Ding! Let me tell you something 1006 followers! It took us only a month and a half to go from barely 60 followers to over 1000! You guys obviously love Rath, AND RATH LOVES YOU TOO! ALMOST AS MUCH AS RATH LOVES RATH! Because EVERYBODY should love Rath! Next stop, 10,000! Then THE MOON!

Let me tell you something 10 packs of Radiance that Rath opened! Rath is... mildly disappointed. Though, Orianma sounds interesting as a deck. Adding her to the list of Rath ideas.

Let me tell you something 1045 Riftbound followers! Did you think Rath was done!? Do you think Rath was gonna lay down and accept just getting the overnumber Ziggs!? NO! IN RATH'S HOUSE, WE GO ALL THE WAY! BECAUSE RATH IS THE WAY! And the way of Rath is getting 1st place and winning a ton of packs! So let me tell you something RATH! Open wide AND SAY RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATH Here comes the winnings!

Let me tell you something Riftbound followers that manifested Rath to pull a Ziggs overnumber! FINE! Rath's gonna make some Ziggs jank! BUT RATHS GONNA TELL YOU NOW THAT ITS NOT GONNA BE STRONG! (Also thank you for the Ziggs and Orianna alt <3)

Let me tell you something 999 Riftbound followers! No surprise here, Rath's intuition was right! Riven is actually looking like a very powerful deck. As soon as Blade of the Exile goes down in price (guys, lets be realistic here, Blades gonna be like $10, not $45) Rath is gonna try her out. And you know what? Rath isn't 100% convinced Riven will be "heron slop." Why? Well, the main upside of Astral Heron is that it negates power costs and allows you to ramp easily. But Riven doesn't have many power costs, and already ramps really well. More than likely this will be a hyper mobile deck like Irelia, but the opposite sort of. See, Irelia relies on have a ton of spells to keep your one unit alive. But because Riven directly synergizes with units rather than targeting, you'll be running a lot more units. This could imply that Riven is going to be faster, more resiliant form of Irelia. Rath is confident Riven will be tier 1.

Let me tell you something Rath fans! RATH FEET PICS LEAKED!

Let me tell you something Rath who forgot to post to his 997 Riftbound followers! How could you forget to post your pulls from the 2 prerifts you attended!? Surely your pulls were amazing just like all the other viral Riftbound posts ri-- Oh. Rath pulled Seraphine and Zero point from prize packs. The other stuff from prerift packs Foot for attention. That hole in Rath's wallet isn't gonna unburn itself!

Let me tell you something 963 Riftbound follo-- WHAT!? Hold the phone! Now give the phone to Rath! RING RING HELLO?? Hey Mama Rath, Rath just wanted to tell you that RATH HAS ALMOST 1000 FOLLOWERS ON TWITTER! It hasn't even been a week since Rath hit 900 followers! No last calls here! The RATH TRAIN is fully capable of going TO THE MOON WHILE PICKING PEOPLE UP! So ALL ABOOOOOOOARD THE RATH TRAIN!

8am: "Okay, Rath has been off work for about 2 hours, lets go take our car in for maintenance real quick. Then we can sleep and go to the prerift." 9am: "Okay, its been about an hour now, they should be almost done." 10am: "Almost done..." 11am: "..." 11:30am: Let me tell you something car dealership that is taking forever to service Rath's car! You said it would take about an hour, yet despite that Rath has been here for over 3 hours and RATH NEEDS TO SLEEP!

Let me tell you something 953 Riftbound followers! Rath is turning off his dms! And this is why! There's no point in checking his dms when Rath is pretty much going to get multiple death threats from, no surprise here, Magic players. If you want to interact with Rath, comment on one of Rath's posts! Also, on account of all the sudden toxicity, Rath is going to be using his block button a lot more liberally. Rath will accept that he brought this swarm on himself by kicking the beehive, but for as inclusive as they say they are, this is a large stain for Magic players.

Let me tell you something Rath who keeps picking fights on the internet when he's supposed to be perpetuating the fact he is the smartest and the best! STOOOOOOOOOP! Not everyone is going to believe you, and you can't convince everyone! Not everyone can have the same brain power as RATH! So instead focus on being a good role model for the Riftbound community! You may not be able to help everyone be Rath, but you can definitely help them! So let me tell you something 944 Riftbound followers! Welcome to the RAAAAAATH Train! We're going non-stop to the moon! So buckle up, flex your muscles, and lets go be the best! This concludes Rath's RAAAAAAAAAAAAATH TALK!

