Riftbound setup and mulligan guide

Setup in Riftbound takes about a minute, and two of the decisions in it have more effect on the game than most turns do. This is what happens, and what to actually do with the mulligan.

What a deck is

A Riftbound deck is four separate things, and only one of them is what most games mean by "deck":

• 1 Legend. Sits to the side all game. Not a unit, does not fight, usually has one ability.
• 40 cards in the main deck. Units, spells, gear.
• 12 runes in a separate rune deck. Never in your hand, never drawn.
• 3 battlefields.

The preconstructed Origins decks are exactly this: 1 + 40 + 12 + 3 = 56 cards.

The separation matters. Your runes are not competing with your spells for draw slots, which is why Riftbound does not have the "flooded or screwed" problem some card games do. Your economy is guaranteed and fixed at two runes a turn.

Choosing the battlefields

Each player brings three. At setup, one of each player's three is chosen at random, and those two are the battlefields for the whole game (rules 480.4.a and 480.5). The other four are set aside.

Two consequences worth thinking about:

You only ever see one of your three, at random. So all three should be cards you are happy to play with. Putting in one great battlefield and two filler ones means a two in three chance of the filler.

One of the two will be theirs. Half the ground you fight over is chosen by your opponent, and its ability will usually suit their deck rather than yours. That is normal, and it is a reason not to build a plan that depends on a specific battlefield trigger.

Who goes first

Whoever goes second channels an extra rune on their first Channel Phase (rule 480.7). So they have three runes on their first turn instead of two.

That is real compensation. Going first means acting first, going second means a turn where you can cast a 3-drop while they are still on 2. Neither is obviously better in the Origins decks.

Drawing the opening hand

Each player draws 4 (rule 117).

Four is a small hand, and it makes the mulligan matter more than it would at seven.

The mulligan

You may set aside up to two cards from your hand. Then you draw that many replacements. Then the cards you set aside get shuffled back into your deck (rules 118.1 to 118.3).

Note the order carefully: you draw the new cards before the old ones go back in. So you cannot draw the same card you just threw away. That is strictly better than the reverse and it means throwing back a card is genuinely getting rid of it for that draw.

You never lose cards. You always end on four.

What to throw back

The rule I use: can I cast this by turn four?

You have 2 runes on turn one, 4 on turn two, 6 on turn three, 8 on turn four, minus any you recycle for Power costs. So by turn four you can realistically cast anything up to about 6 or 7 energy.

Anything above that on turn one is a card you are holding for a third of the game.

Throw back:

• Anything costing 8 or more. Rhasa the Sunderer at 10, Mountain Drake at 9. They win games at turn nine and do nothing before it.
• A second copy of a high cost card. One expensive finisher is a plan, two is a dead hand.
• Cards whose condition cannot be met yet. Rhasa gets cheaper per card in your trash, and your trash is empty.

Keep:

• Everything costing 2 or 3. These are the turns that actually decide the ground.
• One card in the 4 to 6 range as something to build towards.
• Cheap interaction, even if there is nothing to use it on yet.

The most common mulligan mistake

Throwing back your cheap cards because they look weak.

A 2-Energy 2-Might unit is not exciting, but it is the unit standing on a battlefield on turn two collecting a point every turn while your 6-drop sits in hand. In a game where the objective is to occupy ground, the cheap units are the ones that occupy it soonest.

Riftbound rewards being on the board early far more than it rewards having the biggest card.

And the opposite mistake

Keeping four 2-drops and nothing else.

You will take ground on turn two and then have nothing that can take it back once they play something bigger. One card in the middle of the curve gives the hand somewhere to go.

A quick worked example

Opening hand with the Jinx deck:

• Chemtech Enforcer (2)
• Get Excited! (2 + 1 Fury Power)
• Blazing Scorcher (5)
• Rhasa the Sunderer (10)

Throw Rhasa. Ten energy, and its discount needs a full trash that does not exist yet.

Keep the rest. Two castable early cards, one thing to build towards.

That is a one-card mulligan. You do not have to use both, and throwing back a card you could actually cast to dig for something better is usually a mistake at a four card hand size.

Practising it

The setup section of the Trainer walks through all of this on a real board, including an interactive mulligan where you set cards aside and draw back yourself, so the ordering of the steps sticks.

Free, no account needed.