If you’ve been circling the Riftbound table wondering when to jump in, this is the moment. Riftbound: Unleashed — the third full set of Riot Games’ League of Legends Trading Card Game — hit shelves in China on April 10, and the English-language release lands May 8, 2026. With over 220 new cards, four new Champion Legends, three brand-new mechanics, and the first-ever Ultimate Rare card in the game’s history, this set is about to reshape every deck in the format.
New to Riftbound? Here’s the 30-Second Pitch
Riftbound is Riot’s take on the TCG genre, built around the Champions, regions, and vibe of League of Legends. Instead of simply dealing damage to an opponent’s “life total,” you’re fighting over battlefields on the table — conquering and holding them to score points. The first player to the goal wins. Games are fast, tactical, and lean hard on the same kind of positional thinking LoL players already know: pick your fights, rotate to the right lane, and punish the enemy jungler when they overextend. If you’ve played MTG or a Lorcana-style board-control game, you’ll feel at home within your first match.
The Theme: Power Strikes From the Shadows
Every Riftbound set has a flavor identity, and Unleashed is all about stealth, ambush, and the long hunt. The official overview sums it up perfectly: champions in this set “become” — they evolve, accumulate power, and strike decisively once they’ve gathered enough of it. That’s mechanically baked into three new keywords.
XP — A New Resource
XP is a second currency you accumulate over the course of a game. Certain cards grant XP when they act. Other cards get better the more XP you’ve banked, often leveling up into vastly stronger versions of themselves. Master Yi, for example, becomes cheaper to play and gains spell immunity at max level — a terrifying closer for any aggressive deck. If you loved League’s snowball fantasy, this mechanic is going to feel very familiar.
Hunt — Earn XP by Conquering
Units with the Hunt keyword generate XP when they conquer or hold a battlefield. That’s a huge deal: it rewards aggressive, controlling play and ties the game’s two main resources — board presence and XP — into a single loop. Pick good fights, hold the ground, and the game feeds your engine.
Ambush — React, Don’t Just Act
Ambush lets you play qualifying units as reactions to contested battlefields, not just on your normal turn. It’s the jungler fantasy turned into a keyword: wait patiently in the brush, then burst onto the scene right when the fight is happening. Ambush is going to force opponents to think twice before committing to a push, and it’s one of the biggest format-shaping tools Unleashed brings.
Meet the New Champions
Four new Champion Legends headline the set. Champion Legends are the signature build-around cards that define an entire deck archetype.
- Kha’Zix — The Voidreaver is the poster child for the XP mechanic. Evolve, adapt, and eat the enemy team alive.
- Diana — Moonfall aggression. A midrange powerhouse built around Ambush and decisive strikes.
- Lillia — A tempo dreamscape built around tokens, triggers, and the new Sprite mechanic.
- Ivern — Friend of the forest. Expect ramp, Reflection tokens, and plenty of “friend of the deck” synergies.
Ultimate Rarity: Baron Nashor Changes the Game
Here’s the one every collector is chasing: Ultimate Rarity is a brand-new tier that appears in less than 1% of Unleashed packs, and the set features exactly one such card — Baron Nashor. The card is “overnumbered” (numbered 238/219, outside the base set count), wears a unique alternate illustration, and drops the legendary epic monster straight onto the battlefield as a 10-cost, 12-defense beast of a unit. When it enters, it spawns the Baron Pit battlefield token that units can move to from anywhere — a mechanical echo of the LoL objective every jungler knows by heart.
If you’ve been around pulling chase cards in other TCGs, you know what this means: Baron Nashor is going to be the card of Unleashed. Expect packs to fly off shelves on release day.
New Products: The Vault and Pre-Rift Events
Unleashed also debuts The Vault — a reusable storage box containing 6 boosters, 36 runes, 3 tokens, and dividers, perfect for newer players who want a one-stop entry product. Official Pre-Rift sealed tournaments for the English release run on May 1, a week before street date, and the first Summoner Skirmish windows follow on May 25 and June 22.
Get Ready at Mana Riot Games
Whether you’re sleeving up your first deck or chasing that Ultimate Rare Baron Nashor, we’ve got you covered. Mana Riot Games is your home for Riftbound singles.