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Legends of Runeterra is a free-to-play digital collectible card game developed and published by Riot Games. It released on April 29, 2020 for Microsoft Windows, Android, and iOS. The game was released in open beta for Microsoft Windows on January 24, 2020. It uses a setting and characters which originated with League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle arena game by Riot Games.

Gameplay
Legends of Runeterra is played 1v1. Each player begins the match with a hand of four playing cards randomly selected from their card deck, a 20-health-point nexus, and zero mana. Before the match begins, each player also has the option to trade out any of the first four cards they drew for random different ones from their deck.

After this pre-game phase concludes, both players receive a mana gem, one player receives the attack token, and the other receives the defense token. Only the player with the attack token may attack during this round. With some cards the second player can get an attack token as well. After each round, the tokens switch between players, and each player draws a random card from their deck. As the number of rounds increases, so too does the number of mana gems each player receives, up to a maximum of 10. At the end of each round, any unused mana becomes spell mana, up to a maximum of three. This mana can only be used to cast spell cards.

To play cards, players must spend mana gems. Once played, priority passes to the opposite player, who may take an action. If the player has the attack token, they may place their unit cards (Champions and Followers) forward to attack. Once an attack is declared, priority is returned to the defender, who must designate blockers. When attacking, if no opposing card blocks, the card will hit the enemy player's nexus, dealing damage equal to its power stat. If the attacking card is defended against a blocking card, the two cards will clash, dealing their respective damage amounts to one another. When a unit's Health reaches zero, it is destroyed, and no longer exists on the board unless revived or recovered via another effect. Each card also has a health stat. If the damage received is greater than or equal to the health stat of the card, it is destroyed. The objective of the game is to bring the opponent's Nexus to zero health points. Different cards have unique Keywords to facilitate this. For example, a unit with the Elusive keyword can only be blocked by other Elusive units, and an Overwhelm unit deals any excess damage to its blocker to the enemy Nexus.

The Oracle's Eye is a feature usable by hovering over a small eye indicator on the left of a board. It enables players to easily preview the outcome of complicated card interactions, such as in the middle of an attack with several spells queued up.

Cards
Legends of Runeterra offers a variety of cards to allow each player to play games in their own unique way. A deck of cards must consist of exactly 40 cards, in which no more than 3 copies of each cards may be added. Additionally, a player can't add more than 6 Champion cards total in a deck. There are three types of cards: Champions, Followers, and Spells.

Champion and Follower are lumped together as "units", cards which stay on the field and battle for the players. Champions are generally the most powerful cards in the game, and each has a unique criterion that, once met, will level-up the card to a more powerful version. Followers are normal units that have all the basic functions of a unit card, but do not level-up. Spells are single-use cards that cause special effects when played, and then disappear. Some spell cards are limited as to when they can be played. The three 'speeds' are: Slow, Fast and Burst. Slow spells can only be cast on an open game state, and can't be used in response to an opponent's move, or during an in-progress attack. Fast Spells can be used in response to a Slow or other Fast spells, and during combat. Burst Spells can played at any time, resolve immediately, and do not pass turn priority to the other player.

Keywords
Some cards have named effects called keywords allowing for more diverse desks and playstyles. There are a total of 53 keywords that can influence the game. The proper usage of keywords can greatly increase the odds of winning a game. Keywords are often represented by an icon, a visual effect, or is explicitly written on the card. The most common keywords are: Slow, Fast, and Burst, as they is one on each spells. Other common examples of keywords are: Barrier, Challenger, Ephemeral, Elusive, Fearsome, Fleeting, Last Breath, Lifesteal, Overwhelm, and Stun. All of these keywords have various effects on the units on the board or even in both players' hands.

Development and release
Riot's employees were fans of collectible card games, and they saw an opportunity to develop one in the League of Legends universe that would fit in with the company's philosophy of "building a game for core gamers who really want to go deep into a genre." Riot brought a group of professional Magic: The Gathering players in to help test out the game before release, at least one of whom would be retained to help design the final game.

The game is an outlier in its genre because it does not require players to purchase so-called "blind decks"; this was partly to let the developers change the metagame as they saw fit without worrying about players losing interest if the deck they heavily invested in became less powerful. Riot's goal was to give each set of cards at least ten viable decks. At one point Riot considered not having packs for players to collect, although testers reacted negatively to this.

Legends of Runeterra was announced by Riot and entered its first preview on October 15, 2019, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of League of Legends. The release trailer for the game featured champions Darius and Zed fighting. Eurogamer noted that the timing was unusual, given the position of the genre following the failure of Valve's Artifact as well as the waning audience for Blizzard's Hearthstone. Designer Steve Rubin noted, "There definitely was a moment in development when we were seeing Artifact coming out and we were kind of thinking 'Oh, do we rush it out, or do we not?'" Ultimately, Riot moved forward hoping their game's appeal would transcend the state of the CCG market and attract new players with its more generous business model.

The initial preview lasted until October 20 and was only available to a small pool of players. A second preview gave players access to the game's Expeditions mode from November 14 to 19. The game entered open beta on January 24, 2020.

The full, official launch of the game occurred on April 29, 2020, for both PC and smartphones. The official release also brought the first expansion in the game, Rising Tides, which introduced Bilgewater to the game. The game's second expansion, Call of the Mountain, was released on August 26, 2020, and introduced a new region, Targon, alongside 89 collectible cards.