Closing games

What this section covers

1. 1

   Racing

   Sometimes their board is irrelevant because you get there first.

   Keeper of Masks. It dies at the start of your next Beginning Phase anyway, so using it to score is free, and the 3 Might unit stays home ready to defend if the game somehow continues. Spend the asset with an expiry date first.

   You never answered their board because you did not have to. Count how many points you can take before they act, and compare it to how many they need. If yours is the smaller number, the size of their units is irrelevant.

   4 hands-on tests · Core Rules 172, 173
2. 2

   Denying a point

   Taking a point off them is worth exactly as much as scoring one.

   Score. A Conquer resolves immediately on your turn, while their Hold is not checked until the start of theirs, so yours lands first. Denial is the move when you cannot win this turn, and here you can.

   The spare unit from base. Taking the holder off your own battlefield to deny theirs would trade your point for theirs, which is a wash. Denying with a unit that was doing nothing is the whole game.

   3 hands-on tests · Core Rules 173
3. 3

   Finding the eighth point

   On 7, every turn has exactly one question in it.

   Reinforce. You score at the end of this turn, and their unit is exhausted so it cannot interfere before then, but a 1 Might holder is the kind of thin that loses games to something you did not see. The other battlefield would also score, so this costs nothing.

   From here a Conquer only gives the winning point if you score every battlefield that turn (rule 466.1.b.2). So next turn either you take their battlefield as well, or you Hold the one you just took, which has no such restriction.

   3 hands-on tests · Core Rules 172

How this section is taught

Closing games is 3 lessons and 10 tests, played on a board with real cards. Every idea above is shown with the card that does it and then handed to you to perform. Get it wrong and the trainer names the rule you missed at the moment you miss it.

Core Rules cited in this section

172 173

Every clause number above is checked against the official Riftbound Core Rules and printed on screen inside the lesson, so you can read the rule the trainer is teaching from.