For six years, buying a rifle in Valorant meant answering one question: Phantom or Vandal? Silenced spray or headshot one-tap? That’s it. That’s been the entire conversation since the game launched.
On September 22, Riot is ending that duopoly.
Meet the Warden
The Warden is Valorant’s new 2,900-credit automatic rifle — the exact same price tier as the Phantom and Vandal — and it’s built around one gimmick that neither of those guns has ever had: a built-in 2x scope.
That single feature changes everything about how this weapon plays.
The Stats That Matter
Here’s the full breakdown:
- Price: 2,900 credits (same as Phantom/Vandal)
- Fire mode: Fully automatic
- Scope: 2x magnification (a first for any Valorant rifle)
- Damage: A flat 50 body damage at every range — no falloff, ever
- Headshot damage: 200, meaning it can one-tap just like a Vandal
- Magazine: Only 18 rounds
- Fire rate: Slower than the Vandal and Phantom
Translation: this gun doesn’t want you spraying across the map. It wants you posted up, scoped in, holding an angle, and punishing anyone who peeks — with zero penalty for distance.
Why This Actually Matters
Think about the guns that currently live in that “long range but not quite a sniper” space — the Guardian, the Marshal, the Outlaw. They’re all capable at range, but none of them are fully automatic, so they’ve always played second fiddle to the Phantom and Vandal in competitive.
The Warden fixes that. It’s the first weapon that gives you Operator-adjacent range consistency and rifle-level flexibility in the same package. Riot is essentially building a bridge between “cheap long-range specialist” and “expensive sniper,” and pricing it exactly where you’d have to choose it over your go-to rifle, not just add it on top.
If you’ve ever played CS2, this might sound familiar — it’s giving serious SG 553 energy. A rifle that rewards sitting on one angle instead of rotating aggressively, in exchange for giving up some flexibility. Valorant just didn’t have anything like that until now.
The Elephant in the Room: Is It Actually Good?
Here’s the tension worth watching. At 2,900 credits — full rifle price — the Warden isn’t a budget pick that shakes up economy rounds. It’s a direct competitor to two guns that have defined the meta since day one. That means it lives or dies on one question: will an 18-round mag and a slower fire rate be worth trading away for a scope and flat damage?
For anyone who mains passive, angle-holding positions — Sentinels watching a flank, Controllers locking down a site — this could be exactly the upgrade they didn’t know they needed. For anyone who plays aggressive entry, that smaller magazine and slower spray might feel like a genuine downgrade.
It’ll take Champions-level play and a few weeks of ranked to know whether the Warden becomes a real third option or a shelf pick that gets outclassed the moment the honeymoon phase ends.
When You Can Try It
The Warden drops September 22 with Patch 13.06, alongside a new experimental mode called Gauntlet: Glitched and a new Agent Mastery system.
Six years of “Phantom or Vandal.” That ends today.