The weekend is here, and in between the Valentine’s Day celebrations I’ll be looking for one thing in my local stores: Spiritforged, the last set of the Tied to the crack collectible card game (TCG) featuring the cast and world of League of Legends and Arcane, the hit Netflix game and show.
With the addition of new gear (which your units can use to gain powerful buffs), along with gold tokens, a new resource option to play your most powerful cards, plus some great new champions and legends to build, this set adds many exciting gameplay pieces for players to experience. I’m currently building an Azir deck after some lucky shots in my box and because I love his card design.
But forget about all that for a minute because I want to celebrate the best addition to Tied to the crack that dropped with this new set: Pre-Rift, torn Limited format.
I’m old too Magic: The Gathering As a player and outside of Commander, my favorite way to experience the game is through Limited environments, whether Draft or Sealed. Basically, instead of coming in with a pre-made deck, you show up, open packs, and build a deck. Then you play a tournament inside the venue along with the other players.
Draft uses fewer packs, from which you draw one or two cards at a time, before passing them to the next player in your group. Meanwhile, Sealed lets you open six packages that are uniquely yours; This was the Spiritforged Pre-Rift format.
However, to make this format work, Riot designers had to make some adjustments to Tied to the crackthe rules and how the Sealed experience works. Having experienced it firsthand last weekend, they did a great job.
First of all, instead of Tied to the crackWith the usual limit of two rune domains per deck, you can play up to three flavors in your deck. Secondly, while you’ll typically need to play with a Legend and Champion pairing of the same character, for this format you can mix and match.
Not only does this make it a little easier to build a deck with the random variety of cards you open, but it also opens up the possibility for inventive strategies.
I played a fairly basic (although certainly difficult to pilot) aggressive deck led by Draven Legend and Rengar Champion, which as a duo rewarded me and helped me win fights. But others I played against were much more interesting: my round two opponent, for example, paired Irelia with Orin in a Heavy Equipment deck to make his Champion a powerhouse that could decimate one battlefield before setting up and decimating the other.
This Mind, Calm, and Chaos build wouldn’t be possible in a normal game, and I’m sure it’s precisely what Riot Tied to the crack The team would like to see the decks made at the event.
Some other changes were the smaller deck size, which is common in Limited formats, as well as the option to choose not to play a Legend or Champion (you only get one extra card at the start of the game). You can also play blank battlefields if your open arena wouldn’t benefit you (or could actively hurt your strategy), and you can also seed one of your six packs, meaning you get a pair of Champion and Legend of the same character, as well as a selection of cards that would work well in a deck headed by them.
I had such a good time with Pre-Rift that it made me hungry to play something similar soon, but it will be difficult because you can’t find stock.
At the same time, we are seeing TCG as Magic: The Gathering create more limited products, like their Draft Night boxes, which give players packs and a prize to host their own mini-event with friends, and the ongoing Jump Start releases, which let you open two packs that you can combine and start playing – a super accessible entry point for new players.
Hopefully Riot can break torn Availability issues this year as I’m sure many people like me have wanted to experience this world of gaming since bingeing it. Arcanebut found League of Legends not be your cup of tea.
Until then, I’ll have to count the days before Unleashed (the game’s next set) comes out and the next Pre-Rift goes live.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
