Traps and boons affect random cards in your deck and are activated when an affected card is drawn. Multiple traps or boons can be planted on a single card, making each card drawn a potential time bomb (or boon bomb)!
Rules
- If a trap or boon is planted on a card, that card must be drawn to trigger the effect. That may sound like common sense, but some cards and abilities will place cards directly into play from the deck, so keep that in mind.
- Troop of Elnuks is a great example of this, as that card summons each elnuk from the top 10 cards of a deck. Since those cards weren't drawn to your hand first, any traps of boons planted on them won't activate!
- A card still counts as drawn even if there isn’t space for it in your hand.
- If a card with a trap or boon is moved into play, Tossed, destroyed by a Maokai, or otherwise taken out of your deck without drawing it, any traps or boons on that card are destroyed and their effects won’t happen.
- However, if an effect sees cards being drawn from the deck into the player’s hand, then those cards could still have a trap or boon planted on them.
- Take Babbling Bjerg as an example. When this wacky old man is summoned, the player draws a unit with 5+ power. If that card has any traps of boons, they'll be activated!
- Never discount luck when it comes to survival! Which cards receive traps or boon is (mostly) random. This means you could pull one card with one trap... or one with fifty! There's no limit to how many traps or boons could land on a single card.
- Notice that parenthetical “mostly”? Cards like Byrd, Entrapment, and Chump Whump aren’t so random and can plant traps or boons on specific cards!
Types of Boons
Boons are happy little gifts that are planted on random cards in your deck that can give you a little boost. There's only one type of Boon so far, but who knows what the future holds!
Chime
Bard and his buddies can plant Chimes in your deck. When an affected card is drawn, the Chime rings, granting a random ally in your hand +1 Power and +1 Health. Chimes are also an important part of Bard's Origin, the Wandering Caretaker. You can learn more about Bard and Origins by taking a look at our article on Runeterran champions.
Types of Traps
Where a boon might be a pleasant surprise when drawing cards, a trap (or five) could ruin your day. Here's a bit more on the types of traps you'll find in Legends of Runeterra and what they do!
Flashbomb Trap
Caitlyn and her cohorts can plant Flashbomb Traps in the opponent's deck. When affected cards are drawn, the flashbomb goes off, dealing 1 damage to one of the opponent's units at random. Check out the video below to see it in action!
Poison Puffcap
The Poison Puffcap is as dangerous as its name implies—when the opponent draws a card with a Poison Puffcap attached, it will deal 1 damage to their Nexus! For more about this funky fungi, check out our article on Teemo Tricks.