I love Riftbound. Let me just get that out of the way first. Riot’s (second) take on a League of Legends trading card game is now dominating my Sundays. Every weekend, I rock up to my local game store excited to do battle with my fellow players. This has given me a level of investment in the future of the game – I want it to succeed.
And Riot has done an acceptable job with Riftbound so far. The first set suffered from serious supply issues due to popularity, and we’re still seeing some of that in Spiritforged, but Riot seems committed to continuing to print product rather than leaving everyone at the mercy of scalpers and professional sellers. There have also been some fantastic inclusions, such as rewarding off-meta players with metal cards during Regional Qualifiers.
I’ll also say, for people who were expecting otherwise, I’m not bothered about the strength of Chaos (Purple), or any balance matter. We are early in the life cycle of Riftbound, I don’t think Riot should be heavy-handed with retroactive card balancing. I’d much rather see additional counter strategies emerge from new sets, rather than any rash actions at this stage like banning cards.
The Bologna Ruling
My contention comes from the wording of certain card text and how it interacts with the core rulebook—which isn’t very parsable by the way, but that’s a separate issue. We’ve already seen dozens of errata for cards from the original Origins set. The community, so far, has afforded Riot some grace because the beginning of a trading-card game always has unforeseen interactions and complexities. At the very least, Riot has been quick to address these issues, and they should be commended for that.
However, there are some seemingly unintended interactions that Riot has failed to address, even when the need to do so is pressing. For example, the so-called ‘Bologna Ruling’, which concerns Jax’s second legend ability.
Jax’s second ability reads, “[Tap to] Attach an attached Equipment you control to a unit you control.” This makes sense on paper, you’re simply moving an equipment from one unit to another without the need for the first unit to die, or any Weaponmaster trigger.
However, the controversy involves “reattaching”, which means using the ability to remove equipment from a unit, only to then attach it to the same unit. This makes cards like Aphelios more powerful because you can trigger his ability twice, as well as allowing Jax to make constant use of Brutalizer’s ability, which reads, “If this was attached to me this turn, I have an additional +2 might.”
For me, this is fine. It’s a cool, moderately powerful tech available only to Jax, a middle-tier deck. However, there were murmurings in Bologna that this interaction should not have been allowed, but they were allowing it to continue happening because a lower-level judge ruled it so, and they didn’t want to switch it up mid-tournament.
Then, at the Regional Qualifier in Las Vegas, this ruling was seemingly allowed again without any official clarification on the matter. It’s now become an unofficial interaction that’s allowed, but Riot has never released any statement about whether this is how the interaction is supposed to work.
We Shouldn’t Have To Rule By Consensus With Card Interactions
This means that every Jax player questioned at a Nexus Nights has nothing official they can show their opponent as proof that this is how the ability works. Everyone is relying on collective knowledge of one-off rulings from regional events, made by people supposed to enforce the existing rules rather than write them, and discussions buried deep in ‘judge Discords’ to self-referee games. There’s always going to be a level of mutual trust when playing a trading card game, but at no point should you have to scroll a list of threads on a Discord server to justify the legality of your play.
Riot can’t let card rulings become decentralised. The rules surrounding these common interactions should always be public and easily accessible for players. I understand there’s probably hesitancy from Riot to make definitive calls that could negatively affect the future of the game, but you can’t leave players being forced to rule by consensus.
There are also some interactions that are technically allowed but aren’t in the spirit of how the card is supposed to work. The so-called Irelia/Reaver’s Row interaction is one of these, wherein the battlefield Reaver’s Row (“When you defend here, you may move a friendly unit from here to base”) counts as a ‘target’ for Irelia, Fervent (“When you choose or ready me, give me +1 might this turn”) even when you decline to move Irelia using the battlefield.
The concept of targeting or choosing in Riftbound is very finicky. The player isn’t really choosing Irelia here because they’re declining the option to retreat, but by verbalising that they’re choosing not to retreat Irelia, her card text still triggers.
I do enjoy some of these quirky interactions, especially when they’re used to make clever plays. However, try explaining to a new player that this is how everything works because of a combination of rules that aren’t explained on the card. It’s a nightmare for people just trying to learn the game, and that’s what I’m worried about.
Riftbound is already a complex game because of its dual-battlefield system, which introduces a lot of intricacies surrounding targeting, location, and order of operations. Introducing additional complexity based on technicalities is going to frustrate people, unless Riot gets ahead of the problem and becomes more active in making public rulings.
I don’t think all of these interactions are necessarily problematic, but each one needs to be ruled on and addressed directly by Riot. If rulings are published and widely circulated, there won’t be any grey area, and some of these common debates will be quashed. At the moment, we’re relying on each other and strangers online to help us navigate a game that’s already complex and occasionally difficult to understand.
- Original Release Date
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2025
- Designer(s)
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Dave Guskin (Game Director)