Riftbound Radiance: Every Legend and its Signature Explained

With all the Legends and their Signatures revealed, let's take a look together at what each Legend does and what their Signature brings to the table.

Ekko, Boy Who Shattered Time 

Ekko brings back the Empower mechanic which, as a reminder, is basically a new characteristic that a card obtains until it's taken away with some Disempower effect. In this case, Ekko's abilities both grant and then use empowerment.

Empowering Ekko takes surprisingly little effort, since it's enough to pay 1 and exhaust it. The hidden severity of the cost is the exhaustion, since it means it's going to be impossible to use the second part of the ability immediately. Therefore, you won't be able to actually use Ekko more often than every other turn.

The ability itself though requires just disempowerment and exhaustion of Ekko to make the next unit cheaper by 2 Energy and 1 Power. That unit, however, will be killed at the end of the turn. You can use it to cheat out considerably more expensive units much earlier, preferably those that have immediate on-play or Deathknell effects.

Moreover, we should take a look at Ekko's Signature.

This spell for just 2 Energy and any amount of Power allows you to basically replay as many units as you paid Power. This is very strong for a couple of reasons.

• You can re-accelerate units that have already conquered a battlefield and go to a different one
• You get on-play effects again
• You remove Ekko ability's `Kill at the end of turn` clause

Ekko is a super synergistic and cool Legend if you like playing units ahead of schedule and re-using them over and over again.

Ziggs, Hexplosives Expert

Ziggs utilises Bomb tokens with Deploy. For a single Energy and Power, you can exhaust Ziggs to play a Bomb to any battlefield, regardless of whether you control it or not. 

If you have a stalemate situation where you keep holding one battlefield and the opponent holds the other, you can start stacking up Bombs on the opponent's battlefield to essentially force them out.

However, the real spice comes with the Signature.

You can stack up Bombs, but the opponent might still try conquering and re-conquering without ever actually holding to proc the Bombs. This is where Hexplosive Minefield comes into play! This Action speed spell allows you to pop any number of your Bombs at once *and* replay the same number of them to a battlefield. This is a crazy flavourful way to start mayhem at the battlefield the opponent is at. In practice, you might just put Bombs on each battlefield and put the opponent in a weird squeeze of never knowing when and which will pop.

Mordekaiser, Iron Revenant

Mordekaiser's ability is basically a twist on what Kaisa and Ornn already do, namely provide Power that can be spent on some card type. In this case, you cannot just exhaust your Legend but you also need to banish a unit or gear from trash, which is particularly limiting in the early game. However, you do get to spend that Power on either Units or Gear, which is a very broad set.

As far as being similar to other cards goes, this reminds me a lot of Irelia's signature. Here, for two and a power you get to swing combat by 4 Might *and* creatures targeted will deal Might to each other. 

Some key things to notice are that you won't be able to play the Signature using Mordekaiser's mana ability; it's slow speed, so you cannot use it in combat; if your creature survives the Might exchange, it will have marked damage when entering combat.

I expect Morderkaiser to really be good friends with Ferrous Forerunner.

Orianna, Lady of Clockwork

Orianna has a triggered ability that at the beginning of your main phase gives you the option to pay 1 and choose a friendly gear. Then, if you did so, that gear becomes a unit with Might equal to its Energy cost until you choose something else at any subsequent start of Main Phases. In other words, you animate a gear for it to become a unit. It's a very unique ability that is definitely going to make everyone double-check every gear in the game through her lens.

Remember that the wording of the card is very important. For instance, Orianna won't work with Sprite Fountain, because you will play Fountain after the trigger has been resolved, and the following turn the Fountain will have already died to its own deathknell.

Thematically, her Signature is a gear that begs to be animated. The Ball has Ganking and upon both play and move you get to either draw 1 or deal 2 damage to enemy units here. This card can be very scary, especially when you play it directly to a battlefield thanks to its Deploy ability. An example line would be to play it to an opposing battlefield and deal 2 damage there, and the following turn animate it and jump across to the other battlefield with ganking, triggering The Ball again. You can also do some movement shenanigans with Smoke and Mirrors or Emperor's Divide.

