Akali, Brash moves twice and lends you the top card of your deck
Radiance has a third Akali, and she is the odd one out. Akali, Brash costs 5 energy plus 1 Fury power, has 5 Might and is card 015/167 of the set. Travis Gafford posted her on r/riftboundtcg and said Riot supplied the image, so this is an authorised preview rather than a leak. The second of her two abilities does something Riftbound has never printed before.
The cardWhat she does, line by line
Akali, Brash has two abilities, and both of them fire when she moves. Moving, in Riftbound, means taking a unit from where it stands to somewhere else: from your base to a battlefield, or from one battlefield to another.
The first move each turn: add 1 energy and 1 power of any colour. That is extra resources to spend right now, not cards drawn. In practice she pays for herself: on the turn you move her, there is one more cheap card you can afford.
The second move in the same turn: banish the top card of your Main Deck — take it out of the game and set it aside. Until your next Ending Phase, the phase that closes your turn, you may play that card. The wording is blunt about one thing: “You still pay its costs.” No discount, just one extra card available to you for a full round, your opponent’s turn included.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Champion Unit | A unit named after a League of Legends champion. On the board it behaves like any other unit. |
| Energy / power | The number in the white circle is energy, the coloured pip below it is power. Akali asks for 5 energy and 1 red (Fury) power. |
| Might | How hard the unit hits in a fight. Here it is 5. |
| Move | Shifting the unit from your base to a battlefield, or between two battlefields. |
| Add | Putting resources into your pool for this turn. It is not drawing: spend them or lose them. |
| Banish | Taking a card out of the game into a separate zone, away from your deck and your trash. |
| Ending Phase | The phase that closes your turn. That is when your permission to play the banished card runs out. |
RulesWhy this effect is new
Riftbound has always had banish effects, but they have all worked the same way: banish and play it now, usually for free. Blind Fury flips the top card of an opponent’s deck and plays it ignoring its cost; Reinforce digs five deep and knocks 5 off the unit you pick; Dazzling Aurora pulls out a unit and puts it into play for nothing. Every one of them resolves in an instant.
Akali, Brash does the opposite. She gives you no discount and no choice: she takes whatever is on top and leaves it sitting there for a full round. It is the first Riftbound card to open that long a window on a banished card instead of slamming it shut. One commenter in the thread named it straight away: “It’s impulse draw,” wrote u/CardTrickOTK, borrowing the term this effect carries in other card games.
Akali, Deadly Weapon
3 energy, no power, 3 Might. The red one people actually play: she lands early and pings when she moves.
Akali, Brash
5 energy plus 1 Fury power, 5 Might. Twice the price and much later, but every turn she moves twice she pays back resources and a card.
The metaWhere she fits, and the first doubts
Her natural home is a deck that already moves. Akali, Rogue Assassin, the Fury/Calm Legend, shifts units as part of her job, and two moves in one turn is no acrobatics there. The catch is the price tag: 5 energy and a power is a lot for a 5-Might body that does nothing until you move it.
The early Reddit reaction is lukewarm for exactly that reason. “The other red Akali is just a really solid turn 1 or turn 2 play, and this also costs a power,” wrote u/Haunting-Pineapple71. These are first impressions of a card nobody has played yet, and they should be read as such: Radiance preview season runs until October 9, and the rest of the set can still change the maths.
The thread itself grew out of a video interview Gafford recorded with a Riftbound designer, which he summed up in his own post title: Radiance is going to be a “weird” set. Akali, Brash, with a play window that expires at the end of your next turn, makes a decent calling card for that.
Why it matters here. Radiance reaches Italian stores with Pre-Rift events from October 16 to 22 and goes on sale on the 23rd. Akali, Brash is not a card you improvise at a prerelease: she needs two moves in the same turn and enough resources left over to actually cast the banished card, or it just sits there and expires. Anyone planning to slot her into a Fury deck should do the maths first, because a second move in one turn does not happen by itself at the table.
The short version
- Akali, Brash: Radiance Champion Unit, 5 energy plus 1 Fury power, 5 Might, card 015/167.
- First move each turn: 1 extra energy and 1 power of any colour. Second move: banish your top card and you may play it until your next Ending Phase, paying its full cost.
- She is the first Riftbound card to leave a banished card playable for a whole round: every other one plays it immediately, usually for free.
- The preview is Riot-authorised and Riot supplied the image. Radiance releases on October 23, 2026, with Pre-Rift in stores from the 16th.
Source: r/riftboundtcg, thread by u/Tnomad (Travis Gafford). Images: Riot Games.
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