Legend of the Poro King Game Mode Coming Soon!

A few hours ago, Riot announced this year's new game mode on for Snowdown, which shall be known as...

"LEGEND OF THE PORO KING"

Here's L4T3NCY with the scoop:

"This year’s Snowdown brings with it our next featured game mode… and a legend. The “Legend of the Poro King”. We’ve dramatically changed what fights on the Howling Abyss will look like, so let’s get straight into the rules: 

Played on the Howling Abyss, Legend of the Poro King is a 5v5 Blind Draft game mode, where your goal is still to destroy the enemy team’s nexus. However, you’ll have some Poro companions with you (to throw at each other of course), be diving deep to make #bigplays and work together to summon some help from the legendary Poro King himself.

New summoner spells 

When playing the Legend of the Poro King, your regular summoner spells are replaced with two new ones, made just for the mode:

1) Poro Toss / Poro Dash: 
Throw a Poro a long distance, dealing true damage to the first enemy unit hit. This ability can be recast for 3 seconds after it hits an enemy to cast Poro Dash, which will dash your champion to the target hit. Dashing to the target will reduce the cooldown of Poro Toss by 5 seconds.

2) To the King!: 
Passive: Hitting an enemy champion with a Poro gives your team a Poro Mark. Upon reaching 10 Poro Marks, your team summons the Poro King to fight alongside them. While the Poro King is active, no Poro Marks can be scored by either team.

Active: Quickly dash to the Poro King’s side. Can only be cast when the Poro King is summoned for your team.

The Poro King 
The Poro King is benevolent and will aid whichever team has summoned him. He can be dispelled, but only to return again when enough favour has been curried with him. As a tanky siege minion, he brings an impressive power boost to whichever team he’s aiding.

His powers include:

• Tanky siege minion with a LOT of health. Let him be your front line!
• The Poro King absorbs all Poros within his range being thrown by the enemy team, making him a powerful pushing force.
• The Poro King will heal nearby allied champions every 5 seconds for health and a smaller amount of mana based on the team’s average level.
• Every 5 seconds, the Poro King will lob out Poros in an arc around him, dealing magic damage to enemies where they land.

Known issues:

• Play flow art placeholder. Coming soon.
• Loading screen art placeholder. Coming soon.
• Some VO still missing from the poros. 

Also, for fans wondering where Showdown is this year, never fear. We’re looking to make some tweaks to that one and hopefully bring it back at some point as a smoother experience than it was the first time around. We wanted to try something new and light-hearted this year and can’t wait to see what you guys can pull off with the Poro King. Your collective mechanics are waaaaay better than anything we can manage in our playtests, so we’re looking forward to it. The dives.. oh the dives...
See you guys on the Abyss. o^_^O"