After attending a summit at Riot Games in LA to get a hands-on look at upcoming League of Legends Trading Card Game, Riftbound, I was very impressed with the overall experience. With beautiful cards, accessible rules, clever design and unique mechanics, I’m really looking forward to seeing Riftbound’s first set, Origins, launch in October, and can’t wait for the wider TCG community to experience it. I was fortunate enough to have had the chance to speak to Game Director, Dave Guskin, about Riftbound recently; whether you’re a veteran of TCGs, a newcomer to the space, or even just a fan of the League of Legends universe, there’s sure to be lots of interesting details in the conversation we had.

Card Gamer: I noticed that Riftbound, even as a tabletop experience, feels very close to the style of League of Legends itself. By that, I mean that victory is generally attained by conquering and defending territory, along with a good sense of units being sent out from one area, moving across what feels almost like a map to secure different locations and so on, using Champions to do so. Was it a conscious decision to have Riftbound’s gameplay mirror League of Legends itself?

Dave Guskin: Riftbound didn’t start that way; though our very first prototypes were trying to take the way that the League PC game works and turn it into the card game version of that. I think card games have imagined this before, and it hasn’t worked out so well. So we actually went back to the drawing board, [asked ourselves] what sort of experience are we trying to create, and what we thought would be really cool, but also a somewhat new dynamic for the [TCG] space.

Let’s start from Riftbound being a social multiplayer game where you are playing as your Champions, fighting with your Champions. That led us to the battlefields and the way that territory control is implemented. As we recognised, as you did, that it was actually similar to League, we did kind of push toward it. We tried to maximize the resonance where we could, so that it felt representative of the experience, but we never wanted to make a one to one translation.

Card Gamer: I did immediately get that sense of it in the cards that were revealed recently, for example with the blonde Jinx variant card [shown above, alongside the standard Jinx, Demolitionist card]. So that was where I kind of first noted, hey, that does kind of feel like alternate skins! On a different note, PvE [Player vs Environment, so co-operative or solo play vs the game] is something that isn’t done very often in TCGs.

In fact, I think the only example I can think of, certainly recent and beyond long-dead TCGs that came out in the gold rush of the 90s, is Disney Lorcana, with their Illumineer’s Quest sets. What’s great is that it works really well. I personally think that’s something that would be a perfect fit for Riftbound. What are your thoughts on that?

Dave Guskin: We agree! We think it’d be a great fit, though it’s still very early. We have tried prototyping a few versions, and I wouldn’t say they’re ready for prime time yet, but our team is pretty excited about it. Folks like yourself and others have been asking about it, which I think is a good, early signal, that it’s something we should consider. I also think there’s a lot of cool stuff in the League universe; you can imagine this is like fighting against a game boss, because we already have a multiplayer system that works really well.

It should be pretty straightforward to adapt into a system where we’re all co-operating toward the same goal. So yes, it is something we’ve looked at, and it’s something I’m excited about though I don’t know when we’ll be able to do it. Stay tuned is my best answer for that!

Card Gamer: That’s totally understandable; even with Lorcana, it was a case of making sure they had the player base and the fundamentals in place for both one-on-one and multiplayer, then it was introduced quite late once they had things like Locations added to the game. It was there to close off their first story arc with the fourth set, Ursula’s Return; giving players a sense of having helped to defeat the story’s big bad and ready them for the next chapter. It’s good to know that’s something that’s already on your radar at least!

On a very broadly similar point, if we’re speaking of different ways to play, with Riftbound, is it possible to play draft or sealed games with just a minimal number of packs per player?

Dave Guskin: We have prototyped and play tested limited environments; sealed pack and variations of draft. I do think sealed is in a pretty good spot, and would be surprised if we didn’t provide instructions on how to play sealed, especially at the local gaming store level. Whether we’re including sealed in competitive play is TBD, but I am pretty satisfied where we’re at, and I think that is something that we will probably be talking about soon. As for draft, we’re still working on it. A lot of us at Riot, especially on my team, think that draft is great.

I also think draft is great, but I also think it’s a little tricky to develop into something that people want to do again and again. It asks a little bit more of a player, in terms of the skills required to build a deck on the fly, whereas if you’re just making your own constructive deck, you have a little bit more freedom and less pressure. I think it’s something that I would definitely like to have, simply to have different ways to play Riftbound, perhaps for a smaller group.

