How to read a Riftbound card
Every number, symbol and line of small print on the card frame — and which of them matter for price.
A Riftbound card packs a lot into a small rectangle. Once you know where each piece lives, you can read any card in about two seconds — and, more usefully, you can tell at a glance which of two similar-looking cards is the expensive one.
The same card, for real
| Card number | SFD-120 |
|---|---|
| Type | Unit · Champion |
| Domain | Body |
| Energy | 6 |
| Might | 7 |
| Power | 3 |
| Rarity | Epic |
| Artist | Six More Vodka |
Read that as: a six-energy Body unit with seven might and three power, printed as card 120 of Spiritforged. Open the card page →
The three numbers
Energy is what the card costs to play. Might is how hard it hits and how much it can take. Power is the resource contribution it makes. Not every card has all three — spells and gear typically show only a cost — so an empty stat is normal rather than missing data.
For pricing purposes these barely matter on their own. A cheap, efficient common stays cheap no matter how good its stat line is. What moves price is scarcity, which lives further down the card.
Reading the name
Names follow three patterns, and knowing them saves confusion when searching:
Champion - Subtitle— the common form, e.g. a champion unit or legend.Champion, Subtitle— same idea, comma instead of dash.Tribe, Champion - Subtitle— the tribe comes first; the champion is still the one after the comma.
That last pattern catches people out. A card beginning with a tribe name is not a card about that tribe — it still belongs to the champion named after the comma.
Domains
The domain decides which decks a card can go in. There are six — Body, Calm, Chaos, Fury, Mind and Order — plus Colorless, which has no requirement and fits anywhere. Around a sixth of cards are dual-domain and belong to two at once.
The part that decides the price
Two cards can be identical in name, text and stats and differ tenfold in price, because what you are really buying is the printing. The same card can exist as:
- Base — the standard printing, and the cheap one.
- Alt art — different artwork, insert rates only.
- Overnumbered — a collector number above the set’s normal count, marking it as a special printing.
- Signature — the rarest tier, and usually the most expensive version of any card.
On this site every card page lists all of its printings side by side with prices, so you can see the spread before buying. It is routinely large: a signature printing running twenty or thirty times the base card is normal, not exceptional.