Riftbound Radiance: Deploy, Show Off and Disarm Explained

Every previous piece of Radiance coverage on this site has ended with some version of the same disclaimer. Our set schedule post put it flatly: "Anything you read describing Radiance's new mechanics right now is speculation." Our preview season schedule said the same thing four days ago: "None of the mechanics have changed hands yet - that's still the entire point of a preview season."

As of this morning, that disclaimer is out of date. Riot posted The Radiance Overview on 25 September - the same day the developer panel opens at RQ Los Angeles - and for the first time this vertical has actual mechanics to report instead of a placeholder. Three new keywords, a Legend who turns Gear into Units, a new token type, and a second Ultimate Rare that Riot says is deliberately harder to find than the first. Riot is explicit that this is a first pass: the same article gets two more updates, on 5 and 16 October, before Radiance releases on the 23rd. Everything below is what exists as of today, sourced to the article itself and to the five preview cards it prints.

What Riot actually revealed today

The Radiance Overview is a living document rather than a single announcement - Riot's own words: "We're going to update this article two more times throughout spoiler season as more and more of the set is unveiled. Come back on October 5 and October 16 at 10:00 AM PT to learn more about the Set!" Today's installment covers key dates, three new mechanics, one new card type, one new token, and the set's collectibility structure. Full decklists, the Ultimate Rare card itself, and the new Alt Art Runes are all explicitly deferred to later updates.

The confirmed calendar, restated from Riot's own Key Dates block:

• Previews: 25 September - 9 October 2026
• Merch Store drawing sign-up: 25-30 September 2026
• Drawing selection begins: 5 October 2026, approximately 9:00 AM Pacific
• Pre-Rifts: 16-22 October 2026
• Release: 23 October 2026, in English, French and Chinese simultaneously

Deploy, Show Off and Disarm: three new keywords

Three keywords carry their own highlighted badge and reminder text on the preview cards, in the same format our keyword glossary documents for the 25 that already exist. Riot's plain-English description of each, quoted directly:

Each one has a printed example, and the actual card text sharpens what the summary leaves vague.

Dockside Lock-Up (RAD 136/167, Gear, cost 6) is the Deploy example: "When you play this, banish a unit here. When you hold here, kill this to play the banished card, ignoring its cost. (Tokens aren't cards.)" Read alongside the keyword's own reminder - it dies the instant an opponent holds that battlefield - and the card is a bet: lock an enemy unit away for free, but the payoff only arrives if you can hang onto the ground it's sitting on. Deploy's headline restriction is also the interesting part structurally: Gear normally enters play at your base by default, the same rule our keyword glossary notes Hidden has to explicitly override to put a card at a battlefield instead. Deploy is a second, blunter way to force that same override - it doesn't let you choose base or battlefield, it removes base as an option entirely.

Rousing Display (RAD 127/167, Spell, cost 5) is the Show Off example: "Show Off a card with Energy cost 7 or more. (As you play this, you may reveal such a card from your hand or pick a friendly one.) Play two 1 Recruit unit tokens to your base. If you showed off, play four to your base instead." That reminder text is worth reading twice - Show Off isn't limited to your hand. You can point at a big card already sitting on your board instead of one you're holding, which means a deck built around one genuinely expensive payoff can Show Off the same card turn after turn rather than spending it once.

Kai'Sa, Rebel (RAD 063/167, Champion Unit, cost 5, Might 5, Mind) carries Disarm alongside a second ability: "While I'm in a showdown, your spells have Reaction. (Play them any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.)" Riot's framing of Disarm as "similar to Assault" is a useful anchor if you've read our domains breakdown - Assault is Fury's signature +Might-while-attacking keyword, and Disarm is its mirror image aimed at the other side of combat: instead of pumping your own attacker, you're shrinking whatever it's about to hit, for the turn, stacking with every additional instance the way Assault and Shield already do.

Orianna and the first Equipment Units

Riot doesn't introduce this Legend the way it introduced Seraphine, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Ekko and Evelynn back in August, with a name drop and a roster graphic. She surfaces once, mid-explanation, in the new-card-type section: "Gear Units were introduced in Vendetta with the Patched Porobot. With Orianna's Legend effect, equipment can now become Units as well."

