Radiance Patch Notes & Errata, Explained

Riot's Radiance rules update for players: Deploy, Disarm and Show Off in the rules, four errata including Neeko, and tournament changes from 16 October.

Riot published Radiance's rules update on 9 October 2026, two weeks before the set releases. It came in three parts: the core rules patch notes, errata for four Radiance cards, and a changelog for the tournament rules. All three take effect on 16 October, when Pre-Rift events begin. That means the first time most people play Radiance, they will be playing under these rules.

Most of it is careful housekeeping, and Riot says so. The patch notes state that the designers do not change rules or issue errata to manage power levels, and nothing here bans or unbans a card. But a few of the changes affect how cards you will actually play work, and one card, Neeko, Blending In, turns up in all three documents. This post goes through what changed, in the order a player will meet it.

The four errata

Riot gave one reason for all four: the new wording makes the cards easier to understand and clarifies how they work under the rules. Here is each one, printed text first.

Elnuk Herd is the one that changes what a card can do. It is a 6-energy Body unit with Hidden, and when you play it, it gives a friendly unit +3 Might this turn and recycles itself if it was played from face down. The printed card could not target itself. The errata removes "another", so the Herd can now give itself the +3. That matters most when it is your only unit, which is exactly when a card that recycles itself tends to be played.

Last Caress is the opposite case. Moving "even from face down" out of brackets does not change its meaning. The likely reason is that, in Riftbound, text in brackets is usually reminder text that explains a rule and does not add one. Writing the clause without brackets makes it clear that it is part of the card's actual effect.

Forbidden Technique gains one word, "Then", and it is about order. The card can be played from the trash, and the old "Banish this." left room to argue about when the banish happened. "Then" puts it after the play. We have not catalogued the card yet, so there is no link here.

Neeko, three times over

When we wrote up Neeko, Blending In from the first photo of the card, the striking thing was that she breaks the one-Legend rule. If she is in your deck, you name extra Legends at deckbuilding. When you play her, one of them joins your Legend Zone for as long as she is on the board. The 9 October documents deal with her in three separate places.

1. The errata. "Choose 3 different legends" becomes "choose up to 3". The printed text read as an obligation, so a deck that included her had to commit three extra Legends whether it wanted them or not. Now three is a ceiling. Riot does not say why, beyond clarity, so we will not guess at the motive. The practical effect is that you can choose fewer than three.
2. The core rules. The patch notes add a section on "additional deckbuilding decisions", which explains how choices made while building a deck work, and say it starts with Neeko. A choice made before the game begins has never needed rules before, because no card asked for one.
3. The tournament rules. A new rule, 401.2.a, sets special deck registration requirements for cards with special deckbuilding rules, and names Neeko as the example. In practice, at an event that collects decklists, the Legends you choose for her go on the registration too.

The patch notes also list a ruling on Neeko that cites rules 103.1, 440.2.a, 440.3.b, 440.3.c and 355.10.g. If you plan to play her at a competitive event, that ruling is worth reading in full on Riot's page.

Deploy, Disarm and Show Off become rules

Preview Season showed all three new keywords on finished cards (see Radiance Preview Week 1). The patch notes now add them to the rules, and each one gets a definition that settles questions the reminder text left open.

• Deploy is a gear keyword. Deploy gear can be played to a battlefield that is friendly, uncontrolled or held by an enemy. It stays there unless it is destroyed, although some effects can move it. If an opponent holds a battlefield where you have Deploy gear, that gear is killed. Riot says the point is to let effects change one battlefield at a time. Pillaged Armory is one of the first Deploy cards. Our Deploy guide has the full list as it grows.
• Disarm is an attack trigger. The first time a unit with Disarm attacks in a combat, an enemy unit at that battlefield gets -1 Might this turn, or -2 for Disarm 2. If a unit has more than one Disarm, they combine into a single trigger that uses their total. More in our Disarm guide.
• Show Off has you reveal a matching card from your hand, or pick a friendly card or token on the board that meets the condition. Whatever the card reads from the shown-off object is locked in when you show it. So if Primordial Roar shows off a 5-Might unit, it deals 5 damage even if that unit's Might changes before the spell resolves. The patch notes include a ruling on Primordial Roar and shown-off units (832.1.d.1). See our Show Off guide.

