Every Thursday we put one of our supported trading card games center stage, and this week the spotlight lands on Riftbound, Riot Games’ TCG built around the League of Legends universe. The timing couldn’t be better: Riftbound’s fifth set, Radiance, releases October 23, and preview season has been pulling back the curtain on it since late September. If you’ve never picked up a Riftbound deck before, don’t worry — we’ll walk through the basics as we go.
For newcomers, here’s the quick version of how Riftbound works. Every deck is built around a Legend — a champion like Ekko or Seraphine who sits outside your main deck and defines your strategy. Cards belong to one or two of six domains (Fury, Calm, Mind, Body, Chaos, and Order), and matches are won by controlling Battlefields — think of them as lanes you fight to hold, similar to a MOBA map boiled down into a card game. It’s a quick concept to grasp, and Radiance gives new players a genuinely fun set to learn on.
A Set Built Around the Stage
Radiance’s theme is music and performance, built around bands pulled straight from the League of Legends universe — K/DA included. The set’s poster Legends are Ekko and Seraphine, Starry-Eyed Songstress, who headline the booster box art, with Ziggs and Jarvan IV playing supporting roles on the packaging. In total, Radiance introduces nine new Legends, each getting an Overnumbered variant — confirmed names so far include Ekko, Seraphine, Evelynn (Agony’s Embrace), Ziggs, Jarvan IV, and Orianna, with three more still to be revealed before the full card list drops.
New Mechanics Worth Learning
Three new keywords arrive with Radiance, and they each change how a turn can play out. Deploy lets you play a Gear card straight onto a Battlefield for an ongoing benefit — hold that Battlefield as the opponent and the Gear gets destroyed, which adds a real risk/reward layer to board control. Show Off rewards you for revealing a qualifying card from your hand or board, unlocking a bonus effect on whatever you just played. And Disarm works like a more aggressive cousin of the Assault keyword, chipping away at an enemy unit’s Might as you attack, with each stacked instance hitting harder.
Radiance also introduces Equipment Units — thanks to Orianna’s Legend effect, an Equipment card can transform into a full Unit, automatically unequipping in the process — plus a new Bomb token that scales its payoff the more copies you stack up. Collectors have something to chase too: Radiance carries the game’s second-ever Ultimate Rare, said to be even scarcer than Unleashed’s Baron, showing up in roughly 1 out of every 4,000 packs.
What’s Actually Hitting Shelves
Radiance ships as standard 14-card booster packs, plus two Showdown Decks built around Seraphine and Evelynn, Pre-Rift Kits seeded for each of the nine new Legends, and a Vault box loaded with six boosters, foil tokens, and a stack of Runes. Full decklists for the Showdown Decks, along with the rest of the card list, are scheduled to drop October 16 — the same day Pre-Rift events kick off and run through October 22, right up to the October 23 global release.
Preview season itself wraps up right around now, which means the next week is prime time to start seeing full card reveals pile up before the set is even in anyone’s hands. If early metagame chatter follows the pattern of past sets, expect the Seraphine and Evelynn Showdown Decks to shape a lot of early brewing, with the first real competitive data points showing up once Riftbound’s Summoner Skirmish events begin on November 9.
Why It’s a Good Jumping-On Point
New sets are consistently the easiest time to start a card game, and Radiance is shaping up to be a flashy one — a pop-star aesthetic, a genuinely new mechanic trio, and precon decks built to be playable straight out of the box. Whether you’re a longtime Rift-walker or considering your first Legend, this is a set worth watching land on October 23.
New to Riftbound or any of the games we cover and have questions? Come say hi on our socials, or find more spotlights, guides, and TCG news at manariotgames.com — a new Thursday Spotlight lands every week, shining a light on a different game in our lineup.