 7 points, taking your eighth by Conquer only wins if you scored every battlefield that turn. Otherwise you draw a card instead of getting the point (rule 466.1.b.2).

Getting there by Hold always works (rule 466.1.b.1).

So at 7 points, walking one unit onto one empty battlefield does not win the game. People find this out at exactly the worst moment.

3. Forgetting units arrive asleep

Units enter the board exhausted (rule 143.4). The unit you just played cannot move this turn, cannot take ground this turn, and cannot help in a fight anywhere except where it stands.

Everything you play is a threat for next turn. Accelerate buys that turn back for 1 extra Energy and 1 Power (rule 805), which is often worth it and is easy to forget you can do.

4. Attacking into a battlefield you cannot clear

If any defender is still standing after combat, your surviving attackers are recalled to base (rule 461.1.a.2).

So a failed attack does not leave you camped nearby applying pressure. It puts your units back home, exhausted, having lost whatever died. It is strictly worse than not attacking.

Count first: your total Might against theirs. If you cannot clear it, do not go.

5. Trying to chip a big unit down over two turns

All damage clears at the end of every turn (rule 317.2.b), and again after every combat (rule 461.1.a.1).

Damage either kills something now or it did nothing. There is no wearing anything down.

6. Clicking the same rune twice

You need 2 energy. You exhaust a rune, get 1, then click the same rune again for the second.

An exhausted rune produces nothing. It has already been spent, and a cost can only be paid once. It sounds obvious and it happens constantly, because the rune is right there and it looks like a button.

7. Recycling runes without noticing the cost

Exhausting a rune is temporary. It stands back up in your Awaken Phase.

Recycling is not. It sends the rune off your board and into your rune deck (rule 163.2.b). You only get 2 new runes a turn. Pay two Power costs in a turn and your next turn is genuinely poorer.

Coloured pips are more expensive than the number suggests.

8. Treating Assault as a general bonus

Assault X is +X while attacking only (rule 807). Shield X is +X while defending only (rule 814).

A unit with Assault 2 sitting on ground you hold is just its printed Might. If you want it to be worth more, you have to be the one moving in.

9. Missing that Might is summed

Combat is not one card against another. Every unit at the battlefield adds its Might to one total (rule 460.2).

Two 2-Might units beat one 3-Might unit. Reinforcing a battlefield you already hold is often the strongest move on the board, and it is the one that looks least exciting.

10. Letting them hold, because the fight looks bad

If they control a battlefield, they score it every turn at the start of their Beginning Phase (rule 315.2.b.2).

Contesting it stops that, whether or not you win the fight. You do not need to clear the ground, you just need to stop them being the only player on it. Trading a unit to deny a point every turn is usually a good trade, and waiting for a clean fight often means never taking one.

11. Playing around a facedown card badly, or not at all

Hidden lets a player pay 1 Power to place a card facedown at a battlefield they control, then play it free from their next turn (rule 811).

Two failure modes. Ignoring it and walking into a trick. Or being so frightened of it that you never attack. The middle path: assume it is a combat trick worth roughly 2 or 3 Might, and ask whether your attack still works if it is.

12. Emptying your hand on turn three

The Origins Jinx deck in particular asks you to discard a lot, and it is easy to dump your whole hand chasing an early board.

Riftbound games run about fifteen turns. Running out of cards on turn six with a board that scores one point a turn loses to the player still holding options. Jinx's legend draws you a card when you have one or fewer in hand, which is a safety net rather than a plan.

The short version

• Ground scores, cards do not
• Hold beats Conquer, every time
• Count the Might before you move
• Damage clears, so half-kills are wasted
• At 7 points, know the rule before you commit

The fastest way to stop making them

Most of these are things you only really learn by having them happen to you. The Trainer is built to make them happen to you cheaply: it gives you the position, lets you make the wrong move, and then names the rule you missed at the moment you miss it.

41 lessons, 121 hands-on tests, free, no account needed.