Reyna Cervantes (@jfcdoomblade.bsky.social)

How Riftbound Fixes Magic: The Gathering's Biggest Problems 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Riftbound addresses my biggest issues with Magic: The Gathering and its 30-year-old design that at times feels wildly outdated.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.Continue Reading at GameSpot http://dlvr.it/TPTcRN