Let me tell you something 940 Riftbound followers! RIFTBOUND IS DEAD! Now that Rath has your attention, Rath would like to actually discuss possible factors that would kill Riftbound. (Don't worry, Riftbound isn't dead. But we aren't out of the woods) The first barrier to hit us will be the best-of prizing. This barrier is fairly easy to get past. Riot simply has to create a high-tier prize system that is generous like it is now, incentivizes diverse play, and compensates players for their time and money. If the best-of prizing falls apart and the prizes for the game aren't fixed to be as generous as they have been, then the game will have a hard time getting to the second barrier: The eternal format. The eternal format is our second barrier because it will force us all to ask the question "why would I play Eternal when I could just play Standard and get better prizes?" Up until this point, there is a sort of vagueness in whether or not our cards will actually be playable in some fashion after they rotate. If the game rotates with no Eternal format, or an Eternal format that no one wants to play, then all the cards we have will become destined to be solely collectors items, which we all know doesn't bode well for the game's health. To get past this barrier, Riot has to make an Eternal format that has prizes equal to Standard, and it has to be a healthy format that people want to play. This will be easy at first, but maintaining an eternal format has proven to be complicated in the long term without power creep, as seen in Magic, Yugioh, AND Pokemon, the big 3. The third barrier will be met once the game turns about 10 years old. This is effectively a combination of innovation for passing the first two barriers, and also maintaining those ideas to keep the game alive. Once we have past this point, the game is pretty safe to not die anytime soon unless Riot pulls a Zynga or Hasbro and REALLY screws their game up. As it stands now, we are sitting a little bit before the first barrier, and seeing how Riot is still communicating with us and, better yet, listening to what we say, Rath is confident the first barrier has been dealt with and the game is safe until at least the second barrier. So let me tell you something Riot Games who js making Rath's favorite hobby! Hire Rath already! You want Rath to power you through these barriers! EASY! Rath won't just take you through these 3 barriers, HE'LL TAKE YOU THROUGH ALL THE BARRIERS! STRAIGHT TO THE MOON! This concludes Rath's RAAAAAAAAAAAAATH talk!

Let me tell you something TCG players that are debating the resource system for Magic. Magic does not have the best resource system, and here is why: To play cards (aside from free cards) you have to have lands. Said lands are stored in the deck, and must be drawn in order to get your resources to play your cards. This creates 3 scenarios: • You draw too many lands and not have any cards to play. • You draw enough lands, and are thus able to play cards. • You draw little to no lands and you can't play the game. In 2 of the 3 scenarios, the Magic resource system doesn't allow you to play the game. That isn't good game design. Okay, so, to cushion the blow of tueir bad resource system, they introduce two things: • A mulligan in case you draw a bad hand. • Lands that have secondary abilities, not just producing mana. Having a mulligan doesn't solve the issue for two reasons. 1) You can still get one of the 2 out of 3 scenarios where you have an unplayable hand, ending the game. 2) For each mulligan that you are *forced* to take, the game punishes you by having you start the game with 1 less card in hand. Mulliganing to 5 cards in hand is almost certainly a lost game. Then theres lands having additional abilities alongside producing mana. This is a step in the right direction, and thus far its the only step that actually gives a good remedy to Magic's poor resource system. People also say that having the ability to run multiple different colors adds depth, which is true, but it doesn't add as much depth as you think. That would be like saying running two different archetypes in a Yugioh deck also adds depth. Card games have depth in their own ways, being able to run multiple colors is Magic's. Its not like Magic is the only game with depth, it certainly isn't. Okay, well lets look at Riftbound's resource system, runes. While your hand size is significantly smaller, this is more then made up for by having a guaranteed resource by getting 2 runes every turn. In addition, because we have a guaranteed resource, Riot also introduced a new kind of reosurce management in the form of power costs. For some cards, if you want a really good effect, you'll have to sacrifice your runes. This, amongst other factors, is Riftbound's depth. Resource management and planning. If you play too many power costs, you won't have enough energy to slam down big threats. But if you play too little power costs, your deck won't have the oomph it needs to win the game. This strikes are nice balance in gameplay. Since most of the debate is Magic vs Riftbound, which resource system is better? Rath has been playing Magic from 2014 to 2025, and Riftbound from day 0. With this experience, Rath can say Riftbound has the superior resource system. Magic resource system inherently causes gameplay flaws that directly create games where you lose and theres nothing you could have done about it. Riftbound's resource system only does that if you do it to yourself by playing too many power costs in quick succession. If you run out of runes, thats on you. But if you don't draw any lands, thats Magic's fault. Conclusion: Magic players, as usual, are completely deluded by their rose tinted glasses. Magic is not the perfect game. It has many flaws in its resource system that actively create unfun scenarios. When designing a game, that is extremely unintuitive because, well, the point of a game is to have fun. This concludes Rath's RAAAAAAAAATH talk!

Let me tell you something Riftbound players! This actually might be a clever idea. Only the 3 most recent sets will have best of Legends, BUT only 1 of each best placing deck will be able to choose in the order of placements. Rath is going to bed soon so he isn't thinking of any possible issues, but does this solution completely fix best ofs?

Let me tell you something Riot Games who is now testing giving going second a better bonus! Rath has been testing going second for a couple months now! While Rath wouldn't mind his decks getting more traction on account of being even stronger, Rath has to worry that you might overbuff going second! We don't want a Pocket Pokemon TCG incident where going second had like a 90% winrate! Rath can attest that going second IS NOT as weak as everyone says it is! So Rath would like to use the data he has accumulated thus far, and give a recommendation: Going First: Exactly the same as live. Going Second: Exactly the same as live, except you also get to predict 1 before choosing whether or not you want to mulligan any cards. Then after mulliganing you can predict 1 again.

So... you're telling Rath his going second decks are going to be even stronger??