Stalwart Goatherd and the other two cards that kill gear
In under twenty hours, r/riftboundtcg has turned up three Radiance previews that all do the same job: they kill gear. Stalwart Goatherd destroys a piece the moment it lands, Lost to the Sands can take one instead of dealing damage, and Mournful Spirit does it on the way out. All three are photos of physical cards posted by players: Riot has not confirmed them, and the set lands on October 23.
GlossaryThe words you need to read these cards
Terms first. Radiance is the set that puts equipment in the middle of the board, and nearly every line below leans on the same vocabulary. If you are new to the game, keep this within reach.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gear | An equipment card: you play it, it stays on the table and keeps working until someone removes it. |
| Energy | What you pay to play a card. The big number in the top-left corner. |
| Might | A unit’s combat strength. The number in the top-right corner. |
| Shield 2 | +2 Might, but only while that unit is defending. |
| Action | You can play the card on your own turn or during a showdown, the fight over a battlefield. |
| Deathknell | “When I die, the effect happens.” |
| Battlefield | The location you conquer and hold: units go there to fight. |
The cardsWhat each one actually does
Stalwart Goatherd is a 4-Energy, 2-Might unit in the Body domain, numbered 083/167, tagged Mount Targon. It has Shield 2 and a single line: when you play it, you may kill a gear with an Energy cost of 4 or less. The verb matters — it is optional, so if your opponent has no equipment on the board the card does not become dead weight; it is still a 4-Might wall on defence. The removal, in practice, rides along on a body you were going to play anyway.
Lost to the Sands is a 3-Energy Spell in the Fury domain, numbered 013/167. It is an Action and it asks you to choose: deal 4 to a unit at a battlefield, or kill a gear. The second mode has no cost ceiling — any piece of equipment, including the 8- and 9-Energy ones. The price is that the whole card is spent on it: the damage or the gear, never both.
Mournful Spirit is a 4-Energy unit with just 1 Might in the Order domain, numbered 126/167, tagged Shadow Isles and Spirit. Its Deathknell reads: you may kill a unit or a gear here, meaning at the location where the Spirit died. With 1 Might it dies to almost anything, which is the point — it is built to be killed, and whoever swings at it already knows the swing costs them something.
Stalwart Goatherd
Removal stapled to a unit you would play regardless. Ceiling: gear costing 4 Energy or less.
Lost to the Sands
A card spent purely on the answer, but with no cost ceiling: it takes the most expensive gear in the set.
The readWhy three cards together count for more than one
A single answer gets played as a two-of and hoped for. Three answers across three different domains — Body, Fury and Order — is another matter: it means almost every colour pair in Radiance has some way of clearing enemy equipment. And two of the three do not ask for a dedicated turn: the goatherd removes while it develops the board, the Spirit removes by dying.
The same night also produced Improvised Projectile, a 3-Energy Spell in the Mind domain numbered 056/167, pulling in the opposite direction: choose a gear of yours and deal damage equal to that equipment’s Energy cost to a unit at a battlefield. The text on the card says nothing about destroying it — the gear stays put and simply measures the damage. The more expensive it is, the harder it hits.
Why it matters here. Anyone in Italy already sketching a deck around Radiance gear — Orianna making it cheaper, Deploy pinning it to battlefields, the Bomb tokens — should budget for at least three answers in the same set, one of which does not even cost a card. Until the October 23 release these remain unconfirmed previews, but if they hold up they change the maths on how much gear is worth running.
The short version
- Three Radiance previews kill gear: Stalwart Goatherd (083/167), Lost to the Sands (013/167) and Mournful Spirit (126/167).
- They sit in three different domains — Body, Fury and Order — and two of the three need no dedicated turn.
- Improvised Projectile (056/167) goes the other way, using your own gear as a damage yardstick without destroying it.
- None of the four is confirmed by Riot: they are photos of physical cards posted on r/riftboundtcg.
Source: r/riftboundtcg, previews posted by u/Zupifa, u/nic_bolas and u/daviatella on September 29–30, 2026. Images: player photos on r/riftboundtcg.
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