Published May 8, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Riftbound has arguably the best pack-opening experience of all trading card games

Opening Riftbound Unleashed packs made me realize what I love about it as a TCG

Image: Riot Games

I’ve opened thousands of Magic: The Gathering booster packs in my lifetime, and the process has its own sort of narrative flow: if it’s one of my first packs from a particular set, I’ll go slowly, reading each card so I can assess its strength. If I already have a lot of cards from that set, I’ll usually skim through to the last few to check out the rarest cards in the pack. Unless I’m participating in a draft event, it always feels as if this exercise exists in a vacuum, kind of like pulling the lever on a slot machine so that the fleeting rush of dopamine can hit.…