Players are required to communicate honestly about the state of the game with their opponents.

Players are required to communicate honestly and completely with tournament officials.

Players are not required to assist their opponents in playing the game.

Players are required to treat other players, tournament officials, and spectators with respect.

In team events, communication between teammates is allowed and encouraged, but it must be done in a reasonably timely manner. See 703.2 for more information on Slow Play.

Cards have a level of privacy as specified in CR 128. Privacy. These apply to levels of information accessible to the players as well.

In addition to these levels of information, some information is derived.

Like cards, other relevant information about the game state can be public, derived, private, or secret.

The additional relevant public information includes:

The additional relevant derived information includes:

Players must acknowledge changes to public information that result from their cards and effects as those effects would have an observable impact on the game. See 506.3.e. for examples of observable impact.

Players must answer honestly any questions regarding public information.

Players must not represent public or derived information incorrectly.

Players must point out discrepancies between announced and recorded public information.

Judges are encouraged to help players determine public information, but not derived information.

In 2v2, teammates may share Private information, including directly showing each other the cards in their hand as defined by 484.8.e. in the Core Rules.

In competitions, players may take actions that skip parts of the technically precise play sequence without explicitly announcing that sequence.

The most common type of shortcut is skipping one or more parts of a turn, phase, or step to the mutual understanding of all involved players.

Players may request to use a new shortcut in a game but must be clear about the game state at the start and end of the shortcut.

Players may interrupt shortcuts by explaining where they want to intervene to take an action.

Players may interrupt their own shortcuts.

Players can’t use shortcuts they haven’t previously announced or modify existing shortcuts without announcement.

Players can’t interrupt a shortcut with the intent to do nothing.

When resolving spells or abilities, players can’t assume their opponents are using shortcuts without asking.

The following are common shortcuts for Riftbound competitions:

Complex series of game actions are sometimes shortcutted into out-of-order sequences, which are technically incorrect or imprecise, but arrive at the correct legal and understood game state.

Players may ask their opponents to do these actions, or a subset of these actions, in the correct order so that they can react at the appropriate time.

Players can’t shortcut out-of-order in a way that gives them information prematurely that might affect decisions later in that sequence.

When something is recycled, it must be immediately put on the bottom of the appropriate deck.

Some sequences of actions can be repeated and are shortcutted as a loop.

Players performing a loop must have each iteration of the loop be identical with no conditional actions.

To decide how to proceed with a loop, determine how many players are needed to maintain it (who must take actions or make decisions to sustain the loop):

For each maintaining player (if any), in turn order, that player chooses a number of iterations.

Each other player (if any), in turn order, may choose to agree to that number or choose a number of iterations after which they commit to taking action to break the loop or choose not to break the loop.

If no player chooses to break the loop and there were no maintaining players, the game ends in a draw.

Otherwise, the loop continues until the lowest number of iterations chosen, then that player either gains priority (if a maintaining player) or breaks the loop.

If a player intervenes to break a loop, they may choose to interrupt a partially completed iteration.

If a sequence of actions is non-deterministic, it may not be shortcut and iterations must be performed manually.

Some loops are maintained by decisions rather than actions. In these cases, apply 505.4-505.8 but with the player making a different decision rather than a different action.

Judges are the final arbiter of what constitutes a loop, or if choices are available to continue a loop when secret information is involved.

Players who try to opt-out of shortcutting or propose incorrect shortcutting to use up time are cheating. See 704.8 for more information about cheating.

Accountable Player: The player responsible for putting a triggered ability on the chain, as defined by the core rules. See CR 383. Triggered Abilities for more information on triggered abilities.

Players are not required to notify other players of triggered abilities when they are not the accountable player, but may if they wish.

The accountable player must acknowledge their triggers by the time they would have an observable impact on the game. If they do not, they are forgotten.

A triggered ability that was forgotten never goes on the chain.

A triggered ability that was forgotten is still considered to have triggered for the purpose of non-optional “First time” or similarly restricted triggers.

Players may communicate with teammates at all times unless explicitly prohibited by the format rules.

Players that acquire secret or private information about a match in which a teammate is playing can’t communicate with that teammate for the remainder of that match. See CR 128. Privacy for information types.

In high OPL, players must arrange their cards according to the following rules, for clarity.

Runes must be closer to the player than nonrunes.

Nonrunes must be closer to the player’s opponent than the player’s runes.

Main Deck and trash must be together on either the left side or the right side of the board.

Rune Deck should be on the other side (right or left) of the board from the Main Deck.

Legend must be between nonrunes and Chosen Champion, and both legend and Chosen Champion must be together on either the left side or the right side of the board.

Each card or indicator that attaches to another card must be clearly associated with it physically.

Tokens must be represented by card objects that show all relevant information including ready state.

Buffs must be represented by an object that unambiguously represents a buff in game terms.

Ready objects must be oriented facing the controller. Exhausted objects must be oriented at a 90 degree rotation to ready objects, either clockwise or counterclockwise, but all exhausted objects must be rotated consistently.

In competitions, players are responsible for considering options before taking actions.

Once an action is communicated to an opponent, that action can’t generally be taken back.

At low OPL, a player can reverse their most recent action and make a different decision for that action (including not taking it at all) as long as no new action has been taken by either player. The change in decision does not need to be immediate.

At high OPL, a player can reverse their most recent action and make a different decision for that action (including not taking it at all) if no new action has been taken by either player and the following is true:

Intentionally attempting to reverse decisions to gain information from an opponent is considered angle shooting. Players may not change their decisions based on an opponent’s physical reaction or as a response to an opponent starting to take a game action. See 704.4. for more information on angle shooting.

While changing decisions as described above is allowed, players must still maintain an appropriate pace of play. See 703.2 for more information on Slow Play.