Orianna Riftbound Legend Guide | Hextech Analytics

Orianna’s Field Guide

Orianna's Legend is a trigger, not an Action or Reaction: it acts as your Main Phase starts, and only on a gear you already control. Your Rune Pool empties just before it, so its one Energy usually comes from a rune you would otherwise spend that turn. A gear played during the turn cannot become a unit until your next Main Phase, so an opening without gear gets nothing from the Legend. The chosen gear stays a unit, with Might equal to its Energy cost, until you choose another. The mistake is choosing an Equipment that is helping one of your units: it detaches as it becomes a unit, and its Equipment text stops working. That unit loses whatever the Equipment gave it.

How Orianna wins

Orianna scores by turning gear into fighters as your Main Phase begins. Gear readies in your Awaken Phase, so the chosen gear is usually ready to make a standard move that turn. Exquisite is the cheaper way to defend a battlefield where a friendly gear sits, while Mechanical Marvel makes the next gear cheaper once she stands at a battlefield. Becoming a unit does not move the gear, so one in base still exhausts for its standard move to a battlefield. Near the finish, pay for a new choice only when the new unit can score a point the old one cannot.

Key interactions

Deploy The Ball a turn before you need it

The Ball · Lady of Clockwork

The Ball costs five Energy and one Power, must be played to a battlefield, and can deal 2 to each enemy unit there on arrival. Your Legend can make it a 5-Might unit at your next Main Phase, and if you do not control that battlefield then, The Ball contests it: an empty battlefield can become a conquest after the showdown, and an occupied one becomes a combat. If an opponent holds there in their Beginning Phase, Deploy kills The Ball before your next Main Phase. Place it where the opponent has no units, or where dealing 2 kills all of theirs, so they have nothing to hold.

A new choice switches off the old gear

Lady of Clockwork

The Legend's effect lasts until you choose another gear with her, so later payments are optional. Choosing a new gear turns the old one back into a plain gear, and briefly neither is a unit. Suppose a two-Energy gear became a 2-Might unit and is now your only unit at a battlefield. Switching to a gear somewhere else leaves you no units there, so you lose control of it in the next cleanup, and the old gear is recalled to base unless it has Deploy. Before you pay, ask what the current unit gear is protecting and whether the new one takes over that job.

Keep a friendly gear where Exquisite fights

Orianna, Exquisite · The Ball

Exquisite has 4 Might, or 5 while defending through Shield, but she deals no combat damage unless a friendly gear is at her battlefield. Any of your gear there counts, including a plain Deploy gear, a unit gear, or an Equipment attached to her, which shares her location. A gear removed before combat damage leaves her dealing none. Moving The Ball away with Ganking has the same effect: Exquisite can still defend as a 5-Might unit and keep the battlefield if she survives, but she cannot damage the attackers. Before you move The Ball, weigh its draw or 2 damage at the new battlefield against Exquisite's combat damage.

Strengths

Any friendly gear on the board can become a unit, and the one you choose stays a unit across turns without another payment.
Once The Ball is a unit, Ganking lets its standard move go straight from one battlefield to another, instead of only between base and a battlefield.
A Deploy gear chosen at a battlefield you do not control contests it as your Main Phase begins, setting up a possible conquest for one Energy.

Weaknesses

Each Legend choice costs one Energy, so changing unit gear every turn can leave too little to develop units or hold up a spell.
A unit gear is both a unit and a gear, so effects that kill either one can remove it, and replacing it takes another gear and another payment.
Mechanical Marvel's discount works only while she is at a battlefield, so losing her there or pulling her back to base leaves the next gear at full cost.