Card Gamer: I do see those points for sure; I admit that, despite decades of experience with TCGs, deck building, for me, is something I’ve always enjoyed as a big part of the TCG experience, but I feel like the older I get, the less time I have to do it. With that, I feel less confident in doing it too! That said, when I did build a deck using the cards at the Riftbound summit, I did okay. I feel like that’s a real testament to the accessibility and immediacy of Riftbound. There’s the feeling that if I can come away from it thinking, “you know, I built a deck and did pretty well against other players, so if I can do it, then surely anyone can!

Dave Guskin: That’s really great to hear! Who did you use [as the deck’s Champion]?

Card Gamer: I built around Jinx. So it was a red/purple deck, and I used lots of low cost cards; one thing I didn’t account for was a lot of those low cost cards had recycling costs too. So I was getting lots of cards in play and doing really well in the early game. In each game I played, I was getting to seven points really easily, and then just not able to get that final point!

Then by that stage, my opponent had their resources and everything they needed, so managed to claw themselves back to victory with me not having the resources or units to keep going! I noticed that there were so many different approaches depending on the Champions used in a deck, and on that note, how did you decide which Champions to include in [first Riftbound set] Origins?

Dave Guskin: There’s a lot of factors; probably the most important one is that it’s a TCG, so it’s important that we find Champions that we think we can kind of build a TCG strategy around. Some Champions in League are easier to make game strategies around, and some are a little bit harder. So we tried to pick a good mix of Champions that are well known, that we thought we could translate into the TCG space and that kind of blended well together. When you make a set of cards, and if you want the set to be cohesive, you have deck strategies that overlap in some ways. I want the blue cards to be things you consider to play in each of the different blue decks. It’s kind of like massaging that puzzle, I guess.

I think that the choice of Champions is primarily: which ones we think we can translate well into a TCG space, which ones are popular that we think would be great for a first set, and a combination of things that people would be excited to see, excited to play with, excited to be and that we think we could build a great set with!

Card Gamer: There’s a lot of different styles there, mechanically and visually. I must confess that I don’t actually know League as well as I perhaps should, but this is something that speaks volumes about Riftbound: I still found it engaging, even though my knowledge of the universe is lacking overall. I know League through [Netflix animated show] Arcane, and through playing a little bit of [League of Legends digital card game, Legends of Runeterra], but though I wasn’t overly familiar with an awful lot of the characters, I was still able to engage with Riftbound, and become pretty invested in it.

My next question is about the game’s launch; Riftbound is set to launch in October in English, but it’s releasing in China a few months beforehand. What’s the reason for the launch strategy, and are you going to be monitoring the reception, along with the developing meta in China pretty closely ahead of its Western launch?

Dave Guskin: The genesis of it coming out first in China is because when we originally started, we knew there was a big opportunity in China [in the TCG space]. Then, as we were developing it, it seems like Riftbound could be a hit globally; people were responding really well to it, so [we said] let’s definitely deliver across the world. As the timelines [for production and distribution] are a little bit faster in China, it’s easier to distribute it there, than it is to move stuff across the ocean from manufacturers. We didn’t want to artificially delay it for players.

Of course, once players have it, we’re going to learn a ton, and we certainly will be watching very carefully. I think my team is very excited to see how people build decks in the real world, as opposed to inside Riot, where it’s maybe gotten a little bit shuttered, if that’s the right word. I do want see how it develops, and take lessons from that, but I don’t necessarily want to do anything until we can see what happens in the rest of world. So we’ll watch, we’ll see what happens; I am excited to see it, and I’m hopeful that we kind of know how things are gonna go, but I’m also willing to be pleasantly surprised!

Card Gamer: That’s the thing with TCGs, you never quite know what players are going to find, what players are going to do! There’ll definitely be some surprises with what happens once it’s in players hands.

Dave Guskin: As long as we don’t miss a [banned, ridiculously overpowered Yu-Gi-Oh! card] Pot of Greed or something, I’ll be happy! If one ends up feeling way out of range [in the meta], we’ll look at it if we think it’s a problem, but overall, I’m pretty confident about Origins. We had a bit more time for the first set to try to make sure that the content was really good, and I’m pretty excited about it.

Card Gamer: That’s good to hear! I know we’ve this was something that came up at the Riftbound summit: the release schedule for any TCG can feel pretty overwhelming for more casual players. Of course, as relentless as it is, and the term you’ve used yourself is that TCGs are “voracious”, you have to keep content flowing for the people that continue to play it. That goes for people who professionally play, at Organized Play events for example, but also without scaring off the more casual players. What lessons have you taken from how other games essentially ‘feed the beast’, and how have those lessons been applied to Riftbound’s release schedule?

