I don’t know how Riot expects me to pony up the cash necessary for all these great skins. The company announced yesterday that Hillbilly Gragas, Emumu, and Deep One Kassadin are now available. We already knew about the Kassadin skin from the “community inspired skins” announcement, but those other two are just incredible. Emumu made me laugh out loud the instant I saw the splash screen.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Groovy Zilean has to be one of the coolest skins in game. I caught a game with a guy yesterday that had one. Great stuff.

Back on the road today so another quick post as we fight through rain outside Philly. This is some good news, though. Riot has seen fit to pick up three more community skins for official distribution.

This is the kind of thing I love about Riot. The developer could easily put an end to custom skins, or at least send them underground. Instead they embrace the artistic community around the game, throw some RP at the guys making the skins, and give us more choices in game.

As for the skins, you can now get Groovy Zilean, Deep One Kassadin, and Frosted Ezreal in the game store. Zilean is my favorite of the three, but I might have to wait for a sale before I pick him up.

Riot has posted the skins and bundles pack for the upcoming Vladimir patch, which usually means we’ll see it in the next day or two. Of course, I’m going out of town during a major patch again so my impressions of the actual gameplay may be a bit delayed.

His skins look surprisingly cool, though I think I like the clean, colonial looking getup the best. It also looks like he will be ranged, as many people have been wondering. Corki is also getting his one millionth skin in this patch. I don’t think Riot understands that more skins do not make people want to play a character more. In a way, it breeds a bit of animosity from Singed fans and the like – toons that only have one or two skins, basically.

Zilean also gets a new skin, epically themed for dropping his peace bombs on the heads of his enemies. Hopefully we’ll see patchnotes soon so I can cover the inevitable Xin Zhao nerf.