Riftbound: Radiance Hands-On Preview and Interview - Riftbound Embraces Complexity

I played Riftbound's fifth set, Radiance, in Pre-Rift and Sealed formats and spoke with Executive Producer Chengran Chai, who talked about how Deploy is poised to disrupt the meta and more.

The final Riftbound set of the year, Radiance, is finally here, and I got to work with the cards in a very early Pre-Rift tournament. It's the fifth in the League of Legends TCG series, and features music-inspired designs and brand new mechanics that are ready to shake up the meta.

I also had the opportunity to speak with Riftbound Executive Producer Changran Chai to get the scoop on the series straight from the source in a joint interview with Geek Temple's Miles Obenzai.

First, a quick rundown of the new mechanics introduced in Radiance, with some commentary from Chai:

New Radiance Keywords: disarming, showing off, establishing

Disarm is the simplest new mechanic: when your unit attacks with disarm, it reduces the power of one enemy unit on that battlefield, usually one. This immediately made me think of Ahri's main abilities, which is fitting since Ahri is green (calm), Confident with Disarm. When you reduce the strength of an enemy unit, that unit has a built-in windbreaker and gains +1 Might. Kai'sa, Rebel, a promising new blue (Mind) both disarms and gives spells reaction speed during matchups.

Show Off is a mechanic you may be familiar with if you've played other popular TCGs. Show-off cards gain more effect if you "show" an introductory card to your opponent during play. We've only seen four cards in Radiance with Show Off so far – two units and two spells – and each one offers completely different effects. 5-Yellow cost (Order) Spell Rousing Display (obviously part of the Legend Seraphine kit) distributes four 1-Might Recruit tokens to your base instead of one if you display a card with an energy cost of 7 or more.

Chai said Show Off is a trade-off – you give up information for something, but TCGs are very much an information game. "If I'm going to have a spell-heavy deck, whether or not you have Defy in hand matters a lot to me," Chai explained. "Show Off basically opens up another dimension to 3D and 4D chess - 5D."

Maybe you're showing your opponent something that you're purposely trying to throw them off, leading them into a play that you have the perfect counterplay for. Show Off offers great effects, but it also opens up the game to more mind games.

Deploy is a Gear-specific keyword that allows you to deploy that Gear directly to a Battlefield. There, it provides an effect, but is killed if your opponent keeps the battlefield it's on.

There is also a new Token Gear called Bomb. This Token Gear has Deploy and explodes when it "dies", dealing two damage and activating other bombs on the battlefield. Like other deployables, bombs die when an opponent holds the battlefield it's on, but you can always kill it yourself in a variety of ways to trigger the effects.

"I think Deploy is probably going to disrupt [the meta] because historically, you don't just think about going. Go straight to the battlefield." "And now, like Jarvan IV's E-Q, you have Zigs that just drop bombs onto battlefields, and that's going to change the way people think about defense a lot," Chai said.

Jarvan IV's "E-Q" that Chai is referring to is the move combo in League of Legends where he throws his flag and then pulls himself there - almost a 1-for-1 with Legend Jarvan IV's ability in Riftbound, which allows you to move a friendly unit onto the battlefield when you play a Gear with Deploy there (and).

Orianna's Legend ability allows you to turn a friendly Gear into a Gear Unit at the start of your main phase, a very tricky and interesting feat that can steal some points with Deployable Gear! His Signature Gear, The Ball, is particularly interesting as it also gains Ganking, allowing it to flip back and forth between battlefields each turn. Chai seemed particularly fond of Oriana with Deploy, pointing to her Legend and The Ball as playable cards she wanted to showcase from the set.

Both show and expand the complexity of Riftbound. But, Deploy and Disarm seem to be mechanics that completely disrupt defensive Hold strategies, which is especially scary for me as someone playing Akali and Vex with Astral Heron!

The last time I played with a set early, it was exactly behind closed doors with a pre-made display case, and I didn't have more than thirty minutes to actually play with the cards. This time we got a Pre-Rift tournament with packs to take home with us. So, I played Radiance with a Pre-Rift deck and built two "Sealed" decks to experiment with – some more successful than others!

