Riftbound: Vendetta Is A Strong Showing Less Than A Year Into The Game

Riftbound, otherwise known as the "League of Legends TCG," hasn't even been out a year. In many locations, it's gaining even more steam as players flock to local communities and grow the game at the grassroots level. From a macro standpoint, Riot has learned a lot since launch, following the shortage of the Proving Grounds Core Set and some manufacturing and rules snafus.

Now, we're gearing up for the fourth set, Vendetta, and interestingly, this is the first time Riot is trying out the "two-player starter Showdown deck." Instead of providing individual preconstructed starters, you'll be able to pick up a Shen versus Zed Showdown set, which is a brand-new product line for Riftbound.

Based on our session with it at Summer Game Fest (SGF) at Riot HQ, it'll be a great way to pick up and play Riftbound beyond what's already available.

Vendetta is due out on July 31 for its wide release, but we got to test it early, and things are looking excellent in terms of deckbuilding diversity and mechanical uniqueness. For our SGF preview session, we sat down and played a game of Riftbound as Shen, with Game Director Dave Guskin, who took the reins of Zed.

Shen's Legend ability is as follows: "[tap] Give a friendly unit [Tank] this turn." Zed, on the other hand, can retreat from combat for a cost, and create a shadow clone as a diversion.

While simple on paper, Shen's ability created a lot of interesting combat situations, especially when paired with some of the beefier cards included in Shen's precon. Being able to designate anything you want as a tank is a huge game-changing ability, especially if you take deckbuilding as far as it can go.

A lot of the Shen precon rewards players for having exactly two units at a battlefield, with triggers after death if a unit doesn't die alone, or passive buffs to help keep a foothold. You don't need to adhere to this strategy 100%, but it was fun rethinking how I was playing the game, regardless, even for one match as Shen.

In my experience with the third and fourth sets, a ton of different playstyles have opened up in short order. At this point, you can pop in a new Legend and completely change the game, which makes it one of the best kitchen table TCGs I've ever played.

If you're curious what the full product line is for Vendetta (which will sport roughly 166 cards and seven Legends), Riot gave us the rundown:

• The Shen vs. Zed Showdown Deck
• Individual boosters
• Booster boxes
• The "Vault" returns from the last set (similar to "bundles" in MTG)
• Playmats
• Sleeves

Chatting with Guskin, we learned that the Proving Grounds set is still intended to be an evergreen product as of summer 2026. If that continues to hold, picking up Proving Grounds and another two-player Showdown Deck could be a great way to keep things fresh for kitchen table players.

As you can see, the Riftbound team is still experimenting with their product line, and wanted to try something different this time around. It's a smart play, as the TCG market is incredibly busy right now, and experimentation is needed to find the sweet spot going forward.