Legends of Runeterra Beta opens early!

The Legends of Runeterra beta opens a day early tomorrow on January 23rd. There’s just one caveat: you need to have preregistered for the game.

If you did preregister, then you can go ahead and download the client and get ready to play tomorrow. The game will become available at 11:00 AM PST and will roll out over the next few hours.

If you didn’t preregister, it’s not too late! Just head over to the official Legends of Runeterra site!

Legends of Runeterra is an online collectible cardgame based on the League of Legends IP. Riot has been wanting to put the ‘S’ in “Riot Games” for quite some time, and it will be interesting to see how this turns out. The internet card game space already has some big competitors, so I want to see how Riot plans on competing with Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering Arena.

I would have figured Karma’s health would be higher

It looks like gameplay is largely driven by using a Hearthstone-style mana bar for resources. Riot has been making a concerted effort to divide all their champions into regions, which seem to serve as the tribes for this game – Demacia, Freljord, Noxus, Piltover & Zaun, and Ionia. There appear to be some synergies between different regions and champions.

Every round, you are on either attack or defense, which alternates each turn. As you play cards, your opponent can play cards to react. In addition to champions and minions, there are also spells.