Saturday Morning Unleashed Pre-Rift Event

What is a Pre-Rift?

A Pre-Rift event is your first opportunity to get your hands on a new set’s cards and play with them before the set is officially released. Think of it as a sneak peek of what’s to come with the added bonus of cracking open some sweet sweet booster packs filled with brand new cards to add to your collection.

Pre-Rift events are fun, social, and casual! The focus is on learning and light-hearted fun—not cut-throat competition. Don’t hesitate to ask your fellow Riftbounders or the event judge for help while you’re building your deck or in the middle of a game.

The other great thing about Pre-Rifts is that they are Sealed events. This means all the cards you need to play will be provided to you as part of the event, and you’ll just need to build your deck from that limited card pool.

What is Sealed?

In Sealed, you are provided with booster packs to open, for this event it will be Unleashed booster packs. You can use any of the cards you open from those packs when building your deck, but you can’t add outside cards from your collection to your deck. Building a sealed deck has similar rules to building a normal constructed deck, but there are some key differences:

• Sealed decks have a minimum Main Deck size of 25, but you can play more than that if you want to.
• You can use as many copies of a card as you open, including going above the normal limit of 3 copies of a card.
• Sealed decks can use up to three domains of cards and runes. If you use a Legend or Signature card, that covers two of your domains.
• You are not limited to Runes or tokens that you open in your packs. Additional runes will be provided to you by the event organizer, and you can use anything handy to represent tokens!
• Your Chosen Champion and Signature cards must be within your three domains, but they don’t have to match the champion on your legend. For example, you could have Rengar, Trophy Hunter as your Chosen Champion and Alpha Strike in your deck, with Bashful Bloom as your legend. Your three domains would be: Calm, Mind, and Body.
• You can use battlefields that you open, or use a facedown card as a “blank” substitute battlefield. These blank battlefields have no abilities and are locations for players to conquer and hold.
• You can change the starting configuration of your deck in between games and rounds. Don’t be afraid to alter your build as you go!

For Unleashed Pre-Rift events, you’ll be provided with the following to open and use to build your deck. Remember, anything you open is yours to keep!

• 5 Unleashed Booster Packs
• A pack themed around one of six new Champions in Unleashed. These packs have a Legend, a Rare Champion, a Battlefield, and support cards all for that Champion. You’ll get one of these packs at random featuring Jhin, Vi, Master Yi, Ivern, Diana, or Kha’Zix.
• An Ashe, Focused promo card with a special Pre-Rift stamp. You can’t include Ashe in your sealed deck, but she is a special promo you can only get your hands on at these events (while supplies last).

Building Your Deck

When building your sealed deck, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. Remember, what you build has to have at least 25 cards and follow the domain rules listed above. With that in mind, here are a few tips for building your deck at the Pre-Rift:

1. Including a reasonable amount of units in your deck is important, they are the primary way to score points. Most decks want to have at least 15 units that can fight for you. You’ll want approximately five of them to cost 2 Energy, so you have plays to make in your first turns. The rest of your units can be more expensive, with a diversity of costs so you have powerful plays at all points of the game.
2. Use your non-unit cards to help bolster the strategy of your deck. Equipment or spells that give Might are great options to improve your units. It’s also always a good idea to have a few spells that will let you interact directly with your opponent’s units by removing them from play.
3. Think about the different Power costs in your deck. Cards with Power costs tend to have stronger effects, and you will want to have some without going overboard on the runes you’ll have to recycle. When deciding what runes to play in your Rune Deck, make sure to think about the specific Power costs you’re putting in your Main Deck.
4. Unleashed has a new mechanic called XP. It is a resource you can generate that some cards let you spend and some cards will get a benefit from when you have a lot of XP. When including XP cards in your sealed deck, include enough generation to support the payoff cards you want to use.