It’s satisfying as hell to trick an enemy into a position that levels up your own champion or destroys theirs.Ĭhampions also add welcome flavor to well-understood deck types. With champions in play, Runeterra feels like a true battle of wits, each player trying to outsmart or bait the other. Knowing when to play them and how to keep them alive is especially rewarding because you just know your opponent is doing everything they can to kill them. Each one also levels up after meeting certain conditions, often gaining more power and new abilities that make them formidable.Ĭhampions are often more powerful than regular followers, but they’re far from some kind of game-winning trump card.

Braum, for example, regenerates health and gets to choose which enemy unit blocks him, making him a great tank. Each of the initial set of 24 is modelled after a character in League of Legends, adapting their playstyle to fit inside the rules of a card game. It’s satisfying as hell to trick an enemy into a position that levels up your own champion or destroys theirs.īy far the most unique part of Legends of Runeterra’s combat are champions. It keeps Legends of Runeterra feeling unpredictable and dynamic, instead of one player snowballing due to bad luck. Being able to play cards on a turn where it should be impossible to play them because I stored mana earlier is one obvious benefit, but I also like that I’m not as harshly punished by a bad opening hand.

This one change feels as substantial as The Elder Scrolls: Legends having two separate playing boards. In Legends of Runeterra, however, up to three points of my unspent mana are preserved for the next round to be used exclusively on spells. Most card games, for example, punish me for not spending all your mana in a given turn. Some genius twists to combat further distinguish Runeterra from the pack. Not having double-check your math or worry that a certain chain of abilities and spells plays will play out a certain way is a godsend. When interactions between cards get complicated, Runeterra has a clever feature called the Oracle’s Eye that shows you what the board will look like after a certain attack phase or spell has resolved.

Install legends of runeterra