League of Legends dates back to a decade ago, and while tons of new champions were added since, many projects have been scraped and never saw the light of day.
In a Reddit thread, a user shared a paper sheet of all 40 champions who were supposed to release with the game a decade ago. Some of them saw their concept slightly change before release, while others simply were canceled.
This was the case for Tabu, designed as a “Voodoo shaman”. On the shared paper sheet, he’s shown with a voodoo scepter with a giant skull, a red hat, and a tribal outfit.
This champion was canceled before release, and his abilities later became Yorick’s. He was supposed to be an aggressive support, who could apply debuffs to opponents and deal over-time damage while regenerating HP when linked to them.
Players commented they were interested in his “voodoo” concept. Even though his abilities were used for Yorick’s creation later, the character’s design is very different from Tabu’s.
“If he was an anti-AP reflect-damage drain tank (sort of like anti-magic Rammus with more healing than innate resistances), that could be an interesting counter to machine gun mages,” wrote a user in the highest-voted comment.
Champions who apply specific debuffs are rare in the game because they’re hard to balance. That said, an AP-countering version of Rammus would be interesting to see, especially if the champion is designed as a support.
Ideas of playstyles involving ideas of Tabu’s initial project have been resurfacing for years within the community, but it’s also a dividing question.
“Debuffs (or ‘curses’) take out from the game and having a champion purely about curses would make him either OP or useless,” wrote a previous thread’s top-voted comment on the matter. It’s unclear if Riot staff considered this another go afterward, but it’d certainly be an ambitious project for League.
Meanwhile, Milio is League‘s upcoming champion, and a Darkin assassin will be next in line.
