My Process for the Legends of Runeterra Custom Card Set

Legends of Runeterra(LoR) is a digital card game that features 10 unique regions, each region having its own set of cards and keywords that defines its identity. Players can choose two regions to combine and draft their deck from. In this custom set, I created two new champions and their support cards, totaling 25 new cards, plus a new keyword.

If you would like to see the portfolio piece with the final imagery, click here.

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Theme: In the LoL universe, both Sona and Seraphine are talented musicians who wish to bring peace through their muse. With this in mind, I wanted to create a keyword that revolved around taking away enemy units, disarming them, and turning them into allies. Issues with this is LoR does not go in on the stealing mechanic much outside of one champion card, Viego. It's a very strong mechanic, so it needs careful implementation. I took major inspiration from Hearthstone as they include this mechanic more than LoR, and they had some interesting drawbacks to it.

Once I settled on my theme and, I wanted to do extensive research in a few areas:

1. The archetype I was planning to make, stealing enemy units. Looked at how LoR handles it and how other card games handle the mechanic, notably Hearthstone.

2. Other successful custom card sets, acclaimed by the community or high level content creators in the game.

3. Cards I got influence from in LoR and others.

Hearthstone adds lots of drawbacks to the stealing mechanic, either including ways to give the stolen unit back, only having control for one turn, or putting a limit on how strong of a unit you can take These are good ways to put restrictions on individual cards, but making putting this mechanic on a keyword means it will be applied to cards, so the restrictions have to be in the keyword.

Keyword Process:

In each iteration, I knew I wanted the stolen units to be "immobile," meaning they can't attack or block, they essentially lay down arms. A major change from first iterations to the final is making Encourage only target enemy followers, not enemy champions, giving the keyword a necessary drawback as it would provide way too much value otherwise.

Encouraged units have heavy drawbacks of taking up space on your board and not serving much of a purpose, so who you choose to encourage is important. This also limits the use of this keyword outside of its intended archetype which is important with an incredibly strong mechanic like stealing. Another essential part of Encourage is units only stay on your side of the board for one turn. The full strength of Encourage will come from its accompanying cards to make a deck out of it, which brings me to Seraphine.

Seraphine is the star of the show and she is the main supporter of Encourage. I failed to represent this in my first iteration as she was only a Unify producer, which gave way too easy and frequent access to removal. After many more iterations and settling on what is currently final, it began to fit Seraphine more. She is the star of the show, so lore and flavor wise it makes sense that her stage presence would keep encouraged allies on her side of the board.

Balance wise, opponents have to worry about losing units to encourage for more than a turn, but there are a lot less options for Seraphine to encourage and they are much weaker than Unify(which will be seen later). The aura Seraphine brings puts more of a target on her back, which she should be as a champion. Killing her means returning encouraged units to their original board so opponents will have a clear way to stop her. Champions are already the target in LoR as they are the headliners to a player's deck, so this gameplay is something opponents should already be prepared to do against any deck.

Encourage Cards:

I only included four Encourage cards that can be added to decks(Crescendo is created by Sona's level-up) and only two of them are in Seraphine's region. This means Seraphine will be quite tied to Sona, or at least Sona's support cards. I didn't want Seraphine to have consistent access to encouraging enemies, and while there are still a good amount of options, the most encourage cards a player can include in their 40 card deck is 12(3 copies of each) which should result in less reliable access to Encourage.

Sona:

Since Seraphine was the Encourage archetype, I not only wanted Sona to support it but also be the more versatile champion in the set, and because she wasn't as attached to the powerful Encourage keyword as much. To start off, Sona is dual region because in her story she is from Ionia but was adopted by a Demacian family, Lady Lestara, after her home was destroyed. Gameplay wise, this is also befitting because Sona's effect "... the first time you remove an enemy... without it being slain or obliterated..." can only be done with Ionia and Demacia cards(Recall & Capture cards) plus the new Encourage keyword. With this effect she is a great pair to Seraphine but also a strong support for many champions already existing in the game who could use more help: Tahm Kench, Yasuo, Soraka, even Taric.

Lastly are the cards I didn't touch on yet, mostly because they were more refined as I created them near the end once the main idea had already been formed in Sona & Seraphine. All of these are support cards backing up their archetype. The top row are all Seraphine support cards. I find Uninvited Guest to be the most interesting as it can be used to counter and support encourage decks. As a counter, it's pretty simple, if an enemy Seraphine is getting too much value from her encouraged allies this is a strong stated unit that swiftly takes one out. As a support card, it can be used to obliterate a strong Encouraged ally that you don't want to risk your opponent getting back, or it can be used to free up some board space from overcrowding encouraged allies.

For the Sona support cards, in the same reign I wanted Sona to be versatile, so too did I want her support cards. Mageseeker Executioner could be a standard Demacian unit, completely separate from Sona, due to his synergy with other Demacian capture cards. He synergizes with other Demacian capture cards due to his effect. For similar reasons, he is strong with Tahm Kench as well due to the capture synergy. Galrin Monk, while needing an allied Sona, helps support the Sona/Yasuo pairing giving access to a low cost recall which can be used on anything.

The other cards like Bashful Melomaniac, Enraged Rocker, and Morendo are all supporting cards to encourage and give a lot more purpose to having encouraged allies on your side of the board. With Seraphine being 3 mana, there is a strong curve for her deck, and a dream scenario of playing them in a row would be quite powerful and fulfilling.

And that's it! There is my thought process behind the cards I created for this Sona & Seraphine LoR custom card set! A major part of this entire project has been feedback and I thank the Legends of Runeterra custom card community for their incredibly useful insight throughout this process! If you have any thoughts or questions please don't shy away from commenting, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!