Riftbound: Vendetta Hands-On Preview: Zed vs. Shen Showdown Deck and New Keywords

Riftbound’s Vendetta is the League of Legends trading card game’s anticipated fourth set, and I got to go hands-on with the new Zed vs. Shen Showdown deck at Riot’s HQ before its release later this month. I played with Riftbound senior designer Jon Moormann, who spoke in depth about the new mechanics and keywords: Empower, Burn, and Flow.

Before getting into my actual (all-too-short) experience testing out the Zed vs. Shen Showdown deck, here’s some background about those new keywords and some insight about them from Moormann.

New Keywords: Empower, Burn, and Flow

A keyword in Riftbound is, to put it as simply as possible, a mechanic shared across cards. For example, Unleashed introduced the keywords Ambush and Hunt. So when a new one is introduced, we can expect new strategies to emerge. Here’s what you need to know about three new keywords introduced in Vendetta:

Empower is a state you can activate on your turn usually for a cost–either runes or a trigger, like banishing a card. In exchange, the now-Empowered card gains an extra ability or effect.

For example, the Legend Akali’s normal Action effect is, “If it’s your turn, move a friendly unit in a showdown to base.” If you Empower her by exhausting three runes and recycling one, that Action has this additional effect: “... and if I’m Empowered, ready it.”

“You can almost view [Empower] as a different way to draw cards in some ways,” Moormann explained. “It gives colors that maybe have less access to card flow more ways to develop their board over the course of the game.” Essentially, if you have Runes but no cards to play, you can instead spend the energy on Empowering units.

Moormann specifically called out orange (Body) cards as having a lot of Empower cards that do “really great things,” and that Ambessa, a new red (Fury) and yellow (Order) Legend, also has a lot of “cool Empowered stuff in her kit.”

The red (Fury) and purple (Chaos) Zed Legend also has an Empower mechanic, as do many of Vendetta’s new Legends.

“They have a base version of their ability, and at some point in the game, you get to upgrade it to the superpowered version,” Moormann said. “Which is one of our favorite things to do with Empowered–it lets us do cool stuff with Legends. You have a two-stage Legend–your Legend is a little weaker in the early game, but you can make an investment to make it better.”

Burn requires you to put a number of cards from the top of your deck into your trash–and some cards allow you to inflict this on your opponent. If your deck isn’t built specifically for Burn, you’ll probably want to stay away from it, but Burn combos hand-in-hand with Flow.

Flow allows you to play the card from your trash for its Flow cost, and then requires you to banish it.

“Flow works really well with anything that lets you Burn or Discard… because it's basically just free cards,” Moormann said.

Since spoilers have begun rolling out, we’ve seen a lot of Legends make use of all of these new mechanics–like Kennen’s. Zed’s deck in the two-player Showdown Deck I played with makes use of them all as well.

Moormann said one of the things the team playtested a lot with Zed was Jinx–they wanted to make sure it wasn't making Jinx superpowered. “I think we landed in a really cool spot where Zed is very strong, but also Jinx gets stronger, which, [I’m] not sad to see. She could use it,” Moormann said.

The purple Jinx, Rebel, is readied and gets +1 that turn when a card is discarded, and the red Jinx, Demolitionist, discards two when she’s played, so it’s not difficult to consider the combo potential.

Details

As for other cards that benefit from Burn and Flow, Moormann cited red Rumble, Hotheaded, and a battlefield that’s sometimes run with him, Minefield.
“Rumble has some sub-themes where he already wants a little bit of Burn, where he probably plays Minefield in order to enable the red Rumble,” Moormann explained. “I think Minefield as a battlefield gets way better in this set because if I'm running a bunch of Flow cards, I'm very happy to get to take two shots at drawing them every time I go in.”

Zed vs. Shen Showdown Decks Hands-On

New to Riftbound in Vendetta are two-player Showdown Decks, the first of which is Zed vs. Shen. These boxes include “two complete 56-card preconstructed decks (40 cards + 12 runes, 1 Champion Legend, 3 battlefields per deck) and two Vendetta booster packs,” and retail for$34.99 USD.

Moormann summed up the playstyles succinctly: “Zed wants to go in and hit fast, Shen wants to sit back and protect the point with a friend.”

Where Legend Zed, Master of Shadows makes a lot of use of the new mechanics, the yellow (Order) and green (Calm) Legend Shen, Eye of Twilight is a bit more straightforward: Action - Exhaust: Give a friendly unit Tank this turn. (It must be assigned combat damage first.)

“Shen is a Hold deck, but with a twist,” Moormann explained. “Rather than piling as many units as you can, Shen asks you to get exactly two units into a battlefield, and then pays you off handsomely for the duo defense.”

Both of Shen’s Champion Units have extra effects when they hold with exactly one other unit. The yellow (Order) Shen, Leader of the Kinkou Order, scores an additional point. The green (Calm) Shen, Scourge of the Shadows, draws one card.

Hypothetically, I can see some buffoonery with extra tanks, the new yellow Shen; Ahri, Alluring, and Hidden Blade. Moormann also said Ahri improves with some of the Shen cards, which is great to hear, personally, as an Ahri fan.

“Zed is much more aggressive, burning through your deck to get Flow cards into the trash and turning them into the offense-focused Shadow Clones,” Moorman explained.

I very foolishly chose to play as Zed, coming in off a high of playing an undefeated, bastardized mostly red and purple Pyke deck made in a sealed deck challenge at the Regional Qualifier in Vancouver. My current constructed deck is Vex, Gloomist, so I’m actually very much used to… holding.

Moormann out-tempo’d me as Shen, and when my attempts to break his hold were thwarted, I couldn’t replace units fast enough to try again. I also experienced the devastation of putting cards in the trash that would have been clutch when I chose to Burn or Discard, but it was so cool when I did have stuff in the trash I could use. I’m sure there are failsafes for this, like Fizz, Heedless Resurrection, and some new cards I haven’t seen just yet.

I only got to play that one game, so Shen seemed like an easier deck to play without knowing your cards, but Zed absolutely has a lot of very cool combo potential that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to unlock on my first go-around. Speaking of potential, I do think a unique Zed deck would have more potential than a Shen deck, but maybe I’ll be surprised with what pros come up with.

With all that being said, if left constructed the way they are, the preconstructed Shen vs. Zed Showdown decks feel like even match ups. Both do what they want to do very well–Shen is great at holding battlefields with two units, and Zed is great at fiercely attacking while taking advantage of discarding to draw and do other tricks.

They also explore a lot of Riftbound’s mechanics. Between the two decks, you’ll experiment with Tank, Shield, Assault, Ambush, even movement triggers; and the three new mechanics of Flow, Burn, and Empower, too. Overall, I think this new showdown deck set is a great entry-point into Riftbound, and I could see friends swapping decks back and forth to learn what strategies they vibe with the most.

Vendetta, the fourth Riftbound expansion set, releases on July 31 simultaneously worldwide for the first time. It’ll have more than 160 cards, 50 Showcase cards, and nine Champion Legends–setting a new standard for Champion Legends in the future.

You can get a chance to play with Vendetta early at prerelease events at local game stores starting on July 24, which I highly recommend. They’re incredibly fun and beginner-friendly, and it’s where I got my start with Unleashed.

For more on Vendetta, check out Why Riftbound’s Design Team Chose Kennen, Akali, and Jayce for the First Opposing Domain Legends.

Casey DeFreitas is the deputy editor of guides at IGN. Catch her on socials @ShinyCaseyD.