Riftbound Evelynn vs Seraphine: Which Showdown Deck to Play

Both decks follow the standard Riftbound shape: a Legend, a 40-card main deck, a 12-card rune deck and three Battlefields, which is how 56 cards fit in each. Radiance launches worldwide on October 23, 2026, and Riot printed both full lists on that page. New to the game? Our Riftbound how-to-play guide covers the turn before you shuffle up.

Riftbound Evelynn vs Seraphine: the pick for each player

• You want to win your first games: Evelynn. Her deck is cheap to cast, and 13 of its cards carry Hidden, the keyword her Legend feeds on.
• You like going wide and finishing with one big turn: Seraphine. She makes tokens, exhausts them for value and tops out with Supernova.
• You're buying for two new players: the box itself. It's built so the two decks play each other, with playmats and a rulebook included.
• You want one deck to keep upgrading: Evelynn again. Her Legend starts drawing by the second turn; Seraphine players at Pre-Rift events mostly benched theirs.

Riftbound Evelynn vs Seraphine decklists side by side

Counts below are from Riot's lists. Energy costs come from the card pages, and the averages are our math over the 40-card main deck (champion units included).

The gap in the curve is the whole story. Evelynn's deck plays something useful nearly every turn. Seraphine's spends its early turns setting up, then asks to cast a 7- or 9-cost card.

Seraphine: a go-wide deck whose Legend asks a lot

Starry-Eyed Songstress reads: "As an additional cost to play a spell, you may exhaust me and three friendly units to reduce the cost of that spell by" 2 Energy. Four exhausted bodies to save two Energy is a steep rate, and the deck spends a lot of cards to pay it. Concert Poster, Faithful Manufactor, Industrious Mechsmith, Hunting Dog, Rousing Display and Encore all make tokens. Seraphine, Not Alone makes a Recruit when she's played or exhausted and grows for every other exhausted unit you control.

Exhausting is the theme, not only the Legend's cost. Seraphine, Inspiring draws a card when you exhaust three or more friendly units at the same time. Party Crasher costs 9 but gets cheaper for each exhausted unit you control. High Note shrinks an enemy by the number of your exhausted units. At the top, Supernova deals 10 and draws 2, and Raucous Anthem readies your whole team with +3 Might. Meticulous Restorationist comes back from the trash whenever you play one of those 7-plus cards.

Image credit: Riot Games, official Riftbound card gallery (RAD-138, RAD-065, RAD-116, RAD-152).

Pre-Rift weekend gave a first read on her, with one caveat: those were sealed events where players built decks from a seeded Seraphine pack plus boosters, not this precon. The verdict there was blunt. After five Pre-Rifts, u/TritononGaming summed it up: "Major swap off the Sera package... the legend is real bad so just pretend it doesn't exist." The champion units fared better. u/VictoryRecent6864 wrote "I had both blue seraphines out in a few games and drew a ton of cards from them by swinging in with tokens", then took the Legend out after round one.

The Showdown deck has more token makers than any sealed pool, so the Legend will fire more often here. It still costs four exhausted units each time it does.

Evelynn: thirteen Hidden cards feed one Legend

Hidden works like this in the Core Rules: you pay one Power of any Domain to hide the card facedown at a battlefield you control, and "Beginning on the next turn, this gains [Reaction] and you may play this, ignoring its base cost." Agony's Embrace then pays you for it: "Once each turn, when you play a card from face down, draw 1. Then, if it's not your turn, discard 1."

The deck has 13 Hidden cards: two Evelynn, Entrancing, plus Gutter Guardian, Elnuk Herd, Momentary Companion, Pakaa Cub, The Waters' Wage and Demon Shade. With Evelynn, Consuming set aside as your Chosen Champion, about four in five opening hands hold at least one. The rest of the deck turns those plays into more than a card:

• Evelynn, Consuming has Ambush and readies with +1 Might whenever you play a card from face down.
• Evelynn, In Control scores a point when she holds a battlefield where you have a facedown card.
• The Waters' Wage makes one Gold token normally, but three ready Gold tokens if you play it from face down on your turn.
• Bushwhack Trap and Bandle Tree let you hide a second card at a battlefield, and Black Market Broker makes Gold every time you flip one.

Image credit: Riot Games, official Riftbound card gallery (RAD-090, UNL-141, RAD-100, RAD-154).

Last Caress, her Signature spell, lets the next unit you play go to any battlefield, "even from face down," with a buff. That wording comes from Riot's errata of October 9, so read it as the current text if your printed copy differs. At a Pre-Rift, u/adiwam had his Mordekaiser deck "wrecked by an Evelynn deck". One game proves little, but it fits what the card text promises.

GG Haven's beginner guide walks through how the deck plays its facedown cards:

The cost is attention. A hidden card needs a battlefield you control and a spare Power now, and it can't be played until next turn. New players will forget a facedown card or hide one at a battlefield they're about to lose. That's a learning curve, not a weakness, but it's the reason some groups hand Evelynn to the more experienced player.

When Seraphine wins instead

Seraphine has the bigger late game. Evelynn's deck has two cards at 7 Energy or more (both Wrath of the Freljord). Seraphine's has eight, including two Supernova and Moonlight Affliction, which gives a unit -10 Might at Reaction speed. If a game drags, those are the cards that end it. She's also the easier deck to read across the table. It has no facedown cards, so two beginners can learn the core rules before they learn to bluff.

If you want to see how all nine Radiance Legends compare, our Radiance Legends list has the full card text for both Legends and their champions.

Is the Showdown box worth it?

The Riot Store lists the box at $34.99 for two 56-card preconstructed decks, two paper playmats, two booster packs, and a rulebook. Before release it was trading about seven dollars above that on TCGplayer. On the same page, the four priciest singles inside (Last Caress, Seraphine Not Alone, Evelynn Consuming and the Songstress Legend) list for about the box's retail price on their own. Presale card prices move fast in launch week, so treat that as a sign the box isn't overpriced, not as a resale plan. For what the booster slots can pull, see our Radiance chase cards price guide.

Our take

Play Evelynn first. Her Legend gets going in the early turns, her curve is low, and her champions all reward the same thing. Seraphine is the second deck in the box, not a bad one, and she's more fun the bigger your board gets. Give her a few games with the Legend, then try her champions without leaning on it, the way Pre-Rift players did. If you're picking one Radiance deck to build toward, Evelynn's plan has more to grow into.

How we checked this: on October 22, 2026 we counted both lists from Riot's Radiance overview, took Energy costs and current card text from riftbound.org's card pages (checked against Riot's card gallery), computed the opening-hand odds from the Core Rules' four-card draw, and read the Pre-Rift threads on r/Riftbound. Prices are presale figures from the Riot Store and TCGplayer.