Building Decks

The deck builder is where you build and validate decks for the Riftbound trading card game. Pick a legend, fill your zones, and the editor checks the rules as you go.

Decks are blueprints, not physical locations

A deck is a list of cards, not specific printings or copies. It doesn't matter whether you play the English version, the Chinese version, or the signed foil promo. The deck just says "3x Fury Rune" and any printing of that card will do.

This is different from collections, which track where your physical copies are. A deck is the recipe; your collection is the pantry. Most other sites like Piltover Archive or TCG Arena tie decks to specific printings, but OpenRift keeps them separate by design. This means any printing you own (across all available collections) counts toward completing the deck, and shared deck lists (coming soon) work regardless of which language or edition other players own.

Deck structure

Legend1

Defines your deck's identity and which domains it can use

Chosen Champion1

A champion unit that shares a tag with your legend

Runes12

Resource cards that match your legend's domains

Battlefield3

Three unique battlefield cards

Main Deck40

Units, spells, and gear, includes your champion toward the count

Sideboard0–8

Optional cards you can swap in between games

Getting started

Open Decks from the top navigation and click New Deck. Choose a name and a format: Constructed enforces all deck-building rules; Freeform removes them so you can experiment. You can switch between formats at any time.

The editor opens with two panels: a zone sidebar on the left showing your deck's contents, and a card browser on the right where you find and add cards. A validation banner at the top tells you whether your deck is legal.

Building your deck step by step

The browser guides you through each zone automatically. As you fill one zone, it suggests cards for the next.

Pick a Legend

The browser starts filtered to legends. Choose one to set your deck's domains. Runes are auto-populated with a 6/6 split to get you started.

Choose a Champion

The browser suggests champions that share a tag with your legend. Pick one to fill the champion slot.

Add Battlefields

Next, browse battlefield cards and pick three unique ones.

Fill the Main Deck

The browser now shows units, spells, and gear in your legend's domains. Your champion already counts toward the 40, so add 39 more.

You can always click a zone in the sidebar to change which zone you're adding to, or adjust the browser filters manually.

Adding cards

Quick add

Click the + button above any card in the browser to add it to the active zone. Single-card zones like Legend and Champion show a "Choose" button instead. Cards you own show an owned count, so you can build with cards you actually have.

Drag & drop

Drag a card from the browser directly onto a zone in the sidebar. You can also drag cards between zones to reorganize.

Quantity controls

Once a card is in a zone, use the +/− buttons next to it to adjust the quantity.

Shift + drag

Hold Shift while dragging a multi-copy card to move all copies at once.

Use the Overflow zone as a stash for cards you're considering but haven't committed to a zone yet.

Validation rules (Constructed format)

In Constructed format, the editor validates your deck in real time. A green checkmark means your deck is legal. A yellow banner shows the next issue to fix.

Legend: Exactly 1 legend
Champion: Exactly 1 champion that shares a tag with your legend
Runes: Exactly 12 runes, all matching the legend's domains
Battlefield: Exactly 3 unique battlefields
Main: Exactly 39 cards, plus the champion for a total of 40. Max 3 copies of any card. Max 3 Signature cards total, all sharing a Champion tag with the legend. All card domains must be within the legend's domains or colorless.
Sideboard: Up to 8 cards. Copy limits are shared with the main deck (e.g. if you have 2 copies of a card in main, you can only have 1 more in the sideboard).

In Freeform, none of these rules are enforced. Switch to Freeform to theorycraft, then back to Constructed to validate. The zone sidebar highlights violations per zone.

Rune auto-population

When you pick a legend, the editor automatically fills the rune zone with 12 runes split evenly across the legend's two domains (6 per domain). You can then swap individual runes or adjust the split. If you remove a rune and the count drops below 12, the editor adds a replacement from the other domain to keep the balance.

Domain filtering

Once you've selected a legend, the card browser filters to cards matching your legend's domains (plus colorless cards).

Deck stats

Below the zone list in the sidebar, a collapsible stats panel shows a breakdown of your deck:

Domain bar: a color bar showing the proportion of each domain in your deck
Energy and power curves: distribution of energy costs and power values, with averages
Type breakdown: count of units, spells, gear, and other card types, split by domain

Managing decks

The Decks page lists all your decks with their format, domain colors, card count, and validation status. From here you can:

Click a deck to open it in the editor
Rename a deck
Clone a deck to create an exact copy for experimenting with variants
Export a deck list as text
Print proxies to generate a printable PDF for playtesting
Delete a deck you no longer need

Auto-save

Changes save automatically as you edit, and a warning catches you if you try to leave mid-save. There's no manual save button.