True to its roots as a trading card game based on League of Legends — where characters duke it out across three lanes of play — Riftbound has always focused on battlefield cards as a key facet of gameplay. Each player typically brings three battlefields of their choosing for a best-of-three, 1v1 matchup, and they select one at the start of the match. Players accrue points as they take over and retain these battlefields. Each battlefield comes with specific ability, which means players should always choose battlefields that support their deck strategies.
Polygon can exclusively reveal a brand-new battlefield included in the upcoming Riftbound: Vendetta set, due out July 31, that establishes a reliable draw engine for players who consistently keep their number of runes in play relatively low.
Protective Sands lets a player pay one energy to draw a card when they conquer it, as long as they control four or fewer runes. The art appears to be a modified version of a piece originally created for Legends of Runeterra, namely the landmark Ancient Preparations, which depicts a Clockling automaton buried underneath years of sand as a Clockwork Curator stands nearby with its arm raised. In the lore, these kinds of constructs guard the time mage Zilean’s tower and have survived the harsh deserts of Shurima for millennia.
At a glance, Protective Sands doesn’t seem especially flashy. It rewards players who consistently have four or fewer runes in play while still maintaining enough board presence to conquer battlefields. But that’s precisely what makes it an intriguing option for decks that spend power aggressively. Because players generate power by recycling runes back into their rune deck, strategies that regularly cash in their resources rather than stockpiling them can more consistently meet Protective Sands’ condition. In other words, this battlefield encourages a more cyclical resource strategy. Players can turn successful conquests into additional cards for the low cost of a single energy, helping refill their hand while they rebuild their resources.
Protective Sands also offers another glimpse at how Vendetta continues to expand Riftbound‘s strategic depth. The set introduces three new mechanics: Flow, which lets players cast cards from their trash; Burn, which mills cards to fuel synergies or attack an opponent’s deck; and Empower, which allows cards to gain additional abilities after entering play. Vendetta also introduces Unit-Gear cards that count as both units and equipment, along with a cycle of Decrees, which are spells designed to punish cards from opposing domains.
Riftbound: Vendetta launches July 31 and puts a lot of emphasis on iconic rivalries, described in an official blog post as the “clashes between former friends, immortal enemies, and members of the same family.” Protective Sands is just one more place where battles between famous rivals can take place.
