Combo · ENGINE

The Hook's fetch ceiling is the corpse's PRINTED Might — 705 and 711 — so the right fuel is a wall that was never going to attack anyway

2 cards · order · verified

Pieces

• Baited Hook ×1 OGN-242 · engine · order

  1 Energy + 1 Order Power, Exhaust: Kill a friendly unit. Look at the top 5 cards of your Main Deck. You may banish a unit from among them that has Might up to 1 more than the killed unit and play it, ignoring its cost. Then recycle the rest.

• Galio, Indefatigable ×1 UNL-171 · resource · order

  [Deflect] (Opponents must pay 1 Power of any domain to choose me with a spell or ability.) [Tank] (I must be assigned combat damage first.) I don't deal combat damage.

Payoff

Deck

• Any Order legend — both cards are mono-Order (103.1.b.1) and neither is a Signature card, so no legend is forced.

Prerequisites

• THE CEILING IS PRINTED MIGHT, NOT BOARD MIGHT, AND THAT IS THE ENTRY. 711: 'Units in Non-Board Zones are evaluated according to their printed Might.' Its worked example is this exact case — 'A unit in the trash is Mighty if its printed Might is 5 or greater. It doesn't matter if there were effects raising or lowering its might while it was on the board.' The Hook kills the unit FIRST and only then executes 'Might up to 1 more than the killed unit', so by the time that comparison runs the corpse is in the trash and the number is its printed Might. 710 is the board half of the same split — 'Units on the board are evaluated according to their current Might' — and THE CATALOGUE ALREADY OWNED THAT HALF AND NEVER THIS ONE: measured over data/combos.json on 2026-09-12, 710 is cited in entries including renekton-dominus-double-conquer and convergent-mutation-might-transfer, and 711 is cited NOWHERE. That is the same shape as 815.2 against 815.3.
• 705 SAYS IT A SECOND TIME AND NEEDS NO SCOPE ARGUMENT: 'If a Unit leaves play, remove all Buffs from it.' So the conclusion does not depend on how widely 710 and 711 are read under their 706 'Mighty' heading — even if a reader confines those two to the Mighty description, the buff is gone the moment the body reaches the trash, and 703 ('Each Buff individually contributes +1 Might to a Unit') has nothing left to add. TWO INDEPENDENT RULES, ONE CONCLUSION: pumping or buffing the victim before the Hook eats it is worth EXACTLY ZERO.
• THE INVERSION IS THE REASON TO RUN IT: SHRINKING THE VICTIM IS ALSO WORTH ZERO. Because 711 reads the printed number, a Galio the opponent has already dropped to 1 Might with a -Might spell still cashes at 6 and still fetches a Might 7 body. The Hook is the pool's way of collecting full value from a body the opponent has spent a card ruining, which no other Order card does.
• WHY GALIO AND NOT A BIGGER BODY. Measured over data/cards.json on 2026-09-12, the pool prints exactly FOUR units of Might 6 or more at 4 Energy or less, and all four are mono-Order: OGN-208 Cruel Patron (E4, M6), UNL-166 Stalking Wolf (E4 + 1 Power, M6), UNL-171 Galio, Indefatigable (E3 + 1 Power, M6) and VEN-129 Sacred Protector (E4 + 1 Power, M6). Galio is the cheapest, and he is the only one whose combat value is purely defensive — 'I don't deal combat damage' — so he is the one whose death costs the least. His [Tank] makes every other body of yours an invalid damage assignment until he has taken lethal (815.1.c.2) and his [Deflect] taxes the opponent a rainbow for each time they choose him (809.1.c), so he is hard for them to remove and reliably there when you want to eat him.
• WHAT A CEILING OF 7 ACTUALLY BUYS, WITH THE MEMBERS NAMED. 'Play it, ignoring its cost' is Energy AND Power. The mono-Order units of printed Might 7 or more are OGN-231 Commander Ledros (E6 + 4 Power, M8), SFD-174 Trove Golem (E8 + 2 Power, M9), UNL-170 Atakhan (E10 + 3 Power, M7), UNL-179 Rift Herald (E8 + 1 Power, M7) and VEN-138 Shen, Leader of the Kinkou Order (E6 + 2 Power, M7) — measured over data/cards.json on 2026-09-12. A ceiling of 7 reaches the last three and NOT Ledros or the Golem, so the ladder does not run away: 3 Energy + 1 Power of body buys a 10 Energy + 3 Power body and stops there.
• IT IS A FIVE-CARD LOOK, NOT A TUTOR, AND THAT IS THE HONEST LIMIT. The Hook looks at the top five and recycles the ones it does not take to the bottom of the Main Deck (416.1), so the deck cycles rather than depletes and a turn where none of the five is a big enough unit simply buys nothing. 431.1.c keeps it safe with almost nothing left: 'that player looks at or Reveals as many as possible, but does not Burn Out, then proceeds with the rest of the instruction.'
• ONE ACTIVATION A TURN, AND THE BODY ARRIVES ASLEEP. The Hook's cost includes its own exhaust and 315.1.b readies it only at your Awakening, so this is one free unit per turn and no readying effect in the pool changes that usefully. 143.4 makes the fetched unit enter exhausted, so it defends and holds from the next Awakening rather than attacking the turn it lands.
• THE VICTIM MAY BE A TOKEN, AND USUALLY SHOULD NOT BE. The kill is effect text after the colon rather than a cost, so 203.3, 416.3 and 185 never bite and 185.2.d makes a token unit a legal victim (428.1). But a 1 Might Recruit sets the ceiling at 2, and 711 gives a token no more than its printed Might either — see baited-hook-sprite-queen-free-unit, which is that line done properly with a 3 Might Sprite for a ceiling of 4.
• THE RULES PRINT THIS CARD`S OWN COUNTERPLAY AND NO BAITED HOOK ENTRY MENTIONED IT (upgrade 2026-09-12, #187 batch 6). 359.3.e.12 - *"If the spell checks information about a target that is no longer legal or a card or permanent whose location, zone, or status has changed such that that information is no longer available, that check returns `null` and all calculations based on it are ignored"* - and its worked example quotes `OGN-242 Baited Hook` in full, ending that its controller *"looks at the top 5 cards of their Main Deck, but can`t choose any unit from among them."* So an opponent who returns the friendly victim to hand IN RESPONSE makes the whole payload evaporate: the unit cannot be killed, its Might is null, and the Energy, the rainbow and the exhaust are already spent. 359.3.e.4 is the general form (*"it is no longer a legal target, because it`s not treated as the same object"*) and 359.3.e.13 is the limit that keeps the card working normally - a spell that moves something as its OWN cost or effect may look back, so only an OUTSIDE zone change nulls the check. **The bodies a Hook ladder starts on are small, which is exactly the range the pool`s two cheapest bounces cover** (`SFD-138 Windsinger` at zero Energy from face down, `OGN-169 Gust` at one) - see `windsinger-gust-bounce-as-a-counterspell`.

Steps

1. Play Baited Hook (3 Energy) and Galio, Indefatigable (3 Energy + 1 Order Power). The Hook is gear and enters ready (143.4); Galio enters exhausted and walls.
2. Let Galio do his defensive job for as long as he is useful: 815.1.c.2 makes him the only legal damage assignment among your bodies until he has taken lethal, and 809.1.c charges the opponent a rainbow every time they choose him with a spell or ability.
3. When the fetch is worth more than the wall, pay 1 Energy + 1 Order Power and exhaust the Hook, killing Galio.
4. Read the ceiling off the CORPSE: he is in the trash, so 711 evaluates him at his printed 6 whatever his Might was on the board, and the Hook may take a unit of Might up to 7.
5. Look at the top five. Banish one Might 7 or smaller unit from among them and play it ignoring its cost — Energy and Power — and recycle the other four to the bottom (416.1).
6. Next Awakening readies the Hook (315.1.b). Repeat with whatever body is next cheapest to spend.

Per iteration

+1 free body of up to printed Might 7, -1 body, -1 Energy, -1 Order Power, and four cards cycled to the bottom of the Main Deck

How it ends

engine — one free unit of up to printed Might 7 per turn for 1 Energy + 1 Order Power, bounded by what the top five cards happen to hold; nothing here scores

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 710, 711 and 705 2026-07-16
• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt), 703, 431.1.c, 815.1.c.2, 809.1.c and 143.4 2026-07-16
• Card text, data/corpus_flat.txt (built from Riot's gallery content API by scripts/build-cards.mjs) 2026-09-12

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-12 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncited-subrules-500-899.md, section 34), issue #191 2026-09-12 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue