Combo · ENGINE
818.5.a is the only reason any unit in the pool is ever EQUIPPED - 718.2 silences the attached gear's [Equip] and 818.3.c defines the state by it, so without that one sentence all four reader cards are blank letters
Pieces
- Azir, Ascendant ×3
SFD-050 · payoff · calm
1 Calm Power: [Action] — Choose a unit you control. Move me to its location and it to my original location. If it's equipped, you may attach one of its Equipment to me. Use only once per turn.
- Sterak's Gage ×3
SFD-056 · enabler · calm
[Quick-Draw] (This has [Reaction]. When you play it, attach it to a unit you control.) [Equip] 1 Calm Power (1 Calm Power: Attach this to a unit you control.)
Payoff
Deck
- Both cards are mono-Calm (checked against data/cards.json), so 103.1.b.3 admits them under any legend with Calm among its two domains. Measured over data/cards.json those are sixteen names: Nine-Tailed Fox (OGN-255 / OGN-303), Blind Monk (OGN-257 / OGN-304), Unforgiven (OGN-259 / OGN-305), Radiant Dawn (OGN-261 / OGN-306), Fire Below the Mountain (SFD-189 / SFD-244), Grandmaster at Arms (SFD-193 / SFD-245), Blade Dancer (SFD-195 / SFD-246), Emperor of the Sands (SFD-197 / SFD-247), Bashful Bloom (UNL-189 / UNL-230), Wuju Master (UNL-191 / UNL-231), Gloomist (UNL-193 / UNL-232), Green Father (UNL-195 / UNL-233), Rogue Assassin (VEN-139 / VEN-189), Curator of the Sands (VEN-145 / VEN-192), Eye of Twilight (VEN-147 / VEN-193), and the Calm/Body Starter legend, which is restricted in 2v2 only (data/legality.json carries exactly one non-banned row and that is it).
- Neither card is a Signature card (data/cards.json, signature=false on both), so 103.2.d.2 imposes no legend, and neither appears in data/legality.json.
- 103.2.b allows three of each; Azir's own clause caps HIM at one activation a turn, so copies buy activations, not a bigger turn.
Prerequisites
- ONE SENTENCE HOLDS THE WHOLE 'EQUIPPED' VOCABULARY UP, AND NOTHING IN THIS CATALOGUE HAD CITED IT. 818.3.c defines the state - 'The state of being Equipped corresponds to a Top-Most card having a card with Equip that is Attached to it.' - while 718.2 says of that same attached card 'While in this state, the card's printed Rules Text is Inactive' and 721.2 says 'Inactive Abilities do not trigger, do not apply, and cannot be activated.' 818.1.a puts [Equip] on the gear ('Equip is present on Gear with the tag Equipment'), i.e. in the printed Rules Text that 718.2 has just switched off. Read alone those three paragraphs make Equipped self-cancelling: attaching the gear destroys the very [Equip] the state is defined by. 818.5.a is the paragraph that resolves it - 'Whether or not a Gear has Equip may be referenced even if the Rules Text of the Gear is Inactive.' Without it no unit in the pool could ever be equipped.
- THE POOL READS THE STATE AND NEVER THE EVENT. 818.2 makes an Equipped EVENT ('When the Attach action completes from this keyword, the Unit that was chosen is considered to have been Equipped by the Gear with this ability') and 818.2.a says 'This is an event other Game Effects and Triggered Abilities can reference' - and measured 2026-09-09 over data/corpus_flat.txt, the word 'equipped' appears on exactly four cards and every one of them reads the STATE: SFD-050 Azir, Ascendant ('If it's equipped'), SFD-107 Strike Down ('Choose an equipped friendly unit'), SFD-183 Purifier (reminder text, 'while equipped unit is an attacker') and VEN-137 Shady Spectacles ('The equipped unit becomes a copy'). No card says 'when you equip'. So 818.2/818.2.a are dead letter in this pool and the open question they would raise - whether a [Weaponmaster] attach fires the event, given 821.1.c.6's 'The Equip ability is not activated this way' - never has to be answered.
- AND BECAUSE IT IS A STATE, EVERY ATTACH ROUTE REACHES IT. 818.3.a: 'The state of being Equipped is synchronous with that of the Attached state of the Equipment.' Synchronous with the ATTACHED state, not with how the attaching happened - so a body is equipped by a paid [Equip] (818.1.b), by a [Quick-Draw] play (819.1.d), by [Weaponmaster] (821.1.c), by SFD-208 Forge of the Fluft or by SFD-024 Rell, Magnetic alike. Sterak's Gage is the cheapest of those: [Quick-Draw] determines no Equip cost at all, so 3 Energy + 2 Power puts a body into the state Azir's clause is gated on, with no rune and at [Reaction] speed.
