Riftbound vs Magic and Hearthstone

If you have played Magic, Hearthstone, Pokémon or Lorcana, most of Riftbound will feel readable straight away. Cards cost resources, units have numbers, spells do things.

The problems come from the parts that look the same and are not. These are the five that cost me the most games.

1. You do not win by reducing anything to zero

There is no life total. Nobody is being burned down.

You win by getting to 8 points, and points come from controlling battlefields (rule 480.3). Killing their units scores nothing on its own. It is only useful because a dead unit is not standing on ground.

The habit to break: attacking because you can win the fight. The question is not "can I win this fight", it is "does winning this fight put me on ground, or keep them off it".

2. Your resources go down as well as up

In Magic you play a land and it stays. In Hearthstone your mana crystals only increase.

In Riftbound you get 2 runes a turn (rule 315.3.b), and a rune can be spent two ways (rule 163.2):

• exhaust it for 1 Energy, and it stands back up next turn
• recycle it for 1 Power of its domain, and it leaves the board

Coloured costs cost you board. A turn where you pay two Power costs leaves you with two fewer runes going forward, and you only replace them at two a turn.

The habit to break: reading the pip as a colour requirement. It is a colour requirement and a price.

3. Nothing you play can act the turn you play it

Units enter exhausted (rule 143.4). No exceptions except Accelerate, which costs 1 extra Energy and 1 Power (rule 805).

This is closer to summoning sickness than to Hearthstone's charge minions, but stricter: an exhausted unit cannot move either, and moving is how you take ground.

Everything you play is a threat for next turn. Games are planned a turn ahead by default, not by choice.

4. Combat is one total against another

Not one card against another. Not a chosen attacker meeting a chosen blocker.

Sum the Might of every attacking unit. Sum the Might of every defending unit (rule 460.2). Each side assigns its total among the other's units, lethal first, no overkill, and it is all dealt simultaneously.

Two 2-Might units beat one 3-Might unit. There is no blocking assignment to outplay, and no combat damage order to exploit. The maths is public and the trick is whether either side has something to change the numbers before damage.

The habit to break: thinking about favourable individual matchups. Think about totals.

5. Failed attacks send your units home

This one has no equivalent in the games I came from, and it is the most expensive thing to learn late.

After combat, every surviving unit is healed, and if any defender is still standing, the surviving attackers are recalled to base (rule 461.1.a).

So an attack that does not clear the battlefield does not leave you contesting it. Your units go home, exhausted, and the ground is still theirs. You have spent a turn and gained nothing.

In Magic, attacking into a bad block is a trade. In Riftbound, attacking into ground you cannot clear is a wasted turn plus whatever died.

The smaller ones

Damage does not persist. Everything heals at end of turn and after every combat (rules 317.2.b and 461.1.a.1). Chip damage is not a strategy.

There is no card draw arms race. You draw exactly one a turn and there is not much that changes it. Card advantage matters less than position.

The board is tiny. Two battlefields (rule 480.4). There is no third lane and nowhere to develop quietly. Every unit is either in one of two fights or doing nothing.

Holding beats taking. Conquering pays once. Holding pays every turn (rule 464). The patient player usually wins, which is unusual for a game this aggressive-looking.

Your economy is guaranteed. Runes are in a separate deck, so there is no mana flood and no mana screw. What you do with a fixed income is the whole game.

What transfers straight over

Plenty, to be fair:

• reading a board and counting lethal
• holding up interaction and representing a trick
• sequencing your plays so the cheap free actions happen before the paid ones
• knowing when you are the beatdown and when you are not

The tactical skills carry. It is the strategic assumptions that do not.

The fastest way to recalibrate

If you already know card games, you do not need the "what is a card" parts. What you need is to feel the five differences above in a real position.

The Trainer lets you skip ahead. Nothing is locked, and the sections are separate, so you can go straight to Fighting, Scoring, Reading the board and Closing games and leave the basics alone.

Free, no account needed.