Dave Guskin: In probably two major ways. One is that we watch the space. Many of the folks on my team, as well as across Riot and our partners are very familiar with the TCG space, and we’ve seen what’s happened historically. Plus, we’ve also talked to players as we developed the game, asking how often they’d expect new releases to come out. Also asking how disruptive they’d want them to be, to the decks they already had. We combined those learnings into the plan that we have now, which is about once a quarter we expect to release a major booster pack set.

We think that’s about the right amount of change so that metagames don’t get stagnant, and competitive players are excited to see new stuff, but also that if you’re a casual player, you don’t feel like, “new sets keep coming out, and I didn’t have a chance to try out the new stuff from the last time!”.

I am very interested to listen to our community once the game comes up, and see how people want it too. If they’re like, “hey, actually, we’d like it to be a little faster”, we’ll figure out what we can do. Or if it’s too fast, we’ll see what we can do there too. Once we’d made the content, I thought we’d have to release it every quarter, but we could slow down. That’s something where I’m very open to feedback from our players, but feel like a starting spot being one set per quarter is both sustainable from our side, and sustainable from the player side.

Card Gamer: That makes sense, and I think it’s a good approach. My next question goes back to draft; so I don’t know how familiar you are with Star Wars Unlimited, but it has this really cool way of dealing with one of the main draft ‘problems‘. In Star Wars Unlimited, your deck needs its own Leader and a Base, which determine the colors of the cards you can use in your deck. In every Star Wars Unlimited booster pack, you’re guaranteed to get 1 Leader and 1 base, so if you open a certain amount of packs, you’re guaranteed that number of leaders and bases, which should give you plenty of options and flexibility.

In Riftbound, your deck needs a Champion Legend and at least one Champion Unit with the same name [such as the Jinx cards seen above], which works in a similar way to Star Wars Unlimited in that this determines your deck colors and overall strategy. Do you envision this potentially being something you could do in the future: having a pack that has a Champion that’s guaranteed to also have their paired unit, to ensure players have the cards they need to build a deck around?

Dave Guskin: We’ve talked about the specific collation of the packs, so that you’re guaranteed to get a battlefield, a weapon and so on. There’s no determination on that yet, though Origins is not doing that. Even so, we still feel like sealed is pretty good. It is extra work and risk, and changes the opening experience a little bit to fix some of the slots [in a booster pack], but it would improve [some aspects]. It’s definitely something we’re talking about in terms of future sets, in how much of this we might want to do, maybe change how we do it set to set.

It’s definitely something we talked about, and I think Star Wars Unlimited was a great example and market for us to look at. We also see that in a way that other games have done limited in terms of how they’re “first you draft your leader”, or “in this format, the rules are slightly different”. That’s also something that we’ve talked about, and a process that I’m working on.

Card Gamer: I suppose the way you’re working makes conversations like this a bit odd for you, because Riftbound itself hits stores in October, so people like me are salivating on the drip feed of information being released and anticipating the game’s launch, but you’re way in advance in terms of the content you’re working on. I suppose the advantage with that is that you get some flexibility and can look at how the meta evolves in order to build responses to that, or contingencies, into future sets.

Dave Guskin: The timelines for manufacturing and sales are immutable, basically. So yes, we are working ahead, and I’m going to split my brain into like, three or four different timelines here, where I’m trying to process it all! But I think it is helpful; in every moment I can be like, “Okay, this future set is in this state or phase of development”, and what’s super helpful for that phase is knowing how players feel about X. As the game’s out [before that phase’s cards are released], we can find out how players feel about that and make changes.

Still, we try to position those valuable feedback loop findings so that when you lay them on top of each other, we’re getting data from set N-2, which can impact set N, and we can get that in before we close the door on it going to the printer.

So yes, it’s complex, and it can be exhausting sometimes, but it is really cool that we do have the opportunity [to adapt], especially for a game where you can’t change the pieces after they’re out in the wild. It is really important for us to be on top of that feedback though!

Card Gamer: Absolutely; being agile and responsive in that way certainly justifies working so far ahead in terms of content. Lots of TCGs work in a similar way of course, and at one stage it was almost kind of an end goal in doing a digital version to run in parallel with the physical game. Is that something that you are looking at?