- THE MIGHT BONUS RIDES THE RE-ATTACH BECAUSE IT NEVER STOPS BEING ATTACHED. 137.3.a - 'The Might Bonus is applied while Attached and stops applying as soon as the card with the Might Bonus is no longer Attached' - with 434.1.f, which detaches from the old carrier as part of the same attach action: the Gage goes from the swapped body straight onto Azir, so the +3 lands on him (M6 to M9) in the action that moved him.
- AZIR'S SWAP IS AN EFFECT MOVE AND [ACTION] MAKES IT A COMBAT TRICK. 449 lets a spell or ability cause a Move and 420.3.a puts the exhaust cost on the Standard Move alone, so the swap needs no [Ganking] and moves an exhausted body; 806.1.b makes [Action] playable 'during Showdowns, even when it is not the Controlling player's turn', so Azir can arrive at a battlefield already under attack, and 319.6 with 323.2.a hand him the Defender designation at the very next Cleanup, before 465.2 resolves - a 9-Might defender bought for one Calm Power.
- WHAT IT IS NOT: a repeatable relocation engine. Azir's own text says 'Use only once per turn', and 434.1.g makes a re-attach to the current carrier do nothing, so the ceiling is one harvest a turn per copy. R32 (whether a Svellsongur copy of this ability carries its own once-per-turn count) was looked at and deliberately not filed - see docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-issue62-r32-once-per-turn.md - and this entry does not depend on it, because it copies nothing.
Steps
- Play SFD-056 Sterak's Gage (3 Energy + 2 Power) on any friendly body. 819.1.d is short for '[Reaction]' and 'When you play this, attach it to a Unit you control', so the attach happens on the play and its printed [Equip] (one Calm rune) is never determined.
- That body is now Equipped: 818.3 makes it a state, 818.3.c defines it by the attached card having [Equip], and 818.5.a keeps that readable through 718.2's silencing of the gear's printed Rules Text. Its Might is its printed value +3 by 137.3 and 718.4.
- Play SFD-050 Azir, Ascendant (6 Energy + 1 Power). 143.4 has him enter exhausted; nothing here needs him ready, since his ability's cost is one Calm Power and no exhaust.
- In your Main Phase, or inside any Showdown on either player's turn (806.1.b), pay one Calm Power: choose the equipped body, swap locations with it, and attach the Gage to Azir. 434.1.f detaches it from the old carrier in the same action, so 137.3.a never lapses.
- Azir now stands where the body stood, at Might 9, and the body stands where he was. Once each turn, by his own text.
Per iteration
one location swap and one Equipment relocation per turn per Azir, with the Gage's +3 Might Bonus arriving on whichever body Azir is now on
How it ends
engine only - Azir's clause is 'Use only once per turn' and nothing here scores; the line delivers a body and its Might Bonus to a battlefield at [Action] speed and stops there
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 818.5.a 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 818.3 and 818.3.a and 818.3.c 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 818.2 and 818.2.a 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 718.2 and 721.2 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 818.1 and 818.1.a 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 819.1.d 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 137.3.a 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 806.1.b 2026-07-16
- Card text, data/corpus_flat.txt (Riot gallery API, errata applied) 2026-09-04
How this entry was audited
REFUTE = a refutation pass, with its date and verdict · WOUNDED = the pass found a flaw and the entry was rewritten · BUDGETED = the pass checked the recycle-and-draw ledger · lens = the hunt that proposed it.
HAND-WALKED 2026-09-09 (issue #191, uncited sub-rules 500-829, batch 4). The anchor is 818.5.a, cited by nothing in combos.json or synergies.json before this entry, and it is load-bearing rather than decorative: the catalogue already leans hard on 718.2 (an attached Equipment's printed Rules Text is Inactive, which is why the #170 walk removed prize-of-progress-hexplate-equip-shuttle) and on 818.3.c's definition of Equipped, and those two paragraphs contradict each other unless 818.5.a is read with them. Companion measurement, members named: the four cards that use the word 'equipped' all read the STATE (SFD-050, SFD-107, SFD-183 in reminder text, VEN-137), and no card reads the 818.2 EVENT - so that pair is dead letter in this pool and is refused for want of a card, scoped to this card pool. Cross-references: strike-down-blighted-battleaxe-detach-before-it-bites reads the same state with the other Body spell; aphelios-jax-quickdraw-attach and ornns-forge-jax-free-equipment are the [Quick-Draw] half; and jax-unmatched-last-rites-quickdraw-deletes-nonresource-equip, walked in this same batch, is the paragraph pair 819.1.a/819.1.b applied to a cost no discount can reach.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16