Radiance previews near the end: "show us the Legends on day one"
Radiance preview season is winding down: the official calendar closes it on October 9, and at 2:37am UTC Riot's account posted a reveal video saying there are "just a few more reveals" left before the full setlist is out. Meanwhile, between yesterday morning and this morning, twelve new cards turned up on r/riftboundtcg. And today one of the people who keep count of every reveal published a request to Riot: show all the Legends on day one.
The calendarWhat is left between now and release
The official Radiance overview page, updated on October 5, sets the dates: previews from September 25 to October 9, in-store Pre-Rifts from October 16 to 22, release on October 23. Riot also says the page will be updated one last time on October 16 at 10am Pacific, when the full Showdown decklists for Seraphine and Evelynn will land, along with the Nexus Night promo list — both still marked "TBD" today.
Put another way: the surprises run out by Friday, and then the part where you actually play begins.
The cardsTwelve previews in just over a day
From yesterday morning to this one, they arrived back to back: Riven Broken Blade, Illuminators, Mysterious Chronomancer, The Ball (Orianna's Signature Gear), Staunch Survivor, The Empyrean, Rally for War, Gravity Field, Ephemeral Ward, Ki Burst, Meticulous Mechanic and Crossing Fee. All of them are in our spoiler grid, with image and card text.
Two notes on sourcing. Nearly all of these come from photos and screenshots passed around on Reddit, which means they are not confirmed by Riot and are flagged that way in the grid. The exception is Ki Burst, a Riven spell that — as user u/riftbound-org points out — was tucked inside the video the official account posted overnight, after first surfacing in Chinese. It is the same pattern seen last week, when four cards from the set appeared on Chinese channels first.
The ask"Give us the nine Legends on day one"
The post comes from u/mudkip4me, one of the people behind the spreadsheet the community uses to track reveals set after set. The tone is anything but hostile — "I love preview season," they write — but the request is blunt: Riot should reveal every Legend on day one, either in the overview article or by making that day's reveals all Legends.
Here is the reasoning. Radiance has nine Legends, a number Riot itself confirms on the official page. Seven of them, according to u/mudkip4me, were known before previews even started: Seraphine, Ekko, Evelynn, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, K'Sante and Orianna. That left two. But day one brought two cards that gave the rest away on their own: a Signature Gear for Riven, and an Epic Mordekaiser Champion Unit complete with an Alt Art. The reason is an unwritten rule of the game: only Legends get signature cards, and only Legends get an Epic Champion Unit with an Alt Art. By the end of that day, everyone already knew the last two were Riven and Mordekaiser.
The other two arguments are more awkward. The first is fairness: Riot ran a content creator day and, u/mudkip4me writes, some of the invitees were also players holding Regional Championship invites, who played a Pre-Rift there and saw the two missing Legends plus plenty of unrevealed cards — a small but real head start on those who were not in the room. The second is leaks: almost everything that gets leaked is Legends and Champion Units, so revealing them immediately would take the oxygen out of it.
| Legend | The card that defines a deck: you pick it first and build everything else around it |
|---|---|
| Champion Unit | The champion's unit, the one you put on the board and fight with |
| Signature Gear / Spell | A "signed" card tied to a single Legend: see one, and you know that champion is a Legend |
| Alt Art (AA) | The same card with different artwork, harder to pull from a pack |
| Overnumber (OVN) | A variant numbered past the set total: Radiance has one for each of the nine Legends |
| Pre-Rift | The in-store events held before release, October 16 to 22 |
| Regional Championship (RC) | The top-tier tournament you reach by invitation |
Why it matters to us. Players in Italy almost always get preview season second-hand: cards drop overnight, often in Chinese first, and reach us already bounced through Reddit. Knowing the Legends from day one would mean being able to start thinking about a deck straight away, instead of waiting a fortnight to find out whether your champion made the set. It matters for the wallet too: Legends are the cards that decide what you buy at the October 16-22 Pre-Rifts, and knowing earlier is a concrete advantage.
The short version
- Radiance previews close on October 9, and Riot confirmed overnight that only a few are left. Release is October 23, Pre-Rifts start on the 16th.
- Twelve new cards appeared between yesterday and today, nearly all from Reddit and unconfirmed by Riot. All of them are in the site's spoiler grid.
- u/mudkip4me is asking Riot to reveal all nine Legends on day one, arguing the community works them out by nightfall anyway.
Source: r/riftboundtcg, The Radiance Overview and @playriftbound. Images: Riot Games.
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