Arguably the most exciting part about Vendetta, Riftbound’s fourth set, is the first-ever introduction of Champion Legends with opposing domains. This one debut allows brand-new deckbuilding opportunities we’ve yet to see in the League of Legends trading card game, mashing two colors of cards with core ideals that are, generally, at-odds.
Though I didn’t get to play with Akali, Kennen, or Jayce, I did get to talk about them with Riftbound senior designer Jon Moormann at Riot’s HQ back in June. Moormann explained a little bit about why the team chose who they did to be the first ambassadors of these new color combos, and a little about their mechanics and champion units.
Akali: Red (Fury) and Green (Calm)
The Akali, Rogue Assassin Legend card harnesses the power of both Fury and Calm. It allows you to move a friendly unit in a showdown to your base on your turn, with the extra ability to ready the unit if it’s Empowered. “Empowered” is a new keyword introduced in Vendetta, and it’s basically a state you can activate on your turn for a cost–either runes or a trigger, like banishing a card. In Akali’s case, that’s three energy and one power. In exchange, the now-Empowered card gains an extra ability or effect.
Moormann explained how Akali’s Champion Units synergize with her Legend, as they are very “focused on ability and attack triggers.”
“A lot of [Akali’s] kit revolves around her Legend, which lets you basically retreat an attacking character,” Moormann said. “So you kind of run in with Akali, get some attack triggers off her going in, and then pull her back out again.”
Both Akali’s Red and Green Champion Units get an extra effect when they move. Moormann equated the style to Akali’s classic play pattern in League of Legends, where you set down smoke, jump out to poke, then run back into the smoke to try attacking again. In the slideshow above, you can see her Legend, Champion Unit, Signature Spell, and two Spell cards with Akali art that enable the strategy well. Her low-cost Signature Spell, Shuriken Flip, is especially impressive.
“Akali is a well-beloved champion; we really wanted to try and find a way to get Akali into Riftbound, and felt like she was a very good fit for Fury and Calm, as someone who’s kind of this twin disciplines master going back and forth between the sides of Shen and Zed specifically,” Moormann explained.
Jayce: Orange (Body) and Blue (Mind)
Jayce embodies brawn and brains–Body and Mind–with the Jayce, Defender of Tomorrow Legend card. For exhausting one rune, you can ready a gear. If it’s Empowered, you can ready two gear for the same cost.
The other new opposite domain Legends have an Empowered trigger, and Jayce is no different. “[Empowered] lets us be like, you have a two-stage Legend. Your Legend is a little weaker in the early game, but you can make an investment to make it better.”
“Jayce is one of our, I think, weirder Legends,” Moormann said. “He’s all about playing out gear and Units and readying them, so he feels kind of combo-y.”
You can see Jayce’s Legend, Champion Unit, and Signature Spell in the slideshow above along with two Hextech Gears that already combo together, but combo even better with Jayce’s Legend.
“Jayce as Body and Mind made a ton of sense. There’s a lot of other champions we think work for this one,” Moormann said. “Weirdly, [Body and Mind] I think is the opposing domain that has the most space in it, but Jayce, again, very popular and once we kind of came up with the idea of what the Jayce deck was doing, I think that really led us to push more on it.”
Kennen: Yellow (Order) and Purple (Chaos)
Kennen, Heart of the Tempest Legend card, encompasses both Order and Chaos, maybe the most anticipated new color combo considering how some of the best cards belong to the Chaos domain.
“Kennen is all about moving fast, stunning people, and striking from unexpected angles. In Riftbound, we wanted him to showcase the Flow mechanic and really lean into its inherent card advantage and trickiness,” Moormann said.
Flow is a new Vendetta mechanic that, if it’s on the card, allows you to play the card from your trash for a cost before banishing it. “From there, we looked at what Purple and Yellow were doing across Riftbound and leaned into this idea of playing cards from outside of your hand, and gave him an aggressive payout for doing so,” Moormann explained.
While many of the cards we’ve seen from Vendetta so far stay Empowered once they’ve been triggered, Kennen’s Legend is Disempowered whenever you use his ability to grant Assault 2 to an Attacker, meaning you’ll have to Empower him again each time before it can be used. This is triggered by playing a card from anywhere else besides your hand, which sounds tricky, but is very enabled the new Flow mechanic, Kennen’s purple Champion Unit, and Signature Spell Lightning Rush; and more–like the pre-existing Nocturne Champion Unit. The new Burn mechanic, which sends cards from the top of a main deck to the trash, also ties into the idea (and Kennen’s Signature Spell) neatly.
While the other opposing domain Legends had clear options, Moormann said yellow (Order) and purple (Chaos) was the hardest to land.
“For Order and Chaos, that one has been much more challenging, partly just because the way the colors play together and things that they have overlapping mechanically don’t always tie to the characters to make the most sense for the set,” Moormann said.
He believes Kennen works great as an Order and Chaos Legend considering his backstory as a member of the Kinkou Order who “still very much is independent and does his own thing.” Kennen is also, maybe coincidentally, the favorite Champion of senior game designer David Smith.
“But in terms of mechanically fitting into being both Yellow and Purple, that took a lot more work, and I really like where we landed,” Moormann said. “And there’s also a lot more space in yellow [and] purple as a color combination that we’re not exploring with Kennen–I don’t think this is the end of what you can do with this domain pair. If players look at what those two colors do, they can draw some conclusions about where we might go in the future, but there’s a lot of space to look into there.”
Because opposing domain Legends are a little tougher to land in a way that thematically makes sense, we won’t be seeing these combos on Legends as often as the others, but Moormann said we will certainly see them again.
Vendetta, the fourth Riftbound expansion set, releases on July 31, simultaneously worldwide for the first time. It’ll have more than 160 cards, 50 Showcase cards, and nine Champion Legends–setting a new standard for Champion Legends in the future.
For more on Riftbound, check out our hands-on preview of Vendetta’s Zed vs. Shen Showdown deck, complete with more insight from Moormann on the decks themselves and Vendetta’s new keywords: Burn, Flow, and Empower.
Casey DeFreitas is the deputy editor of guides at IGN. Catch her on socials @ShinyCaseyD.
