With Legends of Runeterra, the makers of LoL, Riot, have now introduced their own card game to the market. The open beta has started and is accessible to all interested parties. But how does one actually get started properly? We explain it to you in our comprehensive beginner’s guide.
Legends of Runeterra is a comprehensive and complex game. Anyone looking to start with it can quickly become overwhelmed by the variety of cards, regions, and keywords. Especially those with no experience in card games may find it quite daunting.
However, with a little effort and assistance, you can easily get started and gradually get better over time. Our guide is designed to prepare you well for Legends of Runeterra so that you are not completely lost when you play your first rounds.
Video for the Guide
Alongside our guide, the YouTuber and Twitch streamer Cirouss has created a video. So you can see in action what we are discussing here in the guide, we have embedded his video for you:
What is Legends of Runeterra?
This is the game: Legends of Runeterra is a collectible card game (or CCG) by “League of Legends” makers Riot Games. It is among the six games announced by the company in October 2019 and is currently in open beta.
Legends of Runeterra works roughly similarly to Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering – Arena. You collect cards, build decks, and compete against other players. However, it comes with features and peculiarities that strongly differentiate it from the aforementioned games, which we will explain in more detail below.
Legends of Runeterra can currently only be played on PC and is free to play. A mobile version is already available for pre-registration in the Google Play Store. For Apple, there is already a reference on the official site, but no entry in the App Store yet. However, there is still no date for the official release of LoR and LoR Mobile.
How to Play Legends of Runeterra
To get started, we will explain how Runeterra is played. This should give you a brief insight into the game and show what you can expect in LoR.
Is There a Tutorial?
Here’s how to start: Legends of Runeterra offers a comprehensive tutorial with 13 different introductory scenarios. In these, you will learn the fundamentals of
- how to play a round
- what to pay attention to in the game
- what keywords are and what they do
- what to consider when attacking and defending
- how to win a round
We strongly recommend playing all tutorials. You will gain a good overview of what you have to do in Legends of Runeterra, as well as some rewards.
The tutorials should provide you with enough experience points to complete the first tasks and thus establish a small collection of cards and items to get you started.
Attacking, Blocking, Winning
This is how a round goes: In Legends of Runeterra, you play in a continuous exchange with your opponent. Each round is divided into several turns, similar to Magic. Additionally, you gain mana each round, similar to Hearthstone.
In rounds, you can alternately play cards, cast spells, attack, and block. Only the player with the attacking token is allowed to attack. The defender usually chooses how to block.
A round is won when the opposing Nexus is brought down to 0 life points. You start with 20. Some cards have their own win conditions and ignore the life points of the Nexus.
What is Mana? With mana, you can play cards. Each card has mana costs displayed at the top left corner. You gain one more mana each round, and the mana is fully replenished each round.
Excess mana does not dissipate but flows into spell mana. You can store up to three mana and transfer it to subsequent rounds. These maximum three spell mana can only be spent on spells.
What is the attacking token? The attacking token indicates which player may attack. For the attack, they select allies and bring them onto the field. This initiates the attack and prevents the opponent from playing additional cards (except for fast and instant cards).
The Different Game Modes of LoR
These game modes exist: Currently, Legends of Runeterra offers four different game modes. These can fundamentally differ:
- Playing against players: You play against real opponents with a self-built deck (“constructed”). Here, you can choose between “normal” (unranked) and “ranked” (ranked).
- Against AI: You play unranked games against the computer. Here you can test decks or try out your first games.
- Expedition: You build a deck from randomly selected cards and continuously expand it during the expedition. Comparable to “Draft” (Magic) or “Arena” (Hearthstone). More on this can be found in our guide soon.
- Introduction: Play the individual tutorials.
If you have never played card games of this type before, we recommend avoiding the expedition for now, as it requires an entry fee. Save your entry tokens and prices for now until you have warmed up to the game.
Building Decks and Getting to Know Cards
The heart of Legends of Runeterra are the various cards. There are dozens of different creatures, spells, and champions that you can assemble into decks and compete against others with.
