Radiance reveals of 9 October: Riven's Legend, Raucous Anthem and Burn Away

Riven's Legend was the Radiance card players had asked about longest, and on 9 October it finally arrived. With it, all nine Legends of the next Riftbound set are known. Riot China's daily video showed it first, in Simplified Chinese, and its English name is The Exile, Riven's title in League of Legends. Its overnumbered printing, with art by Charles Liu, had already been out in Chinese since 7 October. Twelve more cards and a third printing of Ekko, Revolutionary came with it, and the best of them belongs to a different Legend altogether.

The Exile is the plainest of the nine Legends. It has no ability to use and nothing to pay: units you play to a battlefield you already control enter ready, which is free Accelerate on every one of them. That sounds small until you count the cards in Calm and Chaos that want a ready unit to exhaust. Riven, Deserter exhausts one of your units to ready another, Life from Stone and Ki Burst take a friendly unit's exhaustion as their cost, and Blade of the Exile can be equipped the same way. Under The Exile, a unit can land and pay for one of those on the same turn. The weakness is just as plain. When you hold no battlefield, the Legend does nothing at all, so it rewards the player who is already ahead and gives no help to the one who is behind.

The best card of the day is Raucous Anthem, and it is a Seraphine card more than anything else. Seven energy to ready every unit you control and give each +3 Might is a finisher for any wide Order deck, but next to Starry-Eyed Songstress it turns into a combo. The Legend exhausts herself and three of your units to take two energy off a spell, the Anthem readies those same three units with +3 Might each, and Seraphine, Inspiring draws a card for the three exhausted at once. For five energy that is a card, three units back on their feet and nine extra Might on the board. Rousing Display wants a 7-cost card to show off and pays four Recruits for it, and four Recruits under the Anthem are four 4-Might attackers.

Burn Away is the best removal of the day, and the word that matters on it is banish. For three energy it removes a unit with 3 Might or less or any gear, and a banished card never dies, so its Deathknell never triggers. In a set with Hunting Dog, Mournful Spirit, Gravity Field and the Bomb tokens, that is a real edge over Lost to the Sands, which does a similar job in Fury for the same price. The Burn 2 that comes with it is a cost in most decks, since running out of cards hands your opponent a point, but in Order it feeds Remember the Fallen.

Remember the Fallen is the slow card of the day and one of the more interesting ones. Eight energy plays three units or gear back from your trash, each costing three or less with one rune at most, which is exactly the limit Trifarian Captain searches for. Order now has a clear package of cheap cards that the Captain finds early and this spell brings back late, with Hunting Dog and Meticulous Restorationist among them. In Mordekaiser's colours there is a catch: Iron Revenant banishes cards from the same trash for runes, so the Legend and the spell fight over one pile.

Spirit of the Forge is the card of the day for Orianna. It picks a gear back up as it lands, readies itself and adds that gear's Energy cost to its Might, so returning The Ball makes a ready 9-Might attacker and leaves The Ball in hand to play again for another card or another 2 damage. Armored Elephant is the sleeper. It is a 6-cost Fury unit with Shield 3 and Tank, so a 7-Might wall on defence, and every time it moves it deals 3 damage to a unit at a battlefield. A unit that moves every turn and shoots every time it does is removal stapled to a body. Bloodscent Swarm is the fourth 8-Might unit at eight energy in the set and the first that gets cheaper when you attack: after one conquered battlefield it costs six, which is well above the rate of Radiance.

The rest of the day filled gaps in decks that already exist. Winged Oracle is a 2-cost Bird that Predicts whenever it becomes exhausted, which makes it a good body for Seraphine's Legend to exhaust. Seraphic Wyvern is a 7-Might Body unit for seven that adds an exhausted rune every time you channel. The extra rune arrives late in the game, so the Wyvern is a big body first and ramp second, although it does empty your Rune Deck sooner for Cosmic Vista. Guardian's Shield is a Reaction that hands Tank and a point of Might to whichever unit you want hit first. Trinket Peddler is a 3-cost unit with Disarm and nothing else, which is fine filler, since Disarm lets it attack into a 4-Might unit on even terms.

Stubborn Construct and Spinning Top Machine push the Mechs further into Fury. The Construct enters ready if you show off a Mech, and the Machine makes a Gold token every turn or trades a unit you were about to lose for a 3-Might Mech token. Mechs now turn up in several domains of the set, and they still lack a real payoff beyond Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor. For collectors, Riot's trailer that evening showed the overnumbered Ekko, Revolutionary, drawn by Grafit Studio, who also painted The Exile.

Card by card

• The Exile, RAD 149 (Riven's Legend), from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Winged Oracle, RAD 053, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Seraphic Wyvern, RAD 092, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Armored Elephant, RAD 078, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Guardian's Shield, RAD 123, from 符文战场 on Bilibili.
• Raucous Anthem, RAD 134, from Riot Games on X.
• Bloodscent Swarm, RAD 080, from Riot Games on X.
• Ekko, Revolutionary, RAD 177 (overnumbered showcase), from Riot Games on X.
• Trinket Peddler, RAD 054, from GameRant.
• Remember the Fallen, RAD 135, from MICE Squirtle on X.
• Spirit of the Forge, RAD 066, from MICE TheManLand on X.
• Burn Away, RAD 124, from PressStart Australia.
• Spinning Top Machine, RAD 022, from 颜赫_HE on Bilibili.
• Stubborn Construct, RAD 011, from RiftboundCN on X.

Five cards of the day have only been shown in Simplified Chinese so far: Winged Oracle, Armored Elephant, Guardian's Shield, Spinning Top Machine and Stubborn Construct. 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.