Udyr Reveal: The Spirit Walker Stands with Freljord

Udyr is the third champion coming to Legends of Runeterra in the Curious Journey expansion. He has a lot of board control potential and can bring raw stats to your team.

Watch him commune with primal spirits on his reveal video here.

Udyr’s design brings a strong potential to tailor the stats on your board to oppose most board states. Much like in League, he switches between four different animal stances which each have different effects for the ally unit you target. The design feels very similar to Aphelios, except with the stances being pumps rather than tempo cards.

Udyr, much like the warmother he fights alongside, Sejuani, requires you to damage the enemy Nexus to level up and generate more stances. The shells which feature Sejuani will benefit from the toolbox potential of Udyr. He levels up slower than Sejuani or Gangplank because he’s lower in mana costs.

Once leveled up, Udyr gains stats very reliably. Playing more stances allows him to consistently grow while buffing the other units on board and dealing damage to enemies.

Udyr’s Champ Spell is Spirits Unleashed. A sweeper that makes your team resistant to the pings is very powerful on a midrange board. As we saw in the preview video, The Scargrounds alongside Udyr will be a very powerful combination.

Longstanding League players may feel confused about Udyr’s new take. This champion will be given a big lore and flavour rework by Riot. This visual and gameplay update is something hat they’re still working on for League, but may be a little later than Runeterra.

The developers decided that the Legends of Runeterra Udyr is a happy medium between Udyr of old and new.

The warrior druid archetype is what they’ve decided to focus on in this version of the character, and it’s a flavour take I’m happy to see. We’ve seen shamanic characters in the Freljord’s key cards before, namely Rimetusk Shaman, Ursine Spiritwalker, and even Starlit Seer. The primal magic take fits perfectly for Udyr.

As well as that, Legends of Runeterra has characterised a lot of its spell cards with deep blue colour schemes. The borealis on Warmother’s Call, Frostbite effects like Flash Freeze and Shatter, and even pump spells like Take Heart and Fury of the North. As such, the developers chose to give the animal spirits a ghostly blue appearance.

Lastly, anyone familiar with Udyr’s old kit in League of Legends know that he uses Tiger Stance, not Wildclaw Stance. The developers renamed the power here to match with Alpha Wildclaw and the feral creatures on Pack Mentality; a kind of feral cat beast we’ve seen in the Freljord cards.

All these new design elements combine together to give us a well rounded look at Udyr, who has quickly and perfectly embodied what a Freljord warrior shaman should look like.

You can find Riot’s statement on Udyr’s upcoming VGU and how they handled it in Legends of Runeterra right here.

Udyr’s support cards largely help him to generate more stances. Ram Stance helps contribute to his level up very well. Cards like Hyara Allseer and Vulpine Wanderer bring more stances to help Udyr grow in power.

Shaman’s Call is a particularly powerful way to generate free stances in conjunction with powerful Freljord spells. Maybe a slower, controlling gameplan with Udyr is possible as well as the midrange or aggressive builds that can damage the enemy nexus easily.

With Galio and the other Formidable cards coming soon, the printing of Wrath of the Freljord is incredibly funny. An 8/8 for 8 with Overwhelm is already a good stat-line, just ask Captain Farron. Particularly small units being unable to block is better than Fearsome and works as copies 4-6 of Level 2 Ashe.

Udyr will arrive in game on February 16th, but you can find him and his support cards right now in the RuneterraCCG deck builder. Stay tuned to the ongoing preview season and upcoming Udyr theorycraft article right here on RuneterraCCG.