The wait for the next expansion to Legends of Runeterra is over. Just a couple more weeks till Riot launches the new expansion with more card teases (the same as when Rising Tides cards were slowly being introduced) expected to come starting tomorrow.

You can take a look at the teaser trailer below:

While Riot isn’t confirming any new cards or gameplay mechanics today, a snippet from the press release shows us of things to come from the expansion.

“On this towering mountain, cosmic beings lend their might to mortals. Astral dragons soar beyond the sky. Tribes of the faithful devote themselves to the sun, moon, and stars.”

Riot Press Release

It looks to me that the new region might be focusing on a buff mechanic for followers, perhaps some sort of ‘stance’ mechanic where certain followers will be able to switch the type of buff that they can get per turn.

Though that’s enough speculation for now.

Detailed in this release are a few changes towards how they’ll aim to release new regions starting from Targon.

Release schedule

As many players knew, when the first expansion was released, there was a gulf of empty content for months on end as the expansion is released all at once without anything new added beyond the time period. Riot is set to address that by adding more content to this particular expansion but at a cadence.

In the new formula detailed in the graphic, Riot is setting out to release “mini-expansions” called sets throughout the months that will share the same set as the overarching expansion.

“The first expansion in a set will be larger (for Call of the Mountain, you’re looking at 89 collectible cards with 7 champions), containing all the cards needed to introduce the new region’s major themes and multiple viable decks featuring that region.

The second and third expansions will each be about half that size (for CotM, that’s 40 cards with 3 champs in both the October and December expansions). These expansions will have a mix of new themes, new mechanics, and evolutions of strategies you encountered in the first expansion.”

Riot Press Release

Or as the PR guys put it:

“Another decision the design team had considered since very early in the game’s development was—you guessed it—more overall card releases. One of the simplest (and exciting) ways to shake up a meta is to just add more cards, more frequently; but that comes with a cascade of additional design decisions and tradeoffs.”

Riot Press Release

The trade-off is that many regions won’t be ‘balanced’ in the number of cards and champions in the repertoire; at least till the end of each expansion, the last of which is scheduled to be in the game come December.

Conclusion

I think this is certainly a much better way to do things; at least in terms of introducing new cards. Personally, I found the 10 or so cards for the previous existing regions to be quite paltry in terms of content and didn’t really change the existing card architypes.

More card releases are definitely needed and I’m glad that they realized that quickly after the game’s official launch.

The first part of the expansion set is set to come out on the end of the month on the 26th of August.

Chia is the horse-author from the far flung year of 2153. While not grazing on grass pastures or reviewing old time-y games and technology from the early 21st century pretending to not know what comes next (as to not disturb the space-time continuum), he can be seen exchanging vast quantities of Earth currency for parts needed to fix his damaged space ship.