Some quick background: A Pre-Rift is a regular pre-release tournament at local game stores. For a fee, usually US$35, you get a Pre-Rift Player Kit, which includes a promotional card, five booster packs, and a 15-card Seeded deck with a Legend and matching hero unit. The idea is to build a 25 card deck on the fly with the seed deck and boosters, resulting in a unique and fun format where people may play cards that might not see the light of day in a competitive build deck. This is especially possible because you can throw a third color and activate combinations that don't exist outside of the sealed die.

In my Pre-Rift Radiance kit, I received an orange Jarvan IV (Body) and a yellow (Order), Exemplar of Demacia Legend. Jarvan's Legend ability uses the new Deploy keyword: "When you play a gear with [Deploy], you may tire me out and pay [1 Power] to move a friendly unit to that battlefield."

I used a lot of Gears with Deploy, cards with Gear synergy, plus some purple (Chaos) cards that made bombs, drew cards, and generated gold so that I could have a decent source of power to activate Legend Jarvan IV. However, I removed Jarvan IV, Royal Heir as my champion unit of choice and replaced it with K'Sante, the Brave I drew. Costly choice champions are generally not the best move, especially in the fast Pre-Rift format, and although K'sante still costs a hefty 5 run, having a unit with Accelerate in my hands was invaluable in the late game.

I can't say I was excited to open Jarvan IV at first (I was hoping for Riven or Evelynn), but after a few turns of play, the deck's strategy was fantastic for me. I was also lucky enough to get a new battlefield called Hunter's Circle which says "for each player the first unit or gear they play on their turn is 1 less" which is great with Deployable Gear as you can play them on the battlefield whenever you want on your turn!

In my first game, a test match, I finished second. I cast the Concert Poster in Hunter’s Circle for free, allowing me to play Skystrike Squadron for less than the cost of 3 to return the Concert Poster to my hand. A 4-Might unit with Reflect on my first turn: not bad! Next turn, I was able to recruit two recruits with the concert poster and Buff a Recruit and my Skystrike Squadron with Pillaged Armory. Maybe a stroke of luck allowed this to happen, but it looked so good!

With this build, I have to give a shout out to Portable Portal, a 2 cost orange gear (body) with Deploy. When I showed this card to someone, they said they knew it was a threat just because Teemo was on it. When you play it, you can pay an orange power (Body) to prepare a unit. In those friendly units on the battlefield with portable portals they also have Ganking. These abilities combined with Jarvan IV Legend allowed for double capture in one turn, or allowed a gank and then retreat with Jarvan's ability to protect my unit. This card is rare though, so pulling it in Pre-Rift isn't exactly guaranteed!

Sealed is a format where each player opens six 14-card booster packs and builds a 25-card deck with the cards they draw from those packs and nothing else - a great activity to do if four friends want to split a booster box! This format is less consistent than Pre-Rift without the pre-seeded deck, but it's still a lot of fun. If you don't get the Legend or Chosen Champion you want to use, you get an extra card for each on your first turn, which is also true in Pre-Rift.

In my two games of Sealed, one of the decks didn't have a discernible theme (I didn't) other than trying to make Seraphine work. In another, I tried to build Ziggs/Bomb because I happened to draw his Legend and the red unit (Fury) with the epic trait, Ziggs, Short-Fused. Let me tell you, if you don't have a very safe way to detonate them on your opponent's turn, it's very difficult to keep a bomb strategy. It usually explodes when your opponent holds the battlefield it's deployed on, dealing two damage per bomb.

It's very difficult to get enough bombs on the battlefield to matter in one turn, unless I stick with Explosimian, which allows you to play three Bomb gear tokens into a single play. Battlefield Of course, if you want to keep your battlefield full of bombs, this still isn't useful for your protection. However, Pre-Rift Seeded decks with Ziggs Legend include the 4-Might purple (Chaos) Champion Unit Ziggs, Explosive, which allows you to kill a friendly utility while defending! If you have enough bombs, you can wipe out your opponent before they even touch you. And if they can, well, zigs, it's +2 explosive, maybe if he kills a friendly cog!

