Demon’s Hand Minigame Guide: Hands, Sigils & More

Demon’s Hand is the new seasonal roguelike card game that Riot Games has added to the client, here’s how it works and how to dominate all three difficulties.

Demon’s Hand is the latest in-client minigame developed in tandem with the seasons themed as regions in Runterra by Riot Games, this time a roguelike card game that cribs much from Balatro. In Demon’s Hand, you fight monsters and beasts as Atakhan relives his once-mortal life in a card game opposite a mysterious figure. You play what boil down to poker hands, receiving points for higher-scoring hands, with some obvious modifiers and mechanics along the way to keep things thresh, mostly encapsulated by Sigils – collectible trinkets that buff certain hands or cards. If you’re looking to unlock all the Sigils and conquer the Demon’s Hand, here’s how. 

How does Demon’s Hand work? 

The mechanics of Demon’s Hand are simple. You have a standard deck of playing cards, renamed and re-stylized to fit Runeterra, but it’s a plain old deck of cards. Four suits, 10 number cards, 4 ‘face’ cards per suit, you know the deal. Each round, you play poker hands to defeat an enemy. The hands are identical in function to standard poker, but they’ve been renamed, so it’s important to quickly note what the Sigils, and game, will refer to the hands as.

Demon’s Hand Mechanics

There are four suits in Demon’s Hand, Sun, Moon, Stone, and Fire. These functions just like Diamonds, Spaces, Hearts, and Clubs in a standard deck of playing cards.

In ascending order of lowest value to highest, the legal hands in Demon’s Hand are as follows:

• Solo – Single card, highest value scores, AKA High Card. – Base Damage: 10
• Dyad – Two cards of the same value, AKA One Pair.  – Base Damage: 20
• Dyad Set – Two sets of two different cards, AKA Two Pair.  – Base Damage: 40
• Triad – Three cards of the same number, AKA Three Of A Kind.  – Base Damage: 80
• Tetrad – Four cards of the same number, AKA Four Of A Kind. – Base Damage: 100
• March –  Five cards with consecutive numbers, AKA Straight.  – Base Damage: 125
• Horde – Five cards that belong to the same suit, AKA Flush.  – Base Damage: 175
• Grand Warhost – Three cards that share value plus 2 different cards that share a value, AKA Full House. – Base Damage: 400
• Marching Horde – Five sequential cards that also share a suit, AKA Straight Flush.  – Base Damage: 600
• Royal Flush – Five sequential Commander cards (face cards) that belong to the same suit. – Base Damage: 2000

Most of the rest of the game comes down to Sigils, powerful buffs that enhance your hands, discards, and other mechanics. These can be purchased at shops, and are the core to scaling the basic hand values enough to kill the two more advanced versions of the game. These are unlocked by playing any of the game modes in the League of Legends client, and if you’re trying to maximize your Sigil unlocks, Arena is the most reliable and time-efficient game mode to do this in. A full list of all 77 unlockable Sigils is available on the League of Legends wiki page.

Tips and Tricks to beat Demon’s Hand 

Most of the time, you’ll be incentivized to play around your Sigils, especially as you enter the two harder difficulties after Story mode. Just like any roguelike, you’re always best off playing the hand that is dealt to you early on, and playing around that. Finding early Sigils that give you a clear playstyle makes your priorities easier. Sigils that focus on a particular type of hand (Solo, Dyad, etc) or a particular Suit are great ways to establish a focus early on. 

Stay open to pivots – if you get a Legendary Sigil that dwarfs all of your other sigils in power, be ready to jump ship. Unlike Balatro, and many other card rogue-likes, you’re not adding a bunch of new cards to your deck as you play, so your odds of getting a particular hand never change too much. As you get up in difficulty, you’ll also want to plan around the bosses, who are guaranteed to stay the same every round. The first stage involves a lot of suit-locking, preventing you from scoring certain suits, so you may need to pick up early Sigils in harder difficulties to circumvent this.

If you’re looking for a specific hand, play around discards and other effects that allow you to draw or play that effect more easily. You won’t want every relic, but on higher difficulties, you should skew towards trying to pull off a more powerful suite of Sigils and Elite enemy buffs and accept that some runs won’t pan out. 

You’ll almost certainly have to play other modes to unlock enough powerful Sigils to beat the hardest mode, but if you have the League of Legends client installed, you’re likely booting one up anyhow.

That’s all you need to know to conquer Demon’s Hand, good luck out there!