Champions, Allies, Spells, and More
What types of cards are there? In Legends of Runeterra, there are fundamentally two different types of cards: spells and units. However, these are further divided into various categories.
For units, there are
- Champions
- and companions
For spells, there are
- slow
- fast
- and instant spells
More about spells can be found in the spell section. Champions and companions are summarized under the term “Allies” on cards.
Some allies also have groups. These include, for example, “Elite,” “Spider,” or “Poro.” Additionally, all cards fall under the rarities Common, Rare, Epic, and Champion.
Most cards in Legends of Runeterra also possess so-called “keywords.” You can find out more about this in the keywords section.
A special feature of champions: A champion is unique on your side of the field. Excess champions become their corresponding spell.
This means that, for example, if you play Garen and have another Garen card in hand, that Garen in hand becomes the spell “Garen’s Judgment,” his so-called champion spell. If Garen leaves the field, Garen’s Judgment becomes a champion again.
Spells
What are spells? Unlike allies, spells are cards whose effect takes effect immediately and are usually consumed. They can be played with regular mana or spell mana.
They often grant strengthening effects like barriers or status boosts or deal damage. They can also summon units, copy cards, and more.
How are spells played? You can essentially play spells like any other card. However, the order of play is very important for them. The rule of “the stack” or “last in, first out” applies here.
This means that the last spell played is the first to take effect. On the game board, you can roughly remember this by reading the spells from left to right. Once played, the spell on the far left always takes effect first.
These keywords are associated with spells: However, spells also have a special property. They have three special, unique keywords that indicate when and how they are played:
- Slow: Can only be played outside of fighting and other spells. The opponent can react.
- Fast: Can be played at any time. The opponent can react.
- Instant: Can be played at any time. Opponents cannot react.
Buying and Crafting Cards
Your main source for new cards at the beginning will likely be the various journeys of the regions. Here you will receive card packs and more. You can also buy or craft cards directly.
Here’s how to craft new cards with shards: Similar to Hearthstone’s dust, you receive shards in Legends of Runeterra. You get shards when you draw a card from a pack and already own three copies of it. You can also earn them as rewards for the expedition or in chests. However, you cannot destroy cards for shards.
With shards, you can craft cards. The costs are as follows:
- Common cards: 100 shards
- Rare cards: 300 shards
- Epic cards: 1200 shards
- Champions: 3000 shards
Here’s how to build new cards with wildcards: In addition to shards, there are also wildcards. You receive these, for example, from capsules as rewards for experience points on a journey. Wildcards come in four different rarities. A wildcard can be directly exchanged for a card.
Here’s how to buy new cards: You also have the option to buy a limited number of wildcards weekly in the shop. These cost coins, a real money currency at a rate of about €1.10 for 100 coins (+ bonuses for larger purchases).
The wildcards cost:
- Champions: 300 coins
- Epic: 120 coins
- Rare: 30 coins
- Common: 10 coins
The number of wildcards available for purchase resets weekly.
Decks and Regions
These are decks: A deck consists of 40 cards from up to two different regions. You may add a maximum of six champions and a maximum of three copies of the same card to a deck.
In general, decks pursue a specific agenda. This means they have a specific task or a specific way in which you play them and how they function. For example, there are decks that:
- aim to eliminate the opponent particularly quickly
- focus on powerful allies late in the game
- or want to control the opponent’s allies
What are regions and what do they mean? Regions in Legends of Runeterra refer to what colors mean in Magic. You can combine them into decks, but (in “constructed”) never have more than two different regions in the deck.
The regions have different strengths and weaknesses as well as different champions. While they are generally equally strong, they have their specific characteristics that somewhat define them.
These regions exist:
- Demacia: Primarily builds on protection, such as with barriers, and strong cards.
- Freljord: For control decks (with “freeze”) or horde decks (with Poros).
- Ionia: Primarily trick cards that continuously swap, strengthen, and re-play cards.
- Noxus: Well-suited for aggressive decks, offering high damage, little defense, and strengthening at the cost of your own life points.
