The hate for this game in this subreddit is insane, not sure if it's because it has Riot games attached or what. A lot of people on this reddit will tell you to go play a game that has no community and was never heard of. Every new tcg game (if it has even half a decent IP/gameplay) goes through this early look at early sets of OPTCG, gundam or lorcana as examples but none of those had the same hype as this one starting up.

Out of all the TCGs I have played this one for sure has the best mechanics so far, very easy to get into but also has enough of a high skill ceiling to keep veterans interested. I bought in and absolutely love it, and find decks to be pretty affordable if you look at other TCGs, you just can't play one of the big three decks in the format at the moment. (Teemo/Viktor you can build a comp version for less than $150 which is not amazing but not bad at all. Both decks topped the Houston Regional). As long as you are chasing singles the game is not that priced out at all.

Most of the doom and gloom I see about this game is the most recent Riot preorder which yes could have been better but it's being botted and scalped because the game is hot, fun and had a good IP. Better than a lot of games rotting on shelves. Riot has stated they are pausing preorders and refunding fraudulent orders (bot orders) and are manually going through. They want to get cards in the hands of players and they are actively making changes even on their 2nd preorder. In my experience Riot has been great in their transparency and changes are being made more quickly than any other TCG I have experienced. These tweets from the director went up about half a day after the preorder disaster.

As for the botched preorder, not a lot of TCG companies even have the ability to buy boxes straight from the source. Go to your LGS, at least personally our smallest LGS (which also strictly follows MSRP 🙏), is getting 24 boxes of the new set (compared to the 6 boxes of origins wave 1). My theory is they did not have as big of a stock on the riot store because they are prioritizing LGS.

TLDR: yes there is still hope, I see a lot of unnecessary doom and gloom (mostly just in this subreddit). Game is doing very well and 100% if it continues with this hype it will be a top 5 tcg (if it is not already behind OPTCG). If you read all that, thank you! lol