On October 9, Riot Games dropped three documents at once on the official Riftbound site: the Radiance rules notes, a batch of errata and the tournament rules changelog. Everything takes effect on October 16, when Pre-Rift events (in-store launch events, running until the 22nd) begin. Radiance hits shelves on October 23 in English, French and Chinese, as we covered in our Radiance story.
The three new keywords
- Deploy (gear): can be played to any battlefield, whether it is yours, your opponent's or nobody's. It stays there until destroyed, but if an opponent holds that battlefield, the gear dies.
- Disarm (units): the first time the unit attacks in each combat, an enemy unit at that battlefield gets -1 Might this turn. Disarm 2 means -2, and several sources add up into a single trigger.
- Show Off (units and spells): you reveal a card from your hand or pick a friendly object on the board that matches what the card asks for. Whatever you show is locked in at that moment, even if it changes later.
The notes also rework the engine under the hood: copy effects get their own layer, applied first, and the rules now separate "pick" (a choice without targeting) from "choose" (targeting). Riot also flagged that "Legacy", a major rewrite of the rules documents, is coming in January; the company says it changes wording and layout, not how cards work.
Errata and tournaments: Neeko takes centre stage
The headline errata is Neeko, Blending In. It used to force you to pick three extra legends; now it is up to three, all different. They are locked in at deck building and, at competitive events, must be written on your deck list. Elnuk Herd can now give the +3 Might to itself, Forbidden Technique makes clear it is banished after you play the card from the trash, and Last Caress only gets a punctuation fix.
On the tournament side, Radiance joins Standard on October 16. The changelog also confirms you may bluff about private information, adds penalties for scouting other matches, and requires loops to be fully deterministic, with no random elements.
What it means for you
If you are heading to a Pre-Rift in the UK, Germany, France or anywhere else in Europe, read up on the three keywords first: the printed cards do not spell out every detail, such as Deploy gear dying when you lose the battlefield. And remember that errata change the official text, not the card: yours is still legal, but it plays as the new text says. Keep the release calendar handy and, once you open your packs, log your pulls in your collection to track their value alongside the rest of your Riftbound cards.