The core rules changes that matter in play

Beyond the keywords, the patch notes list fourteen rules changes. Most only matter to judges, but these change how particular cards play:

• "Pick" no longer means "choose". From Radiance, choose means targeting and pick means a choice that does not target. Some Radiance cards already print "pick". This matters for anything that reacts to being targeted. A card that says pick does not set off those effects. Riot says the change prepares for the Legacy update in January.
• Making new choices. When an effect tells you to make new choices, you remake every decision. You can choose the same options again, but you cannot keep some old decisions and change others. Triggered abilities that care about targeting trigger again even if you choose the same target. This replaces a temporary model that the Vendetta FAQ had patched, and Riot says it was not happy with that model.
• Empower can stack past the old limit. An object with an Empower ability can now be Empowered more than once, ignoring the old "not already Empowered" restriction. Activating it at the maximum does nothing, and Riot says that is deliberate. The card behind this is Kayle, Justified, who reads "I can be Empowered up to three times" and needed an FAQ ruling in Vendetta.
• Ignored and negated instructions. If an instruction mistargets, it is ignored, and so is every instruction linked to it. If it fails for any other reason (replaced, skipped or impossible), it is negated, and the instructions after it still happen if they can. This writes a Vendetta FAQ fix into the rules, and it decides whether the second half of a card works when the first half fails.
• Pending items can't be targeted. Spells and abilities can no longer target a pending item. Riot cites rare cases involving Promising Future.
• Requirements and restrictions. How mandatory requirements combine (Riot cites Dragon Roost) is now in the rules, along with a new idea, the restriction. The example is Perched Grimwyrm's "play only to a battlefield you've conquered this turn".
• Units can't be attached. A unit cannot be attached to another object, and a non-unit that becomes a unit while attached falls off at once. The cause is Orianna, Lady of Clockwork, the Radiance Legend that turns a friendly gear into a unit with Might equal to its Energy cost. Three of the patch notes' rulings cover her: with attached Equipment, with Deploy gear, and with unit gear in your base.
• Copies get their own layer. Copy effects now come first in the order effects are applied, and making a copy is now a game action of its own. For example, the tokens Zilean, Time Mage makes with his replacement effect get their copyable traits as if those traits were printed on them. Traits added from outside, such as the Mech tag from Experimental Hexplate, are not copied.
• 2v2 scoring is consistent. The rules for the final point, and for which teams can score, now apply only to a team that controls a battlefield on its own turn or a teammate's, not on an opponent's. Riot says these rules contradicted each other before Vendetta. Radiance finishes aligning them.
• "You" during finalisation. If an instruction checks whether "you" did something, it now checks whether the action happened, not who did it, so a change of control afterwards does not undo it. Riot says players found control changes confusing with these cards.

The patch notes also have rulings for Chronobreak (the order of a chain), Transpositionist with Gangplank, Naval, Gutter Guardian with facedown cards, and Ekko with Unlicensed Armory. Riot's page cites the rule numbers for each.

The tournament rules changelog

The tournament changelog has 31 entries. Riot describes it as mostly fixing small mistakes and helping judges, which matches what is in it. These are the ones a player is most likely to notice:

Two of these are worth a note. The bluffing rule puts in writing what most players already assumed: you do not have to tell the truth about your hand. The notes rule makes the gap between games more useful, because you can check your sideboard plan against written notes until opening hands are drawn, as long as you stop then.

What this update does not do

It does not ban anything. The last changes to the ban list took effect on 18 September, and our ban list explainer has the current list. It does not change any card's power level, because Riot rules that out in the patch notes. It does not rotate any set out of Standard: the only Standard change is that Radiance joins.

Riot also says that a bigger rules rewrite is coming in January with Legacy. It will reformat the rules to make them easier to read, and Riot says it will not change how any mechanic works. A further FAQ article is planned after Radiance releases.

Before your Pre-Rift

If you are playing a Pre-Rift event between 16 and 22 October, three things are worth knowing before you sit down. Elnuk Herd can now buff itself. Neeko lets you choose fewer than three extra Legends. And a card that says "pick" does not target. Everything else on the list mostly matters if something unusual comes up and you have to call a judge.

For where to play and what a seat costs, our Radiance pre-order prices page lists Pre-Rift kits and events alongside the sealed product, by store and by market. Every Radiance card above has a card page that starts comparing store prices as listings appear.

Source: https://riftcompare.com/blog/riftbound-radiance-patch-notes-errata