- Piltover & Zhaun: Combo cards that primarily synergize with spells. Also builds on direct damage through spells.
- Shadow Isles: Primarily “ephemeral” minions and tokens. Shadow Isles decks play with strong attacks without lasting companions. Comparable to graveyard decks from Magic.
Deck Building
What should I consider when building a deck? When building a deck, you should always keep in mind what this deck is supposed to achieve. Do you want to eliminate your opponent quickly? Then take many cheap, strong units and forgo protection. Do you want to play specific combos? Then make sure the opponent can’t overwhelm you first.
The core of a deck is usually the champions. The champions dictate how you should build your deck. If you have no idea where to start, simply choose a champion and try to build a deck that supports them.
However, it is important to maintain a balance of spells and allies as well as your “mana curve.” This means that you typically should not have too many cheap and not too many expensive cards in the deck, and you should not solely play with spells.
For starters, we have already introduced three good starter decks for Legends of Runeterra that you can use as inspiration. But have the courage to create your own – and to fail. That’s how you learn.
Keywords
What are keywords? Most cards in Runeterra have specific keywords. These trigger special effects. For starters, we will briefly show you all the keywords and what they do.
These keywords exist and this is what they do:
- Invulnerable: Cannot block.
- Barrier: Prevents all damage (once)
- Challenger: Can only be blocked by opponents with 3 or more strength.
- Stunned: Cannot attack or block this round.
- Direct strike: Attacks first during the attack.
- Double strike: Attacks twice, first with a direct strike, then normal.
- Freeze: Sets an opponent’s strength to 0.
- Regeneration: Restores lost health at the beginning of a round.
- Ephemeral: Disappears after the round.
- Challenger: Can choose a blocker.
- Life steal: Heals the own Nexus for the damage dealt.
- Last Breath: Triggers an effect upon death.
- Robust: Takes 1 less damage from all sources.
- Overwhelm: Deals damage exceeding the blocker’s health to the Nexus.
- Untouchable: Can only be blocked by other untouchable units.
- Supports: Applies the described effect to the attacker left of the card.
- Ethereal: Dies after the round or after attacking.
Further keywords and triggers: There are also other important words on cards that describe something. These, however, are triggers. These are words that indicate when a described effect takes place:
- Play: Effect takes effect upon playing.
- Enlightened: Requires 10 maximum mana.
- Loyalty: Triggers when the top card of the deck belongs to the same region.
- Nexus Strike: Triggers after an attack against the Nexus.
- Strike: Triggers after an attack.
- Recall: Returns the card from the board back to the hand of the owner.
You can find the keywords associated with spells in the spell section.
Experience Points and Progress
How do I progress in Legends of Runeterra? You earn experience points for most battles and activities in Legends of Runeterra. With these, you advance in the regions and unlock new chests, capsules, and cards.
In general, you earn experience with each game. However, there are limitations. For the first ten wins in PvP, you receive 200 experience points. After that, the number of granted XP gradually decreases until after 30 wins you no longer receive XP.
You also earn additional XP for PvP losses, AI wins, and AI losses. You also get XP for the expedition, depending on the number of victories, which you collect at the end of the expedition.
You also earn particularly high amounts of experience through daily missions. You can check these with the “Missions” button in the main menu. The more experience you accumulate per week, the better your weekly vault (on Tuesdays) will be.
In a post from Riot, it is stated that you will only receive significantly less XP if you play about seven to nine hours a day.
Tips for Hearthstone and Magic Players
What you should pay attention to: Anyone with experience in Hearthstone, Magic, or other card games of this type can derive many things for Legends of Runeterra. Especially deck building is almost identical, as many deck archetypes also exist in LoR:
- “Rush” or “Aggro” decks (Noxus/Ionia)
- Control and counter decks (Freljord/Demacia)
- Token and graveyard decks (Shadow Isles/Piltover & Zhaun)
In general, Magic players can loosely orient themselves by the colors. These correspond in Legends of Runeterra loosely to the characteristics that colors also bring in Magic.
By the way, our editor Alex finds Legends of Runeterra to be better than both other competitors:
