You wanna hear how a not completely degenerate company effortlessly mixes Magic the Gathering and Gwent into one non wallet-breaking game? Well sit down and shut up; it’s time to talk about Legends of Runeterra.
Legends of Runeterra is a collectible card game, or CCG, made by Riot Games, the company that’s brought you groundbreaking titles like Teamfight Tactics and its lower quality MOBA spinoff, League of Legends.
What Is It?
I just told you: it’s an online CCG. Play it; it’s good.
Not convinced?
You ever wanted to play poker but it felt too repetitive? Ever wanted to braindeadedly SMOrc your opponent and not think of your attacks? Ever wanted to block your braindead opponent’s attacks and be a defensive tactician?
SMOrc
Forget all that. Have you ever wanted to play a six mana card on turn three through core game mechanics?
Hell yes you do, and even if you don’t, you just don’t know that you do yet.
Like I said, it combines Gwent, The Witcher’s card game, and Magic the Gathering, that card game where you untap your mana before you draw for some reason.
I’m a filthy Yu-Gi-Oh! player, so take all my opinions regarding card games with a grain of salt.
However, if you like Yu-Gi-Oh! well, firstly, who hurt you? Secondly, you’ll like Gwent, and more specifically, you’ll probably like Legends of Runeterra.
If you like searching your deck no less than fives times a turn and having every game decided on turn three, Gwent is literally your game.
Legends of Runeterra has little to no searching and I can’t be bothered to research cards outside of the two classes I play, so let’s assume I’m right. But it does take something I really liked from Gwent: simultaneous turns.
Core Mechanics
So, ya got your turns and your rounds. Round starts and ya take your turn. Your opponent takes their turn. Ya keep doing that 'til you’re done. After you’re both done, round ends. New round, new turns. Every round ya get one mana up to 10, well 13, but fogettaboutit. Ya get 20 life, 40 cards and six slots for monsters called followers. Capisce?
Sorry, my screen went blank and I started thinking about eating hot dogs in Central Park. What happened?
Anyway, one of the game’s main aspects is both players take their turns simultaneously and can pass at any time. This means both players gradually build up their board at the same time which leads to some juicy gameplay.
One of my favorite aspects of card games is bluffing, which Legends of Runeterra lends itself to incredibly well.
You build up an army because you see your opponent playing a bunch of followers. Something feels off, but you keep going. Your opponent passes and you decide to play one final follower for good measure.
Your opponent was baiting you into over-committing and has queued up an Avalanche which will destroy your whole board. But momma didn’t raise no suboptimal mana user and that three mana you’ve been floating goes to playing Deny, Runeterra’s version of Counterspell.
And now, you see it.
His mana’s empty, followers weak, hand is heavy. There’s lethal on board already, one-mana Yeti.
What I’m saying is I like taking turns at the same time. However, there’s something I like even more: true interactivity™.
Only Magic the Gathering players will remember a time when you had to take into account your opponent’s creatures. Now, we play Hearthstone and just SMOrc or make the obvious trades.
‘There’s little decision-making when it comes to choosing attacks.’ When my boy Karthik “Karna” Manohar told me this, I thought this Magic the Gathering and Super Smash Bros. pro was trolling me. After only a few hours of playing Runeterra, I understood what he was talking about.
In Legends of Runeterra, you can choose what followers to block with. Instead of automatically taking the optimal trades, both players generally have to consent to followers fighting each other.
On top of that, players can play most spells at any time as long as they have mana, including when you declare attackers. This means you not only have to play around blockers, but also play around possible spells in hand.
Oh, also if you float mana, up to three of it carries over, but it must be used exclusively for spells. Neat.
30 Packs a Week, FOR FREE
So, I started playing Runeterra on a Saturday. Every week, you get three chests which contain three packs each. The more you play, the better the chests get. You get to unlock chests every Tuesday.
Not only that, if you play enough, they also give you a free draft token, called an expedition token. So, after three days of playing, I got all three chests fully upgraded. Within those chests was almost 2,000 dust, or shards, and a bunch of cards. Also, like I said, I got an expedition token.
Now, let’s do the math on how insane this is. In Hearthstone, a pack gives you about 100 dust on average according to a Gamepedia article. It's a little disingenuous for me to say a pack is worth 100 dust as you can get a specific card you’re looking for, so these are really rough estimates.
A legendary in Hearthstone is worth 1,600 dust. A legendary in Runeterra is worth 3,000. So basically, 100 dust in Hearthstone is worth 200 shards in Runeterra. I got 2,000 shards, nine packs and an expedition token which is worth 3,000 shards. That comes out to a little more than 30 packs worth of stuff.
Also, Runeterra has way less cards. Although the game is still pay-to-win, it’s way more accessible to free-to-play players than Hearthstone, especially newcomers.
Balance
Now, let’s talk about the only major problem I have with the game: balance.
The game is not unbalanced at all from what I’ve seen. Most games feel pretty fair and I generally only lose to bad decisions or bad draws. My problem with balance is the disproportionate power of individual cards.
Let me give you Zach “GamerRvg” Kannass’s favorite example.
You can pay seven mana to kill one follower or, for only two more mana, can destroy every follower on the board.
One of these cards seems better than the other. I'm not sure though.
Other examples include valuing giving a follower Trample, called Overwhelm, for a turn at two mana. Healing an ally for seven health and drawing a card is valued at seven mana, or I can draw one and play an insane follower for three. A 3/1 that basically attacks every other turn and never dies is valued the same as a follower with the same stats that has to be re-summoned every turn.
Also, most one-drops are better than many two-cost followers.
There’s still tons of combinations of 40 well-designed cards, but there are some really bad cards, specifically spells. With a new game it’s understandable that there are some design oversights, but I feel like there are some cards so bad that if their cost were lowered by one, they’d still be unplayable.
There’s no way I’m playing a heal seven, draw one for six mana, let alone seven. Right?
But again, it’s a brand-new IP and Riot is a small indie company after all. Legends of Runeterra is still a fantastic game and one of the best CCGs I’ve ever played.
Now, can we please get DreamHack and Riot to partner and host Legends of Runeterra tournaments so there’s literally no reason to play Hearthstone?
