Riftbound Reveals Overnumbered Ekko Variants Ahead of Radiance Launch

Riftbound is nearly a year old in Western markets, and Riot Games' League of Legends trading card game is marking the occasion with another set. Radiance, the game's fifth major release, launches October 23 at local game stores and big-box retailers, a little more than a week before the October 31 anniversary of the game's Western debut.

One of the set's headline names is Ekko, Boy Who Shattered Time, and we now have a first look at his Overnumbered variant art. The base card has been shown before, but the new treatment gives the time-bending Legend a fresh visual identity.

Ekko is a Fury/Mind (red and blue) Legend with an Empower mechanic. You exhaust one rune and Ekko to empower him. From there, you can disempower and exhaust him to reduce the cost of the next unit you play that turn by 2 and a recycled rune of any color. The catch is that the unit gains "Kill me at end of turn," so it heads to the discard pile once the turn wraps up.

That fits the character neatly. Ekko is known for bending time and making short-lived clones of himself to confuse opponents, and this Legend lets him hand a version of that trick to other units in your deck.

The natural deck-building approach is to lean on cards that make an immediate impact. Units with Accelerate, which enter ready and can attack right away, look like the best fit. Accelerate normally costs one exhausted rune and one recycled rune, so Ekko's discount means you still pay less to bring in an Accelerated unit, even though it will not stick around.

Radiance is the last scheduled release before the one-year mark. Prerelease events, known in the community as "Pre-Rifts," begin at local game stores on October 16, giving players a chance to try the set before it reaches shelves.