Our Thoughts on Riven’s Reveal Package (Legends of Runeterra)
She’s finally here! Riven is officially the third and last champion of the Cosmic Creation expansion of Legends of Runeterra.
In this guide, our Glimpse Beyond experts, Rattlingbones and Precipic, will breakdown Riven, her potential deck archetypes, and the other cards that were revealed today.
She involves the new Reforge keyword, so be sure to check out our previous article on the Reforge cards reveal if you missed out on that.
Here are the cards we’ll be covering:
- Riven (champion)
- Riven’s Weapon Hilt (spell)
- Sharpened Resolve (spell)
- Survival Skills (spell)
For more expert analysis, don’t miss out on Swim‘s video below!
Riven
- Riven level 1
- 3 mana 3|4 Champion (level 1)
- Text – When you gain the attack token, Reforge. Level up: I see Blade of the Exile in your hand
- Riven level 2
- 3 mana 4|5 Champion (level 2)
- Text – When you gain the attack, Reforge. When my Power is increased for the first time each round, increase it by twice as much.
Riven is a super powerful card and is one of the most flexible champions that we have ever gotten in this game.
The card can effectively be run in aggro decks, combo decks, and midrange decks as a powerful tempo too that also generates value over time.
This might be dumb, but the most notable thing about Riven is that she is a 3 mana 3|4, this trades up on tempo with basically every play up to this point.
Riven is so flexible that I think I will just go through the various archetypes that she fits into:
- Riven Darius
- This would be an aggressive Overwhelm deck where you would be using Riven to push through some early damage and help create some tools that make your Overwhelm units even more difficult to deal with.
- Beyond this, a flipped Riven with Battle Fury and Overwhelm is basically always lethal.
- Riven Miss Fortune
- This would be a fairly aggressive burn deck that utilized the combo of either Miss Fortune into Island Navigator or Riven into Island Navigator to create a pretty sick amount of value.
- The biggest thing Riven provides for this deck is that she’s another power 3 drop in a deck that doesn’t really have great 3 mana plays.
- Draven Riven/Ezreal Riven
- This is a spin on the Ezreal Noxus deck that would utilize Riven’s spells as discard fodder for cards like Rummage and Sump Dredger.
- Riven fits incredibly well into this deck because she is a proactive 3 drop that works with Tri-Beam Improbulator.
- It is very possible that you run 2 copies of each champion just because that means you never are forced into their champion spell and each is fairly similar in value.
- Riven Lee Sin
- This is the coolest combo concept. Riven gives Lee Sin both spells he needs to flip and Overwhelm so that he can one-shot the opponent.
- This would be a pretty combo-focused deck that could even play cards like Shiraza the Blade for silly one turn kills
- Quinn Riven
- This is another fairly aggressive deck looking to abuse the Scout keyword with Riven.
- You are very likely to get a quick full Reforge off in this deck and when paired with cards like Genevive or Quinn whose effect is incredibly hard to deal with because your cards are both killing off their unit and dealing an absurd amount of damage.
- Riven Vi
- Similar to the Lee Sin concept: Giving Vi access to Overwhelm can let her push through a kinda insane amount of damage.
- This concept also has the ability to discard the Riven spells to cards like Sump Dredger and Rummage to give the deck more consistency
- Ashe Riven
- The biggest reason this could be sweet is because Trifarian Gloryseeker plus the various Riven Spells gives you a ton of value and Riven can easily be put up to 5 power for Trifarian Assessor.
- It is also notable that giving the giant bodies in an Ashe deck Overwhelm and/or Quick Attack is pretty powerful.
- Viktor Riven
- This is mostly that Riven creates a kinda nuts amount of Augment fodder for Viktor which can allow him to both level and then Viktor can then make all of the Riven spells cheaper after she levels.
Overall, I am super hyped to see what decks people come up with playing Riven.
Weapon Hilt
- Riven’s Weapon Hilt
- 2 mana, Burst spell
- Text – Give an ally +2|+0 this round. Reforge. Shuffle a Riven into your deck.
It’s actually kind of hard to evaluate Weapon Hilt.
Naturally, giving a unit +2 for 2 mana is quite underwhelming. It’s just that we can’t look at Weapon Hilt as a 2 mana cost card.
In reality, what we’re evaluating is this – for 3 mana, give an Ally +2 attack and apply one of the following effects to the same or another ally for the turn:
- +2 attack for the turn
- Overwhelm for the turn
- Quick Attack for the turn
Breaking this down further:
- Brother’s Bond costs 2 mana and it gives 2 units +2 permanently
- Might gives a unit +3 + Overwhelm for the turn
- Rush gives a unit +1 and Quick Attack for the turn
These cards are cheaper versions of Weapon Hilt + the Fragment and yet none are utilized in competitive play.
The only key difference here is that the Fragments generated from the Reforge will ultimately work towards creating Blade of the Exile.
Only time will tell how good it’ll be :).
Sharpened Resolve
- Sharpened Resolve
- 3 mana, Burst spell
- text – Give an ally +3|+2 this round
I think we can all agree that cards like Fury of North and Sharp Sight are insane (So good in fact that Fury got nerfed once before).
Being able to push 3 extra damage while saving a unit from a removal spell is often a game-defining moment. Make no mistake, despite the smaller boost to health, this card is crazy good and will see a lot of play.
Survival Skill
- Survival Skills
- 5 mana, Slow spell
- Text – Allies can’t drop below 1 health this round. When discarded, your Strongest ally can’t drop below 1 health this round
Survival Skills is a really interesting card.
The Slow effect is cool in theory but less likely to be utilized. The discard effect however is just crazy. I mean think about it, in many situations, it’ll just be a cheaper Deny/Nopeify; assuming you have Rummage or Draven’s Axe.
It totally depends on the regions you’re facing of course but if it’s not SI, you’re very likely to get a massive blowout.
Also on turn 3, you have the blowout of going Draven block and then discard this to Spinning Axe and create a free block on cards like Zed or Miss Fortune.
Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out for the rest of our analysis as more cards come out and be sure to revisit our previous impressions for the set.
Bones streams at twitch.tv/rattlingbones_ every weeknight @9PM EST