That's enough to confirm her as Radiance's sixth named Legend, and the card sitting next to that paragraph gives the rest: Orianna, Lady of Clockwork (RAD 145/167), Calm and Mind. Her printed ability: "At the start of your Main Phase, you may pay 1 to choose a friendly gear. It becomes a unit gear with Might equal to its Energy cost until you choose another gear with me." That leaves three of Radiance's nine Legends still fully unannounced, down from four as of our preview-schedule coverage four days ago.

Worth being precise about what her ability actually does, because Riot's own copy blurs it slightly. "Gear Units were introduced in Vendetta" describes Unit-Gear, a printed card type covered in our 2026 set schedule - a card that is permanently both a unit and gear from the moment it's printed, the way Patched Porobot is. Orianna doesn't print a new permanent hybrid card. She applies a temporary, revocable status to an ordinary Gear you already control, and only one gear at a time gets to be a unit under her - choosing a different one switches it. Riot's own caveat matters here too: "when an Equipment becomes a Unit, it's automatically unequipped," so you cannot animate a piece of equipment while it's still attached to something else.

One more cross-check worth making before you build around her: Calm and Mind is already the most crowded non-rival pairing on this vertical's own Legend grid - Ahri, Ornn, Lillia and Nasus all sit there already, one per set since Origins. Orianna doesn't break new colour-pair ground the way Vendetta's three opposing-domain Legends did. She's simply the fifth entry on the pairing's most-populated row.

Bomb: a token that chain-reacts

Riot's pitch for the new token is short: "Bombs are small gifts to leave your opponent! The more bombs you play, the bigger the boom." The printed card explains why that isn't just flavour text. Bomb (RAD T02, Token Gear) carries Deploy - so it only ever sits on a battlefield, and dies the moment an opponent holds there - plus a Deathknell: "Deal 2 to an enemy unit here and kill all other Bombs you control here."

Read that instruction against how Deathknell actually works, which our keyword glossary covers in full: a Deathknell fires when its owner dies and goes to the trash, and killing a second Bomb at that battlefield sends it to the trash too - which means the second Bomb's own Deathknell fires as well, dealing another 2 and clearing out a third if one is present. Stack three Bombs at one battlefield and a single kill or a single lost hold can cascade through all of them, one 2-damage trigger at a time. That is the literal mechanism behind "the more bombs you play, the bigger the boom" - not a flavour claim, a chain reaction you can count in whole numbers.

A second Ultimate Rare, and a changed pack

Radiance's collectibility section opens with a direct comparison to the set that came before it: "Radiance brings Riftbound's second Ultimate Rare. We learned a lot with the Ultimate Rare introduced in Unleashed. While finding one was very exciting, it wasn't quite as rare as we wanted it to be. We're trying something new with this card: it's our rarest Ultimate Rare yet, significantly harder to find than the Baron." Riot doesn't spell the name out in full, but "the Baron" is almost certainly Baron Nashor, Unleashed's own splashy Ultimate Rare and a card our Vendetta FAQ coverage already cites for how its delayed-replacement location text works.

The number attached to that promise is specific: "On average across the entire Radiance print run, an Ultimate Rare appears in approximately 0.025% of booster packs" - about 1 in 4,000. Riot adds the standard caveat that pack contents are randomised during manufacturing and any stated rate is a print-run average, not a per-box guarantee.

The pack itself changed shape to make room for it. Here is Riot's full Radiance breakdown next to the Vendetta breakdown our sealed and draft rules post already recorded:

The total is still 14 cards, and the two non-foil "hit" slots are still two slots - Radiance just carves one of them into a guaranteed Rare-or-better plus a wider pool that now explicitly includes the Ultimate Rare. Riot's Vendetta breakdown never itemised an Ultimate Rare slot at all; Radiance's does, printed directly into the checklist.

One number doesn't reconcile cleanly yet, and it's worth flagging rather than smoothing over. All five preview cards shown today - Dockside Lock-Up, Rousing Display, Kai'Sa, Orianna and Bomb - carry the collector line RAD ___/167, not the 180-card, 66-Showcase total Riot's own Radiance Drawing FAQ cites for the Booster Display the same day. Whether the base set settles at 167 with Showcase counted separately on top, the way Vendetta's 166-card core sat under 50-plus additional Showcase cards, or whether 180 gets restated closer to release, is not something anything published today resolves.

The product lineup so far

Pricing, where Riot has actually attached a number, is straight from its own Merch Store FAQ rather than a market estimate:

• Radiance Booster Display - 24 packs pulling from the 180-card, 66-Showcase pool cited above. $119.99 / €127.99 plus shipping and handling - a shade under $5 a pack before shipping.
• Showdown Decks: Evelynn vs. Seraphine - two 56-card preconstructed decks, two paper playmats and a rulebook. $34.99 / €36.99 plus shipping and handling.
• Vault - a storage box, six Radiance booster packs, foil tokens, and a set of 36 Runes. No price published yet.
• Pre-Rift Kits - five Radiance boosters plus a seeded Pre-Rift pack for each of the nine new Legends, the same 5-plus-1 structure our sealed and draft rules post recorded for Vendetta's kit. No price published yet.

Riot names Seraphine's Legend title inside the Showdown Deck section - Starry-Eyed Songstress - but leaves Evelynn's blank as "TBD," alongside every other line of both decklists. That's a genuine asymmetry in today's reveal, not a signal about either character; Riot says full decklists arrive with the 16 October update.

Both Riot-run stores and your local shop get a piece of the promo calendar. At retail, sign up for your local game store's Pre-Rift and you're promised a copy of Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor while supplies last - a Champion Unit promo, not confirmation that Heimerdinger is one of Radiance's own named Legends (that name currently belongs to Legacy, Set 6, per our sealed and draft rules coverage of that set's roster). Nexus Night promo packs get updated with new Radiance cards, list still to come. Two Summoner Skirmish windows are dated - 9 November and 14 December - with participation, Top Cut and Champion rewards all marked TBD; Riot does confirm the Champion prize "will also walk away with the Skirmish Playmat."

One more line item, separate from the numbered card checklist: Heartsteel Overnumbers. Riot's own copy - "The boys are here with a modern fashion makeover. Collect them all and stun your opponent with your overwhelming aura" - and the reveal video's own description name the lineup directly: Sett, K'Sante, Ezreal, Yone, Kayn and Aphelios, the real Heartsteel band from League of Legends, reworked as alternate-art Overnumbers with artist signatures.

What Riot has not shown yet

Naming the gaps rather than filling them:

• The Ultimate Rare card itself. Not revealed. Riot says check back 5 October.
• Alt Art Runes. Confirmed to exist ("This new set has some musically inspired Runes"), not shown. Same 5 October promise.
• Both Showdown Deck decklists in full. Only Seraphine's Legend title is named; everything else on both sheets reads TBD until 16 October.
• The remaining three of Radiance's nine Legends. Six are now named - Seraphine, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Ekko, Evelynn and Orianna - three are not.
• Whether Deploy, Show Off and Disarm are the complete list of new Radiance keywords, or the first wave of more. Nothing in today's article claims completeness.
• Nexus Night promo cards and Summoner Skirmish rewards. Both explicitly deferred to 16 October.
• Pricing for the Vault and Pre-Rift Kits.

Quick reference

• Published: 25 September 2026, the same day RQ Los Angeles opens and Radiance preview season formally begins. Two more updates land 5 and 16 October, before an 23 October release in English, French and Chinese.
• Three new keywords: Deploy (Gear that plays only to a battlefield and dies the moment an opponent holds there), Show Off (reveal a qualifying card to unlock a bonus effect), Disarm (reduce an enemy unit's Might for the turn as you attack, stacking like Assault).
• New card interaction: Orianna, Lady of Clockwork (Calm/Mind) - Radiance's sixth confirmed Legend - can turn one friendly Gear at a time into a unit gear with Might equal to its Energy cost.
• New token: Bomb, a Deploy token gear whose Deathknell deals 2 and kills every other Bomb you control at that battlefield - which can cascade, since each of those also has its own Deathknell.
• Collectibility: Radiance's second-ever Ultimate Rare, pulled at roughly 1 in 4,000 packs - deliberately rarer than Unleashed's. The pack's higher-rarity slots split into one guaranteed Rare-or-better plus one wider slot that now explicitly includes the Ultimate Rare.
• Pricing confirmed: Booster Display $119.99 / €127.99 (24 packs); Showdown Decks (Evelynn vs. Seraphine) $34.99 / €36.99. Vault and Pre-Rift Kit pricing not yet published.
• Open discrepancy: today's five preview cards are numbered out of 167, not the 180-card, 66-Showcase total cited the same day in Riot's Merch Store FAQ. Unreconciled as of this writing.