Dave Guskin: We’ve talked about it. I think the community is very interested in having a digital version, of course; everyone wants to play on the phone, or in their home at their own time. We have focused primarily on that in-person experience, which is the best way to play Riftbound; we’re emphasizing this is an in-person game, and we’re going to try to maximize that. That said, in the future we’ll definitely look into, whether it feels right to make some sort of digital version of Riftbound.

I think there are people in the community who’ve started looking at making digital representations of the game, and we want to support that, if we can; there’s still work to do to figure out how to best support it. So I would say that digital is definitely on our minds, but it’s not our priority right now. The priority is the physical game and making sure that people can play in their local game store, and have the greatest experience possible. Then the digital version will be the next step after that.

Card Gamer: I agree. There are big games that don’t have official digital versions now; we’ve mentioned Lorcana and Star Wars Unlimited, but Flesh and Blood is another big example. There’s smaller games that don’t have it either; I think it’s important to keep that kind of in-person experience and have it separate. I suppose for League in general, there’s Legends of Runeterra; if people want to play a League of Legends digital card game, that’s still there.

Dave Guskin: Yeah, I definitely don’t want to force our way into that space. I think if we hear the feedback, if players really want digital, at Riot we can ask “what does that look like?”. I’m open to discussing it and figuring out what that looks like, but it isn’t a priority right now.

Card Gamer: Which I totally understand, for sure. So, I started off saying that I hadn’t really had much experience of League of Legends itself, but I have noticed recently, that at Comic Cons I’ve been to, there’ve been an awful lot of people cosplaying as characters from Arcane, and I’m aware of fans that have done that, yet like me haven’t actually played League. It crossed my mind that Riftbound isn’t just going to appeal to the League of Legends audience; you’ll be attracting fans from across the League universe, and not just from the PC game itself.

Dave Guskin: One thing that we really want Riftbound to be a celebration of all those expressions of League; as a big way to bring new people into the fold with our game. There’s people who’ve been playing the League PC game for around 15 years or whatever, but there’s people inbetween, and even other fans who’ve been to Esports events just to be part of that environment. I’m excited about that, and I think it’s awesome that people are doing that; I’m hopeful that we can support it. So if you did love being Vi, or Jayce, or Ekko from Arcane, then we want to have something for you; here’s a little piece of collectibility you can have if you want to, and you don’t even have to play the game!

Card Gamer: On that point, are you looking to build some kind of crossover type content, or have ways to attract fans to Riftbound from another corner of the League universe?

Dave Guskin: I definitely want it to be welcoming! For example, we’ve talked about the upcoming fighting game [also by Riot Games], 2XKO. It’s set in the League universe, and it’s also very character driven. We’ve thought of doing a product where it’s like, 2XKO and Riftbound together, and I’m excited about the possibilities there. I don’t know what that’s going to look like, or if we’ll do it, but I think there’s opportunities like that, where we can connect different parts of other Riot Games, and I think that’s pretty cool. Riftbound is a way that the League IP touches the real world [as opposed to digital], and that’s something that doesn’t happen that often.

That’s a cool opportunity in terms of moving players from one to the other. Again, I wanted, it to be welcoming, so if you play League on PC, and you realize that “hey, my friends are playing Riftbound; I know those characters! Sure, I’ll play a couple of games.” And we hope that it’s easy for a person to just try it out and have that experience.

Card Gamer: So, that brings me to my final question. Do you have a favorite Champion yourself in Riftbound?

Dave Guskin: Yasuo is my favorite; I just love the way he plays. The mobility thing is something that a lot of card games don’t have. Like you, I am also a child of 90s card games, so I’ve seen that many of these [trading card] games kind of function in similar ways. I feel like the mobility part, when you really care about moving between the locations on the board, is very distinct, you know for a TCG. I like that I can play by beating you with my deck’s ‘tricks’, but it’s in a different way, where I’m trying to move my ‘monster’ around!.

My favorite card in the set is also a Yasuo deck card; when it shows up, I’ll fanboy over it! [Note: When I spoke to Dave for this interview, his favorite card hadn’t been revealed, but we now know it to be the Yasuo, Windrider card; Dave did indeed fanboy over the card on social media when it was revealed!]

A huge thanks to Dave Guskin for his time, and to Riot Games for arranging the interview. Riftbound is due out in October 2025. Check out Card Gamer’s deeper looks at the game, including whyRiftbound cards have different colored backs, along with all of the cards revealed for the first set, Origins, so far!