What does Deploy do?

Gear in Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game usually stays away from the fighting. A gear enters play at your base, and an unattached gear that ends up at a battlefield goes back to your base in the next cleanup. Deploy is the keyword that changes this. It arrives with Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026, and it puts a gear on a battlefield, where it works for the units around it.

Every gear with Deploy carries the same reminder text: play this only to a battlefield, and when an opponent holds here, kill this.

Where can you play a gear with Deploy?

A gear with Deploy can be played to any battlefield, and only to a battlefield, never to your base. Rule 830 of the Core Rules says this includes battlefields where enemy units stand and open battlefields, which have no units and no controller, and the keyword says any battlefield, so a battlefield you control counts too. The gear then stays where you put it, because Deploy keeps it from being recalled to your base in cleanups.

Deploy adds nothing to the cost of the card. Banner of Conquest costs 1 Energy and one Fury Power, and your units at its battlefield have Assault, so each of them has +1 Might while it attacks. Pillaged Armory buffs a friendly unit when you play it and again when you conquer its battlefield. Concert Poster lets you pay 1 Energy for a Recruit, a 1 Might unit token, in your base at the same two moments.

A gear is not a unit, so playing one to a battlefield does not start a showdown or a combat, and it does not give you control of that battlefield. Like other gear, a gear with Deploy is played in your own Main Phase while no showdown or combat is under way, unless a card gives it Action or Reaction.

When is a gear with Deploy killed?

A gear with Deploy is killed when an opponent holds its battlefield. A player holds a battlefield when they still control it at the start of their turn and score a point for it in their Beginning Phase. At that moment, every gear with Deploy that you have at that battlefield is killed.

Where you put the gear decides how long it lasts. At a battlefield you control, the gear is safe while you keep it, and an opponent who takes that battlefield from you must still control it at the start of their following turn before the gear is killed. At a battlefield your opponent controls, the gear lasts until the start of their next turn, unless your units take the battlefield first.

Opponents can also remove a gear with Deploy the usual ways: Lost to the Sands can kill a gear, and Adaptatron may kill one when it conquers. A gear killed by a hold dies like any other gear, so its Deathknell triggers. Gravity Field makes opponents pay 1 Energy and one Power of any domain to move units to its battlefield, and it draws you a card when it dies.

A few gear with Deploy leave on their own when you hold their battlefield. The Good Stuff, which makes you discard 1 card and draw 3 when you play it, returns to your hand when you hold its battlefield, so you can play it again. Demacian Standard, the signature gear of Jarvan IV, may return in the same way. Dockside Lock-Up banishes a unit when you play it and, when you hold its battlefield, kills itself to play the banished card, ignoring its cost.

Where should you put a gear with Deploy?

Match the gear to its job. A gear that helps attackers or rewards conquering belongs at the battlefield you are about to attack: play it in your Main Phase, then move your units in. Banner of Conquest gives each of them Assault for the fight, and if they win, the gear stays at a battlefield you now control.

A gear that helps defenders or rewards holding belongs at a battlefield you already control. Resource Extractor plays a Gold gear token at the end of your turn if you control its battlefield, and Gravity Field makes that battlefield more expensive to attack.

Can a gear with Deploy move?

Not by itself, because only units move on their own, but effects that move gear can move it from one battlefield to another. Three cards of Radiance show how.

• Command: Attack, a Calm spell, can move a friendly gear with Deploy to a battlefield.
• The Ball, the Calm and Mind signature gear of Orianna, lets you draw 1 card or deal 2 to each enemy unit at its battlefield whenever you play or move it.
• Lady of Clockwork, the Legend of Orianna, can make a friendly gear a unit gear, with Might equal to its Energy cost, until you choose another gear. As a unit, The Ball moves like any unit, and its Ganking lets it move from battlefield to battlefield.

What are Bomb tokens?

A Bomb is a gear token with Deploy and a Deathknell. When it dies, it deals 2 to an enemy unit at its battlefield and kills all other Bombs you control there, whose own Deathknells then trigger. Ziggs is the champion built around them. Hexplosives Expert, his Legend, plays a Bomb to a battlefield for 1 Energy, one Power of any domain and an exhaust. Amateur Demolitionist and Satchel Charge each play one as well.

Bombs turn the Deploy rule against your opponent. A Bomb left at a battlefield they control is killed when they hold it, and its Deathknell deals 2 to one of their units there. Detonation Amplifier, itself a gear with Deploy, makes your Deathknell effects at its battlefield trigger an additional time.

Which other cards are built around Deploy?

Deploy is new in Radiance, and the set has gear with Deploy in all six domains, from 1 Energy commons such as Banner of Conquest to the 6 Energy Epic Dockside Lock-Up. Besides Ziggs, Jarvan IV is the champion built around the keyword. Three cards of the Body domain reward you for using gear with Deploy.

• Exemplar of Demacia, the Legend of Jarvan IV, lets you exhaust it and pay one Power of any domain to move a friendly unit to the battlefield where you just played a gear with Deploy.
• Jarvan IV, Martial Paragon gives your gear with Deploy Action, so you can play them in showdowns, and channels a rune exhausted when he conquers a battlefield where a friendly gear with Deploy stands.
• Overloaded Traveler, a 2 Energy Body unit, has +1 Might while a friendly gear with Deploy is at its battlefield.

Every gear is on the gear page, and the Radiance list shows the whole set. Gear with Deploy is not the only gear that can stand at a battlefield: Equipment gets there attached to a unit, and unlike a gear with Deploy it goes back to its base in the next cleanup when that unit dies. The full wording of Deploy is rule 830 of the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub.