Riot's opening-night Radiance video: K'Sante's Legend, Heimerdinger's Mechs and a 12-Might Ahri /

By Ron Cruz · Published September 25, 2026

Riot didn’t wait for its developer panel to start showing Radiance cards. At 2:01 p.m. Pacific on September 25, the official Riftbound account posted an 86-second video of two players squaring off at a karaoke bar, and nearly every card they play is new.

The video shows nine new cards and a Mech token, including K’Sante’s Legend and new versions of Heimerdinger and Ahri. It also puts three mechanics that first surfaced in photos from PAX West on finished cards: Deploy, Show Off and Disarm. Here’s what every card does and how Ahri ends the video at 12 Might.

K’Sante is a Calm and Body Legend

K’Sante’s Legend is called Pride of Nazumah, and it’s a Calm and Body Legend. In August, Riot confirmed nine Radiance Legends and named five of them: Seraphine, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Ekko and Evelynn. K’Sante is the sixth. Riot has since named the other three: Orianna, Riven and Mordekaiser. All nine are on our Radiance page.

His ability costs 1 energy and exhausts him. In return, a friendly unit gets “I have Assault equal to my Shield” for the rest of the turn.

Here’s why that matters. Shield is a defensive keyword: a unit gets +1 Might for each Shield while it’s defending. Assault is the attacking version, adding Might while the unit attacks. K’Sante lets a unit take the Shield it built up for defense and swing with it.

His Signature Spell, Ntofo Strikes, costs 2 energy and 1 Calm or Body power. It’s an Action, so you can play it on your turn or during a showdown. It gives a friendly unit Shield 2 this turn, then deals damage equal to that unit’s Shield to an enemy unit. That’s 2 damage on its own, and more if the unit already had Shield. Use the Legend on the same unit afterward and it also gets Assault 2.

Heimerdinger turns your tokens into Mechs

Heimerdinger, Academy Instructor costs 6 energy and 1 Order power, and has 5 Might. While he’s at a battlefield, any time you would play a unit token, you can play a 3-Might Mech token to that same location instead.

That includes tokens headed to your base, and it isn’t limited to Radiance cards. Anything in your deck that makes 1-Might Recruit tokens can make 3-Might Mechs while Heimerdinger is at a battlefield.

Show Off: Rousing Display and Supernova

Rousing Display is a spell that costs 5 energy and plays two 1-Might Recruit tokens to your base. It also has Show Off. As you play it, you can reveal a card from your hand that costs 7 or more energy, or pick one you already have in play. If you do, you get four Recruits instead of two.

Showing off only reveals the card. It stays in your hand or on the board.

In the video, the player shows off Supernova, a spell that costs 9 energy and 1 Mind power. It deals 10 to a unit and draws 2. With Heimerdinger already at a battlefield, all four Recruits come in as Mechs. That’s four 3-Might units from one 5-energy spell.

Show Off in the video

Riot Games / @playriftbound: opening-night Radiance video

Ahri, Confident brings Disarm

Ahri, Confident costs 4 energy and 1 Calm power, and has 4 Might. She has Disarm: when she attacks, an enemy unit at that battlefield gets -1 Might this turn. Her second ability pays that off. Whenever you reduce the Might of an enemy unit where she is by 1 or more, she gets +1 Might this turn.

So Disarm is a 2-Might swing for Ahri every time she attacks: -1 on their side, +1 on hers.

Deploy: Pillaged Armory

Pillaged Armory is a Body gear that costs 1 energy, and it has Deploy. Deploy gear can only be played to a battlefield, and it’s killed when an opponent holds that battlefield.

When you play the Armory, and again whenever you conquer that battlefield, you buff a friendly unit. That gives it a +1 Might buff if it doesn’t already have one.

Invigorating Bloom and Packed Amphitheater

Invigorating Bloom is a Calm gear that costs 3 energy. When you play it, a friendly unit gets +3 Might this turn. After that, you can exhaust the Bloom along with a friendly Mighty unit, meaning one with 5 or more Might, to draw a card.

Packed Amphitheater is a battlefield where Champion units have +1 Might. That counts everyone’s champions, so in the video it helps both sides.

Invigorating Bloom and Packed Amphitheater

Riot Games / @playriftbound: opening-night Radiance video

How Ahri gets to 12

The video sets it up as Seraphine against K’Sante. Seraphine, Not Alone isn’t new. Riot had already shown her.

The K’Sante player opens by deploying Pillaged Armory and buffing Ahri. The other player moves Sett, Kingpin and Heimerdinger into the Packed Amphitheater, then pays 5 energy for Rousing Display and shows off Supernova. Because Heimerdinger is at a battlefield, the four Recruits come in as four Mechs. They go to the base, so they stay out of the fight.

Then it’s the K’Sante player’s turn:

On defense, Sett and Heimerdinger each have 5 Might, plus 1 each from the Amphitheater. Disarm drops Heimerdinger back to 5, so the defense totals 11. That’s 12 to 11, and Ahri steals the spotlight.

What’s new and what you already know

Deploy, Show Off and Disarm don’t appear on any card released so far. Everything else in the video works the way it already does in Riftbound: Shield, Assault, Mighty, buffs, and Mech and Recruit tokens all exist on current cards.

What’s next

The video came out ahead of Riot’s developer panel at RQ Los Angeles at 3 p.m. Pacific with Game Director Dave Guskin, Radiance Lead Designer Jon Moormann, Creative Director Brice Cox and Art Director Michelle Mauk. Riot posted the full panel, Radiance: Taking the Stage, on YouTube, and our panel story covers what it showed.

Riot updates its Card Gallery at 5 p.m. Pacific each day with the previous day’s reveals. Previews run through October 9, Pre-Rift events run October 16 to 22, and Radiance releases October 23.