[News] How Riftbound Fixes Magic: The Gathering's Biggest Problems

How Riftbound Fixes Magic: The Gathering's Biggest Problems
By Reyna Cervantes

Riot Games recently launched Riftbound, a trading-card game based on the wildly popular League of Legends franchise. While the first thought that comes to mind when coming across a new TCG in an overcrowded market is usually “another one?” I’m here to tell you that not only does Riftbound have a strong foundation for a casual/competitive game, it actually improves and fixes many mechanics seen in other TCGs. Most notably, Riftbound addresses my biggest issues with Magic: The Gathering and its 30-year-old design that at times feels wildly outdated. Here’s a breakdown of just some of the many improvements I noticed while playing Riftbound as a seasoned Magic player.

Casual Yet Competitive

One of my least favorite aspects of Magic is having to juggle multiple decks for multiple situations. When playing Limited, I have to build a 40-card deck. When playing Pauper or Vintage, I have to maintain 60-card decks. When playing Commander with friends at the local brewery, I have to carry around a 100-card behemoth of a deck. The different formats all carry their own restrictions and decklists and it can be a lot to maintain for a single card game. This issue doesn’t exist for Riftbound, as any 40-card deck you buy or build is good for use in 1v1, 2v2, and three- or four-player Free-for-All. While any TCG can inspire the “grinding” mindset that comes with entering competitive play, I find myself regularly playing casual Riftbound matches simply because the game scales so well without deck modifications. It encourages the mindset of building a single deck and being able to play it in multiple formats, and means my Jinx deck that I’m so proud of can be shown off a lot more. To learn a bit more about this design choice of scalable formats, I talked with Nik Davidson, game design architect over at Riot Games.

“I've worked on Magic and Marvel Snap and Pokemon, and I love all of those games. There's so much that can be drawn from all the best design innovations over the years. I think one thing that we really wanted to do was focus on the social multiplayer. That is something that games have done, but we felt we could do with a fresh take if we're doing it from the ground up," Davison said. "The fact that Riftbound plays so well as a four-player free-for-all or three-player free-for-all, or a 2v2, that's not accidental. That was really baked into the initial pitch for the game. That social competitive play is something that I think Riftbound does uniquely well."

A game of Riftbound in action.
More Player Urgency

If you play Commander, you’ve likely experienced being knocked out of the game far before anyone else--being forced to sit there and watch while everyone else continues to play. Riftbound circumvents this lackluster experience by being a point-control game, in which players are racing to collect eight points by conquering or holding battlefields. By having this be the goal of the game, Riftbound ensures that every player is participating for the entirety of the match. Sometimes, a player can even come back from behind by playing smartly while others are dunking it out.

Riftbound also ensures that you’re playing the game more often than you’re not, as players need to only shuffle their decks once at the start of the game. There’s no “tutor” or searching cards, meaning no more having to sit there while someone struggles to shuffle a 100-card deck over and over again.

A Resource System That Never Leaves You Screwed

One of the least appealing aspects of Magic is its outdated mana system. Players having to draw into resources and play a single land per turn leads to slow games, especially if you’re “mana screwed,” meaning you either haven't drawn enough lands or lack the right mana colors to play your spells. It feels bad and keeps players from playing the game. Riftbound doesn't have this issue, as it features the rune system, wherein players get to channel two per turn from a separate deck of 12 cards. This design choice leads to faster starts and players always having decisions to make on their turns instead of playing a single (or worse, no) land per turn before passing.

More powerful spells and units in Riftbound require a “Power” cost, where a rune of the corresponding color must be “recycled” to the bottom of the rune deck. This provides players with a healthy curve, but also allows for explosive and impactful turns that can’t be repeated turn after turn. This creates some of the most hype-heavy moments I’ve experienced in a TCG in recent memory. Using Kai’sa as a Legend, and her ability to ramp into a Time Warp to take an extra turn, led to me scoring winning-game points that felt like solving a puzzle. Davidson said of the system:

“The original trio of Dave Guskin, Dave Smith, and John Mormon came up with a similar system relatively early. It was just one of those things where you take your first shot and try to reiterate it from there. The first shot turned out really close to the mark. It's gone through some iterations since then, but when I first talked to people about joining the Riftbound team, I was told ‘Yeah, we've got a new resource system’ and I'm like, ‘Oh no,’ because normally you can have a new resource system or a good resource system. But in this case, we lucked out and got both. I actually wouldn't say it's luck. Those guys are some of the best in the business. The thing that this resource does, that I really, really love, is it gives you a balance of consistency and choices. You get to choose when you're expending those power costs. You get to choose how much in your deckbuilding you're focusing on being able to consistently ramp or being able to pay those high-impact, high-power cost cards. It's really flexible.”

A Promise Of Support

Already Riot has shown that it's willing to communicate with players and support Riftbound in meaningful ways. From putting out a statement about supply issues and promises to fix them, a second set announcement, prize-pool support, a promise of future formats such as draft, and encouraging people to go out to their local game store to play, it is clear Riot is aiming to make an impact in the TCG scene. It's not unusual for game companies to simply refuse to put out statements or neglect proper communication with its playerbase, making it all the more refreshing to see Riot make strides where other TCGs have failed.

“TCGs live and die by their local play environments. We have our first regional qualifier in the United States. We've had huge tournaments in China. Tournaments are great and they are a part of our competitive ecosystem. Coming out of COVID, it is such a wonderful thing just to get together with your friends and play a card game. It's one of those simple pleasures that cannot be replaced," Davidson said. "I have gotten back together with friends to play Riftbound that I hadn't seen in like a year and a half and now we have something to connect over again in a physical space. There is something special that a physical face-to-face game can provide. That's one of the things that made Riot so interested in Riftbound. It's an opportunity for us to create what we intend to be the best possible face-to-face, competitive, social, collaborative gaming environment that we can.”

After spending some quality game time with Riftbound, I can’t help but agree with him. The future of the game looks bright.

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