Tom Martell

If you are coming to Riftbound from Magic, here is a thread of a few things to remember (aka mistakes I’ve made or rules that surprised me):

1 - Pay attention to Actions &amp; Reactions - you can’t play Actions in response to other Actions, so you can’t use Cleave to save your attacker from a Hextech Ray.

2 - There is no end step and you only get priority for Actions on your opponents turn in showdowns, so if they don’t move to a new Battlefield on their turn, you can’t play your Stacked Deck.

3 - Spells that say “do this X times” don’t work like the other spells and you don’t choose your targets when you cast them. They put “reflexive triggers” on the stack for each X time. These can be individually responded to and target when they go on the stack.

This means you can Retreat your only unit in response to Falling Star and they have to target their own units. 

It also means the targets don’t count as “a spell you own” because the triggers do the targeting, so you won’t draw from Dreaming Tree if you target your own unit once

4 - Deflect is per time you target it, so if you hit a Qiyana twice with your Falling Star you need to pay 2 power.

Note that you can use Kai’sa to pay for Deflect to cast a Stupefy but not for Falling Star (since Falling Star targets with abilities, not a spell).

5 - Moving a unit into an empty Battlefield is NOT an attack, so Assault isn’t on. They must have a unit there for a Combat Showdown to start. 

Don’t Cleave your unit and “attack” an empty Battlefield to play around Void Seeker - it doesn’t work out well for you.

6 - it’s very easy to forget to pay power for spells so develop a clear, visible habit to make it clear to your opponent what is happening.

I play my card, tap my runes and then turn the power runes face down but leave them there so it’s very obvious I’ve paid correctly.

Please don’t just tap a bunch of runes and quickly recycle some. Let your opponent clearly see that you are paying correctly before anything moves around.

7 - It’s really easy to lose track of points. I’ve started tracking each point by turn and how it’s earned. It helps me recreate the game by turn if I need to and makes it really clear what the score is at any point if we have a discrepancy.

Just thought of 8 - Curve matters a lot since its so tempo orientated, so make sure you have enough early plays. I see a lot of Kai'sa lists with 6 twos and that is crazy to me. You are playing a tempo/aggro deck that will just not have a turn 1 play 30% of the time!