Unfortunately, I didn't have this Ziggs unit in my Sealed game, so a different strategy was in order. We've determined that it's probably best to load bombs on one battlefield, leave them alone, and then build a strong hold on the other battlefield, forcing your opponent to counter a unit-enhanced or bomb-enhanced battlefield.

Unit Reckless Innovator and Gear The Good Stuff, both purple (Chaos) cards, also proved to be very useful in almost any deck I or my opponent played. I have a lot more to say, but it's pointless expecting you to read my ramblings, so we'll end it.

Overall, the Sealed and Pre-Rift formats were a lot of fun for Radiance, and the new ideas this set brings to Riftbound add even more complexity to the existing pool. As with Radiance in a vacuum for Sealed, it seemed to have unique deck building options. This is of course by design.

"We want the core set to have a rich enough playset," Chai said. "As the sealed events are fun… in and of themselves."

Riftbound: Radiance - Music ON, SPs and Alt Runes

With the game set defined, this is when the Riftbound team puts collectability on top with Alt Art, Overnumbered, and SP cards. Some rare Radiance highlights are Riot Games Music crossovers, including Overnumbered Heartsteel cards, SP K/DA cards, and Overnumbered Ekko, Revolutionary, which features Ekko's original True Damage skin. Overnumbered cards also come in Signature variants, which are the rarest cards in the set next to Ultimate Rare.

"We knew that Riot in general was going to have a music moment at the end of the year, so we said pretty early on that we were going to lean into it," Chai said. However, as a physical game, the Riftbound team had to finalize many of the card's details before the tracks were made and the new character designs were finished. "That's why you're seeing...for the K/DA and Heartsteel cards, it's their K/DA All Out and Heartsteel 1.0 versions, because the 2.0 versions weren't quite ready," Chai said. But we thought it was a great way to showcase Riftbound's contributions and take advantage of the wider music moment to let even more fans see and experience Riftbound.

This original plan didn't even include the Riftbound Heartsteel cards being sharpened in the new Live My Life Heartsteel music video – Riot's music team actually started this easter egg and the Riftbound team wanted the cards in the music video. Of course they said yes.

Although Riftbound has been heavily supported from within Riot since its inception, its somewhat unexpected explosion in popularity has given Riftbound more opportunities to be in Riot-wide moments. Another example is the Riftbound Easter Egg in Valorant's Aeris Flex cosmetics.

Heartsteel Overnumbered cards have a very unique design, similar to K-pop photo cards, with bright motifs, stickers and Y2K elements. Taking even more photo card inspiration, Heartsteel Oversized Signature Cards are signed by the characters themselves - not artists like other Signature cards! During the Radiance panel at the Riftbound Regional Qualifier (RQ) in Los Angeles, Riot Games Senior Director of Creative Development Michelle Mauk talked about the design process, which I highly recommend watching if you're interested.

I always feel like the renders of Overnumbered cards don't do them justice, and that's certainly the case with Heartsteel cards. The texture and foiling on Riftbound's attractive cards is always impressive to see in person.

Radiance's Ultimate Rare ties in nicely with the heavy music theme, but shockingly, it's a Battlefield: Packed Amphitheater. This card will be the rarest card in all of the Riftbound core sets, appearing in only about 0.025% of booster packs. This is a very rare increase from the only other Ultimate Rare, the Publisher Baron from Unleashed, with a close rate of 0.1%. The foils and textures you can't see in a render do a lot of the heavy lifting for this render — and you can get a better look at it and see some of the creators' reactions in this official PlayRiftbound loop.

There are other Overnumbers and Alt Art cards to chase that aren't musically inclined, like IGN's Overnumbererd Mordekaiser Legend that was revealed exclusively last week.

Radiance Pre-Rifts hits your local game store on October 16th, and I really can't wait to play more. With the complexities that Radiance introduces, this might not be the best deck for first timers, but it's great for existing players who crave more variety and creativity in their deck building. That being said, the Riftbound community has always been nothing but welcoming and helpful in every store I've played, so don't be shy. Otherwise, Radiance booster boxes, packs, and vaults will be available for purchase on October 23rd.

Casey DeFreitas is the VP of Guides at IGN and is running three Riftbound Radiance Pre-Rifts games this weekend at a local game store because they're so much fun. Check him out on social media @ShinyCaseyD.