How Riot will finally add Rammus, TFT’s white whale, in a future set

There are now 159 champions in League of Legends with the introduction of Renata Glasc. 158 of them have been ported into Teamfight Tactics. The lone armadillo Rammus has been TFT’s white whale, but Riot have big plans to finally add him in a future set.

There is a huge roster of champions in League of Legends that TFT developers have the luxury of tapping into. On top of that, there’s (nearly) endless opportunities and fantasies Riot can realize by morphing champion kits into (almost) anything with the technology at their fingertips. As far as debuts go, Neon Nights was the best players could ask for. Five new champions were added in Alistar, Corki, the newly-released Zeri and Renata Glasc, as well as Arcane antagonist Silco, who doesn’t even feature in League of Legends. It brought the total of champion appearances in TFT to 158 (159 with Silco), and cut the list of champions missing to just one: Rammus. The Armordillo hasn’t featured in any TFT Set, with his long-awaited debut becoming a meme in the community. It wasn’t meant to be this way. However, with the white whale still eluding Riot heading into TFT Set 7, the developers are planning to give Rammus the “ok” debut he deserves ⁠— when the time is right.

Rammus was almost in TFT Set 6 ⁠— almost

Developer Lynda Tang said in an interview that Rammus was originally in both Set 6 and the Neon Nights Mid-Set update. The armadillo was going to finally have his time in the spotlight, although not as a purchasable unit. “In the beginning, way back when we were starting on Set 6, we were like ‘Innovator would summon these things,’” she explained. “The first Innovator 3 summon was a Rammus instead of a Scarab, but we didn’t want Rammus’ first appearance in TFT to be a summoned unit.”

• Read More: TFT’s Hextech Augments stay in Set 7, but Riot won’t commit to long-term future

That Innovator Scarab was “kind of sus”, in Tang’s words, and ultimately was Rammus’ bogeyman across all of Gizmos & Gadgets. Riot knew he had to appear in TFT soon. Developer Stephen ‘Mortdog’ Mortimer himself claimed “I was pushing so hard for Rammus to get into this Set.” They exhausted a bunch of options. However, no matter what way they spun it, they couldn’t get over the fact Rammus was essentially in the set. Just not in name.

“Fast forward to Set 6.5 where we have Alistar and Corki in, and we were like ‘we’ve got to put Rammus in,’” Tang continued. “We originally had Rammus in as a one-cost but then we looked at Hextech and we looked at him, and a lot of the things that came from Rammus was like the Innovator Scarab. We tried a lot of different spells to make him not feel like that, but we were like ‘what’s up with these Rammus spells? I want him to deal damage back, I want him to taunt people.’” “Rammus was going to be a Hextech Bruiser and he was going to be fairly tanky. You’d also have Nocturne, Sejuani, Swain, but they didn’t really have a lot of damage. That’s why we pivoted from him to Jarvan IV.”

When will Rammus debut in TFT?

While the Armordillo rolled into the sunset without a debut in Neon Nights, Riot learned a lot about what fantasies they wanted Rammus to fulfil ⁠and setting the launchpad up for his debut eventually.

As for exact timings, Rammus’ TFT debut is a heavily-guarded secret. All you can really juice out of him in-game anyways is a simple “ok”, and Riot were equally as tight-lipped. That being said, they are confident they’ve landed on the best way to honor him and give him the debut he deserves.

• Read More: Riot continues Arcane’s storyline with Jinx and Vi swap in TFT Set 6.5

“Rammus will be coming along in a future Set and I think we had a good rolling ball idea with Rammus but due to scope concerns we decided to leave him out until we could treat him properly as a TFT character,” Tang concluded. Have faith that the developers haven’t forgotten about the armadillo. However, his debut might still be some time away yet.