SealedYou play with what you open, and nothing else
A Pre-Rift is a Sealed event: the organiser hands you the cards on the spot, you open your packs at the table and build a deck out of that pool only, with nothing added from your collection. That is why it is the one night where a brand-new player and someone who has played for a year start on roughly level ground. Riot frames it as a relaxed evening, where asking the judge for help while you are still building is perfectly normal. Events kick off on Friday the 16th, and the window runs for the rest of the week.
The rulesTwenty-five cards, three domains, copies unlimited
- your Main Deck needs at least 25 cards, and you can go higher;
- you may use up to three domains, counting both cards and Runes;
- a Signature spell is legal only if both of its domains are among those three;
- you can play without a Legend or without a Champion Unit, and then you draw an extra card on your first turn; if you do run a Legend, both of its domains have to sit inside your three;
- any Champion Unit can be your Chosen Champion, whatever your Legend is;
- you may play every copy you open of a card;
- Runes and tokens are not limited to what you pull: the organiser supplies extra Runes;
- battlefields are the ones you open, or a facedown card used as a blank battlefield with no abilities;
- you can change your deck between games and rounds.
Two pieces of advice from Riot for anyone who has never played Sealed: run at least fifteen units, since units are your main way to score, and make about five of them cost 2 Energy so you have something to do in the early turns.
| Sealed | You play only with the cards opened during the event. |
|---|---|
| Domain | A card's «colour». At a Pre-Rift you can mix three of them at most. |
The promoHeimerdinger stays out of the deck
The Pre-Rift kit holds five Radiance Booster Packs, a champion pack built around one of the nine new Legends (it contains the Legend, a rare champion, a battlefield and the cards that support them) and the Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor promo. Everything you open is yours to keep, but the promo is not playable: Riot states that this copy cannot go into your Sealed deck. If Heimerdinger shows up in your packs in the regular version, that one is fine. It was the question left open while the only account of the kit came from the Radiance Summit recap.
The rulingsThree answers that came with the guide
K'Sante. His Legend ability stays on for the whole turn rather than taking a single snapshot: a unit with Shield 2 and Assault 2 ends up at Assault 4, and if you hand it more Shield mid-turn with a trick, Assault climbs again.
Encore. When a card asks you to choose with Encore, the two picks have to be different: you cannot take the same one twice out of the four on offer.
Equipment turning into a unit. An Equipment that becomes a unit does not carry over the text it had while equipped: with Orianna's Legend, a converted Blade of Exile is simply a 3 Might unit with no Gank. A fuller FAQ will follow after release.
Why it matters to us. From October 16 the Pre-Rift runs in Italian stores too, and these rules come from Riot rather than from each individual shop: remember the 25-card floor, the three-domain ceiling and the Heimerdinger promo staying out. The rest — unlimited copies, facedown battlefields, a deck you can rebuild between games — works in favour of anyone without a collection behind them.
The short version
- Radiance Pre-Rift events start on Friday, October 16 and run for a week, with times set by each store.
- Sealed deck: 25 cards minimum, three domains maximum, unlimited copies of whatever you open.
- The Heimerdinger promo is not deck-legal; the regular version pulled from a pack is.
- Rulings: K'Sante adds Shield to Assault for the whole turn, Encore needs two different picks, converted Equipment loses its equipped text.
Source: Riot Games — Preparing for the Radiance Pre-Rift. Images: Riot Games.
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