There are many cards in Legends of Runeterra, and each have their own stats and effects to make them unique. It can be overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the card game genre, to learn all these effects. That’s why we’re dissecting all the keywords in a series of guides. In this one we’re taking a look at Rally.

Rally is an outlier among the keywords in Legends of Runeterra. It doesn’t have direct impact from unit-to-unit, like most other keywords have. Instead, it influences the flow of the game.

To capture what Rally does in Legends of Runeterra, we first need to summarize the general flow of combat in the game. Each round, you and your opponent alternate between being the attacker and the defender. When you’re the attacker, you get to decide which of your units try to hit the enemy Nexus. When you’re the defender, you get to decide which of your units you want to use to block the incoming enemy attacks.

However, while those are the roles assigned, the game decides whether you’re allowed to line up attackers based on the “attack token”, highlighted in the image below.

When roles are swapped, the designated attacker is granted this attack token. Once the attacker has committed which units to push damage with, the attack token is consumed, and the defender can line up its blockers. The attack/defend roles then swap, and the attack token is granted to the other player.

Cards that read Rally essentially grant you an attack token regardless of your role. It does not stack immediately though—you’ll have to spend your initial attack token first. If you’re on the offense, you can play a card that has Rally after your initial offensive push. When you’re on the defense and you play a card that grants you an attack token, you can initiate the offense before the enemy does, or sit out their attack first and then strike back.

Below is a sequence to help understand what Rally means in-game.

Rally is a scarce effect among cards in Legends of Runeterra. Just four cards from Demacia and two cards from Noxus have the effect. Below are a few examples.

Images via Riot Games.