K'sante, Pride of Nazumah

K'sante gives a unit Assault equal to its Shield for one turn. It's an interesting way to have units very good at defense normally with Shield, but be able to turn the corner by getting Assault. Naturally, this necessitates either units natively with Shield or effects that grant it. Thankfully, we get the Signature spell.

At Action speed, we grant a unit Shield 2, and then deal damage equal to its Shield to an enemy unit. In practice, we could have a unit that already has Shield, give it additional two Shield, shoot something for three, use K'sante, and attack with Assault 3.

Riven, The Exile

Riven has a unique ability that's neither triggered nor activated. It's a passive that overrides the rules of the game in that your units you play to a battlefield you control enter ready.

This is going to be particularly useful with two aspects of the game. The first is movement triggers and being able to play a unit ready to a battlefield and immediately move back, triggering the unit, such as Stellacorn Herder. Another is Ganking - playing a unit ready to one battlefield and jumping into showdown on the other.

Riven's Signature is a gear that equips for either Power or exhausting a unit. The second part is synergistic with Riven, as you can play a unit ready to a battlefield and exhaust it to this ability. This blade grants extra 3 Might and Ganking, which we already know works inherently well with the Legend. 

Riven is going to be a tricksy, movement-based deck that's also going to be super hard to play around, as you can not only move but also gank across easily - very reminiscent of Irelia.

Jarvan IV, Exemplar of Demacia

Jarvan IV has a triggered ability that allows you to pay Power and exhaust him to move a friendly unit to a battlefield where you've just played a Deploy gear to. 

The deck based on Jarvan IV will have to include some Deploy gear, but the payoff of getting one free movement per turn is very good. Since it's only *to* a battlefield, you can think of it as aggressive free Accelerate for a unit that otherwise wouldn't be able to immediately attack.

Naturally, the Signature is a Gear with Deploy. The effect is pretty innocuous, as it grants +2 Might to a creature that's attacking here and you can return it to your hand upon holding. In practice, it's basically a Discipline that grants Accelerate and then every combat you get to reuse it. To get your Energy's and Power's worth out of this card, you probably need to trigger it about 2-3 times; anything above that is very beneficial Might-to-Cost-wise.

Evelynn, Agony's Embrace

Evelynn has a unique ability wherein you get to draw 1 card when you play a card from face down. However, you can do it only once each turn and you also discard 1 if it's not your turn. Therefore, she incentivizes flipping your Hiddens on your own turn to get that draw off. You can also flip once every turn, on yours and then opponent's, but only the flip on your turn will be card positive, otherwise it's card selection. It's not free real estate though, since you do have to pay Power every time to hide the cards. However, if you build the deck in a way where you'd typically want to hide cards anyways, this is a great way to get a couple of free extra cards off your Legend.

Interestingly, the Signature is not a Hidden card! It's a Reaction speed spell that grants the next unit the option to be played to any battlefield and get a Buff. This can be used as a sort of ambush if you follow it up by revealing a hidden unit. It's also a semi-accelerate, as you can play this Signature and then a unit. You can also save your unit in a very convoluted way if you play Last Caress, reveal Tideturner, make it go to a different battlefield and then switch it with the unit you actually want to save.

Seraphine, Starry-Eyed Songstress

Thanks to Seraphine, you can discount one spell a turn by 2 Energy if you exhaust her and three friendly units. This lends itself to being a spell and token deck, since you need a lot of units to discount spells and naturally spells themselves for them to be discounted.

Thematically, the Signature is both a spell and makes unit tokens. It's actually a modal spell with four different options, where you can choose two. We haven't seen many such flexible cards in Riftbound, but typically flexibility pays off big, and so I expect this card to likewise be pretty strong.

Conclusion

9 exciting Legends, each with a different flavour and vibe! I cannot wait to see how they develop in practice!