Radiance reveals of 10 October: Merciless Lurker and a signed Songstress

The daily reveals of Radiance, the next Riftbound set, ended on 10 October with a short day: four cards and a signed printing, all of them shown in Simplified Chinese. Three of the four are in Calm or Chaos, the two domains of Riven's Legend The Exile from the day before, and the best of them is a Chaos unit that looks made for her deck.

Merciless Lurker is the best card of the day. Five Might for five energy is the going rate, and on top of that it can exhaust to Stun an enemy unit, so that unit deals no combat damage this turn. A stun every turn on a full-sized body is a lot, and Riven's deck gets the most out of it. Played to a battlefield you hold under The Exile, the Lurker enters ready and stuns straight away. Riven, Deserter can then exhaust another unit to ready it for a second stun, and she grows a point of Might for each unit that exhausts on the way. With Ki Burst and Riven, Broken Blade stunning as well, and Storm Raptor drawing a card when a stunned enemy dies at its battlefield, stunning has become a plan in Calm and Chaos rather than a side effect.

Pre-Battle Ritual is better than it looks. It is a 2-cost Reaction that gives a unit +2 Might, and if you show off a gear it readies two runes, which pays its energy back. Showing off only asks you to reveal a gear from your hand or point at one you control, so in any deck with gear on the table it is a combat trick that costs a single Calm rune and leaves your other runes standing for the next one. Blade of the Exile makes it a Riven card and Lady of Clockwork makes it an Orianna card, since both Legends play Calm. Whenever a gear is around, it is a stronger trick than Consult the Heavens.

Hunting Blind looks like a Riven card and plays better in K'Sante's deck. It is a Deploy gear that pulls an enemy unit to its battlefield and gives your units there Shield 2, so the unit it drags in meets your units on their own ground, where they defend with two extra Might each. Pulling the only defender off the other battlefield and leaving that one open to conquer is the stronger use. At four energy and two runes it is expensive for a gear the opponent kills by holding its battlefield, and it needs help to pay off. Pride of Nazumah, K'Sante's Legend, gives a unit Assault equal to its Shield and K'Sante, Dauntless doubles a unit's Shield, so in Calm and Body the Blind's Shield 2 works on attack as well as on defence.

Demolition Ape is a Bomb card in a 6-cost body. Six Might for six energy is fair on its own, and every time it holds a battlefield it puts three Bombs on a single battlefield. Three Bombs in one place are up to six damage to enemy units there the moment the first of them dies, and more with Ziggs, Short-Fused adding Bonus Damage or Detonation Amplifier making each Deathknell trigger twice. The catch is the word hold: the Ape does nothing on the turn it lands and has to survive the opponent's turn before the first Bomb appears. In the Bomb deck of Hexplosives Expert that is a fine top end, and outside it the Ape is a plain 6-drop.

The collector's card of the day is a signed printing of Seraphine's Legend, Starry-Eyed Songstress, numbered RAD 174a* with art by BlackVIII. It was first seen on the big screen at the Chinese Nationals in Chengdu. Every earlier Riftbound set has signed printings, marked by a star after the number, and this is the first one Radiance has shown.

Card by card

• Merciless Lurker, RAD 104, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Pre-Battle Ritual, RAD 032, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Demolition Ape, RAD 094, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Hunting Blind, RAD 044, from 符文狼叔 on Bilibili.
• Starry-Eyed Songstress, RAD 174a* (signed), from RiftboundCN on X.

Four cards of the day have only been shown in Simplified Chinese so far: Pre-Battle Ritual, Demolition Ape, Merciless Lurker and Hunting Blind. Their English names here are translations of the Chinese names and may differ from the names on the English cards.

Every card here is a preview. It is unreleased, and what is printed on it can change before Radiance releases on 23 October. The Radiance Reveals page shows every card by the day it was revealed, with what is still to come, and the Radiance card list holds the cards themselves. A card the official gallery does not list yet is shown as it was revealed until Riot lists it.