What are Ultimate Rares?

Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game keeps its rarest printing for the Ultimate Rares. Riot Games added the Ultimate rarity with Unleashed, the third set, and described it as a rarity for cards that are exciting on their own and very hard to find. Two cards have the rarity so far: Baron Nashor in Unleashed and the battlefield Packed Amphitheater in Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026.

An Ultimate Rare is a collector's printing. It reprints a card of its own set with new artwork and a number past the end of the set, and in a game it does exactly what the standard card does.

Which cards are Ultimate Rares?

Two cards are Ultimate Rares so far, one in each set that has the rarity.

• Baron Nashor is the Ultimate Rare of Unleashed, numbered 238/219. Its standard printing, Baron Nashor at 147/219, is an Epic unit of the Chaos domain that costs 10 Energy, has 12 Might and gives your other units +2 Might. The Ultimate printing trades the standard artwork for a new one by Zhang Yu, in the look of an ink painting, black and gray with gold eyes.
• Packed Amphitheater is the Ultimate Rare of Radiance, numbered 184/167. Its standard printing, Packed Amphitheater at 164/167, is an Uncommon battlefield that gives the champion units there +1 Might. The Ultimate printing by Fish Art Studio shows a crowd of fans in front of a stage, framed like the screen of a camera that is recording the show. Riot revealed it on 2 October 2026 in a video from the Radiance Creator Summit. It is the only battlefield so far with a showcase printing.

The two cards show that the rarity of the standard card does not decide which card becomes an Ultimate Rare: the first one reprints an Epic unit and the second an Uncommon battlefield. Baron Nashor also has an alternate art printing at 147a/219, so Unleashed prints the Baron in three versions.

How do you recognize an Ultimate Rare?

The collector number is the first sign: like an overnumbered card, an Ultimate Rare has a number above the size of its set. In both sets it comes after the overnumbered cards: those of Unleashed run from 220 to 237 and Baron Nashor is 238, while those of Radiance run from 168 to 183 and Packed Amphitheater is 184. Riot calls Baron Nashor a unique overnumbered card, and that is a fair way to think of an Ultimate Rare: the last and rarest overnumbered card of its set.

The gem is no help. An Ultimate Rare carries the same gold hexagon as every other showcase printing, so the gem alone cannot tell it apart from an alternate art card or an overnumbered card. Both Ultimate Rares are foil, and Riot said of each of them that a picture does not do the card justice.

How rare is an Ultimate Rare?

An Ultimate Rare is the rarest kind of printing a set can hold. Riot put Baron Nashor in fewer than one Unleashed booster pack in 1,000, which is fewer than one in every 40 booster displays of 24 packs. In its overview of Radiance, Riot said that the Baron was not quite as rare as it had wanted, and it puts Packed Amphitheater in about 0.025 percent of Radiance packs, which is one pack in 4,000 or about one in 167 displays.

Riot adds three points to these odds. A pack never holds more than one Ultimate Rare. No pack, display or case is guaranteed to hold one. The rates are averages over the whole print run, so they promise nothing for a single box.

An Ultimate Rare turns up in one of the two rare slots of a booster pack. In Unleashed either rare slot can hold it. In Radiance one rare slot always holds a Rare or an Epic, and only the other slot can hold a showcase printing or the Ultimate Rare. In the pull rates of a booster pack, the Ultimate Rare comes last, after the Epic, alternate art, overnumbered and signed printings.

Does an Ultimate Rare play differently?

No. An Ultimate Rare has the same name, cost and abilities as the standard card, and the Core Rules say that the illustration of a card conveys no gameplay information (rule 139.1). The Ultimate Baron Nashor even leaves out the reminder text in parentheses that the standard card prints after its first ability. That changes nothing, because the Core Rules say that the presence or absence of reminder text has no effect on the game (rule 135.2.d.3).

An Ultimate Rare counts toward the same deck limits as the standard card. A main deck can hold up to three cards with the same name (rule 103.3.b), so one Ultimate Baron Nashor and two standard ones make three copies, not more. In a one-on-one Duel each player brings three battlefields (rule 487.4.a), and a deck may not hold two battlefields with the same name (rule 103.5.c), so a deck holds one Packed Amphitheater at most, in either printing. The Tournament Rules make a card legal wherever a card of the same name is legal (rule 601.2.a), so both Ultimate Rares are legal wherever their standard printings are.

Will every set have an Ultimate Rare?

No. When Riot introduced the rarity, it said that Ultimate Rares will not appear in every set and that it keeps them for truly special cards. Origins and Spiritforged came out before the rarity existed. Vendetta, the fourth set, has none: Riot's list of what a Vendetta pack can hold names Rares, Epics, alternate art, special and overnumbered cards, but no Ultimate Rare. Unleashed and Radiance have exactly one each. Legacy, the sixth set, with its release on 29 January 2027, has no announced Ultimate Rare, and Riot has not said whether it will have one.

Is an Ultimate Rare worth chasing?

For a player, no. The standard printing does exactly the same job in a deck, and the standard Packed Amphitheater is an Uncommon, the rarity of three cards in every Radiance pack. The Ultimate Rare is a prize for collectors, and its odds make it a poor reason to open packs: at one pack in 4,000, finding one Packed Amphitheater takes about 167 displays on average, which comes to about $20,000 at the launch price of $119.99 for a Radiance booster display.

A collector who wants one does better to get the single card. Single cards come from local game stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides. The Ultimate Baron Nashor sells for $1,828.46 today, while the standard Baron Nashor sells for $21.70. The page of each card shows its current price beside its other printings.

The Ultimate Rares page lists every Ultimate Rare, the newest first, and the rarity guide sets them apart from the other showcase printings with Riot's odds for each set. The pack opener lets you open packs of Unleashed and Radiance at those odds. Where the Ultimate Rare of Unleashed stands among the cards that sell for the most is covered in which Riftbound cards are the most expensive.