I have fallen in love with a new game called Riftbound. It’s a card game spinoff of League of Legends, and it’s utterly fantastic – you can check out a much longer article on my Riftbound obsession for more details, and to find out why it might be the TCG everyone has been waiting for.
Here, I instead want to talk about the best way to experience the new game: Proving Grounds. This starter-kit-meets-board-game comes with four solidly strong pre-made decks headlined by popular League champions (Annie, Garen, Lux, and Master Yi ). It includes cardboard playmats to help you lay out your games, giant Battlefield cards to fight over, and plastic token game pieces so you can track your points.
I’ve played it with two players and with four, with players who are TCG aficionados and folks who aren’t, and every match has been a blast, People can pick the rules up quickly, and with multiple players there’s a lot of room for forming temporary alliances in a more effective way than I’ve felt from other multiplayer TCG formats (I’m mostly thinking of Magic: The Gathering’s Commander)
It’s reasonably priced to boot at $29.99 / £29.99 / AU$59.99, but there’s a catch: you won’t find it anywhere for that price. Not at the Riot Official Store, not anywhere.
As you might expect from a card game based on one of the world’s most popular gaming franchises – with both the immensely popular MOBA, several hit spinoffs, and the phenomenal Arcane Netflix series – Riftbound has been selling like hotcakes, and in many places it’s sold out or being offered at a massively inflated price.
There’s some good news, however, with Riot announcing that it’s aware of the issues and has several plans to try and rectify them, including restocks, reprints, and “programs” to “incentivize partners and provide them rewards for engaging in player-first behavior, including reasonable pricing.”
This includes new stock, which Riot promises will be “arriving to local game stores between now and the end of the year.”
So this Black Friday and as we head into the holiday period, I know what I’ll be on the lookout for: more Riftbound packs, and you should definitely have the game (especially the Proving Grounds box set) on your radar.
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