There’s nothing elegant about Challenge—and that’s exactly the point. This is Riftbound’s street brawl moment.
No spells flying, no clever tricks—just two units swinging for pride.
In a set loaded with layered mechanics and reactive plays, Challenge is refreshingly primal: it forces violence now, on your terms.
Gameplay / Cool Mechanics
For 2 mana, Challenge lets you pick one of your units and one of your opponent’s, and they immediately deal damage equal to their Mights to each other.
No blockers, no battle order. You make them punch each other straight in the face.
Mechanically, that’s spicy. It lets you:
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Pre-emptively kill an enemy unit with a big Might before combat.
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Leverage a buffed-up friendly unit to delete a threat without risking Showdown phase tricks.
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Force bad trades your opponent was trying to avoid.
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Enable revenge-kill plays with injured units that wouldn’t normally get another swing.
It doesn’t scale as hard as damage-dealing spells, but the flexibility to target any unit—including exhausted or shielded ones—and force damage outside combat?
That makes Challenge a potential tech piece in tempo decks, aggro-midrange hybrids, or disruption-heavy red builds.
Visuals
The art absolutely matches the card’s spirit. Two brawlers mid-strike, faces contorted in motion, fists blurred with speed lines and flash-crack impact.
The framing is tight, claustrophobic—like a bar fight you walked into mid-punch. You can feel the bluntness.
The symmetry of the pose gives a “mirror match” feel, reinforcing that this is not a clean kill—it’s a mutual beatdown.
Pull Rate & Value Speculation
Challenge is card 128/298 and likely slotted as a Common or Uncommon in the main set based on simplicity.
No alternate art has surfaced yet, but if Riftbound expands on faction-style art variants, this one could easily get a Bilgewater-street reprint.
From a playability angle, it’s a great early pickup for sealed and limited formats. Foils? That impact flash effect would pop.
Challenge won’t win you the game outright, but it might buy you the exact moment you need to turn one around. Brutal. Simple. Useful. Just how red likes it.
