Deploy, Disarm and Show Off: the new rules land October 16

by Riccardo Emanuele Eustor·Riftbound Zone

Riot published the Riftbound core rules patch notes for Radiance today. They take effect on October 16, the same day Pre-Rift begins. Inside: three new keywords — Deploy, Disarm and Show Off — a long list of technical clarifications, and a set of official rulings on the trickiest interactions in the set. No card already in circulation changes power level: this is the rulebook catching up with what Radiance puts on the table.

The vocabularyThe three new words, explained

These are the three mechanics you will find printed on Radiance cards. Here is what they mean, then each one with the details that actually matter.

DeployGear that plants itself on a battlefield

Deploy is a keyword that shows up on gear. Gear with Deploy can be played to any battlefield: yours, nobody's, even one the opponent is sitting on. The point is to drop effects that only apply right there, at that spot on the table.

There is a catch. When an opponent holds a battlefield where you have gear with Deploy, that gear is killed. As long as nobody destroys it, though, it stays put — and some effects can move it to another battlefield.

DisarmAn attack trigger that shaves off Might

Disarm sits on units and is an attack trigger. The first time a unit with Disarm attacks in a combat, it gives an enemy unit at the same battlefield -1 [M] for that turn. If the unit has Disarm 2, the penalty is -2.

Disarm stacks the way Assault and Shield do: a unit that picks up Disarm from several sources does not get several triggers, it gets one for the sum. You can already see it printed on Trinket Peddler, the 3-Energy, 3-Might yordle trader in the Radiance grid.

Show OffFlashing a card to get something

Show Off appears on both units and spells. When a card asks you to Show Off something you have two options: reveal a card from your hand that fits the requirement, or point at a friendly object already on the board (card or token) with the right characteristics.

Here is the part that matters: the shown-off card's information is locked in the moment you show it off. If that unit later bounces to hand, gets discarded or changes Might, the card that showed it off still reads the old values. It cuts both ways: pumping a unit after showing it off with Primordial Roar does not add damage, it is already too late. And you cannot Show Off a facedown card — face down, it has no characteristics to read.

The restEverything else that moved in the rulebook

Riot says there were no big holes to patch this time and that most of the work is about the new cards. The entries that matter even if you never sleeve a Radiance card:

• Copy effects get their own layer. They used to sit with trait-altering effects, which confused people: now they are the first layer and everything else shifts down one. Copies only copy what is copyable — the Mech tag stapled on by Experimental Hexplate, for instance, is not copied.
• «Pick» is not «choose». From here on, «choose» means you are targeting and «pick» means you are only making a decision. The rewrite starts in Radiance and finishes with Legacy in January.
• Pending items are not legal targets for spells and abilities. A rare case, Riot says, and usually Promising Future is to blame.
• Making new choices means making all of them again. The Vendetta model did not satisfy anyone: now you redo every decision from scratch, and triggers that fire on targeting fire again even if you pick the same unit.
• Ignored versus negated instructions. An instruction that mistargets is ignored, and later linked instructions are ignored too. One that fails for any other reason is negated, and later linked instructions still run.
• 2v2 scoring is now aligned: the special rules on the final point and scoring eligibility apply only to teams holding a battlefield during their own or a teammate's turn, not during an opponent's.
• Empowering more than once. An object can be given permission to be Empowered several times and ignore the usual «play only if not Empowered» line — see Kayle, Justified.

JanuaryLegacy rewrites the rulebook from scratch

In the same notes Riot previews what happens with Legacy in January: the rules documents get rebuilt from the ground up, with a new structure, less repetition and cleaner text for players and judges alike. The team is explicit about the limits: «this is about rewriting the rules to be more readable, and it won't change how Riftbound's mechanics actually work». A dedicated FAQ is coming after Radiance ships.

Source: playriftbound.com. Images: Riot Games.