On Saturday, tabletop gamers gathered in Hobby Lords to compete in the qualifying Dunedin round of the ‘‘Riftbound: Road to 10k’’ — an Asia-Pacific tournament of trading card game Riftbound: League of Legends.
The winner — Josh Collier — snagged a spot at the showdown to be held in Auckland on August 15.
Hobby Lords store specialist Mitchell Green said it was quite rare for a trading card game tournament to have a $10,000 prize pool.
He believed the national contest was able to offer such a large prize pool thanks to the many League of Legends fans who had taken up the game.
Riftbound trading card game is set in the same universe as League of Legends — a free-to-play, multiplayer online battle arena video game.
‘‘League of Legends as a game has always been known for like big sort of money-making sports events where people play at quite a high level for quite a bit of money.
‘‘Because Riftbound is a card game based around that, it’s been quite popular . . . at least locally, that’s for sure.’’
The winner would get $3500, second would get $2500, third and fourth place would win $1000 and fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth place would win $500.
About eight players took part in the Dunedin competition on Saturday.
Riftbound differs from many other card trading games as it is a tug-of-war for area control rather than attempting to reduce the opponents’ life points to zero.
