Combo · ENGINE

Baited Hook × Sprite Queen — the token that dies anyway buys a free 4-Might unit out of your deck, every turn

2 cards · order + mind · 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.

• Sprite Queen ×1 UNL-084 · engine · mind

  When you play me or at the start of your Beginning Phase, play a ready 3 Might Sprite unit token with [Temporary] to your base. (Kill them at the start of their controller's next Beginning Phase, before scoring.)

Payoff

Deck

• Legend domains cover Mind and Order — OGN-265 Herald of the Arcane, OGS-021 Lady of Luminosity - Starter, SFD-201 Chem-Baroness, UNL-199 Deceiver. Baited Hook is mono-Order and Sprite Queen mono-Mind (103.1.b.3).

Prerequisites

• THE ISSUE TRANSCRIBED THE COST WRONG, AND THE TOKEN QUESTION DOES NOT ARISE. The activation is 1 Energy + 1 Order Power + exhaust, and 'Kill a friendly unit' is the first sentence of the EFFECT, after the colon — not a cost. So 416.3 (Recycling as a Cost) and 203.3 (an impossible cost cannot be paid) are both inapplicable, and 185 ('Tokens are not cards') never bites: the Hook KILLS (428.1, a permanent going to the trash from the board) and 185.2.d makes a token follow all the rules of its type. The only Recycle in the card is of the four cards you looked at, from your own Main Deck to your own Main Deck (416.1.a, 416.1.c, bottom, random order 416.5).
• THE FUEL IS FREE BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY DEAD. 816.1.b reads [Temporary] as 'At the start of this permanent's controller's Beginning Phase, before scoring, kill this', and 816.1.c puts the Trigger Condition at the START of the Beginning Phase, which is why the Sprite born inside that window survives the turn it appears. During your Main Phase you always control exactly one 3-Might body that is going to die for nothing; Sprite Queen replays it next Beginning Phase whether it died on schedule or early. Feeding it to the Hook costs zero.
• WHY 3 MIGHT MATTERS: THE FETCH CEILING IS THE KILLED UNIT'S MIGHT + 1. Order's own faucets are smaller — the whole corpus list is 1-Might Recruits (OGN-211, OGN-212, OGN-218, OGN-222, OGN-239, OGN-246, OGS-015, SFD-153, SFD-168, SFD-179, VEN-128), 1-Might Birds (UNL-153, UNL-160) and 2-Might Sand Soldiers (SFD-154, SFD-157), so mono-Order caps the fetch at Might 3 and only once per copy. Sprite Queen is the only repeating source of a 3-Might disposable body in the identity.
• WHAT THE FREE UNIT IS WORTH, MEASURED OVER EVERY Mind-or-Order UNIT WITH MIGHT ≤ 4. The ceiling is OGN-226 Spectral Matron (Order, E4 P2 M4), whose own play trigger is a SECOND free body — 'you may play a unit costing no more than 3 Energy and no more than 1 rainbow Power from your trash, ignoring its cost' — once your trash holds one. UNL-087 Blue Sentinel (Mind, E4 P1 M4) is the other headline. Also at the ceiling: OGN-225 Solari Chief, OGN-239 Machine Evangel, UNL-169 Ashe Focused, SFD-089 Rumble Scrapper (all E5 P1 M4) and UNL-164 Safety Inspector (E5 P1 M3). So 1 Energy + 1 Order Power buys up to 4 Energy + 2 Power of unit, against the free floor of 2 Power a turn.
• IT IS A FIVE-CARD DIG, NOT A TUTOR, AND THE ENTRY CLAIMS NOTHING MORE. If no unit of the right Might is in the top 5 the 'may' is declined and you have spent 1 Energy + 1 Order Power and the Sprite for a reshuffle of the top four to the bottom. It never Burns Out (431.1.c), even with fewer than 5 cards left.
• ONCE PER TURN, WHICH IS WHY IT IS NOT INFINITE. 315.1.b readies the Hook only at Awaken; per #56's walk exactly five cards in the pool ready gear (VEN-149, VEN-150, SFD-221, OGN-162, VEN-068), so a second activation in one turn needs one of them.
• RIDER, NOT AN INGREDIENT: OGN-246 Viktor, Leader ('When another non-Recruit unit you control dies, play a 1 Might Recruit unit token into your base') pays a permanent Recruit for every Sprite the Hook eats — 187.2 gives the Sprite the Fae tag, so it is a non-Recruit death. Third card, so notable rather than uses.
• OVERLAP, DECLARED. viktor-leader-sprite-queen-free-bodies already uses UNL-084 and converts the Sprite's SCHEDULED death into a Recruit. This entry spends the same Sprite EARLY, in the Main Phase, for a card out of your own deck. They do not conflict — with Viktor out you get both off one kill — but the products are different.
• Setup is slow and stated: Sprite Queen 7 Energy + 1 Power, Baited Hook 3 Energy. Sprite Queen must survive; nothing in the line protects her.
• THE SCUTTLE CRAB VARIANT IS REFUTED, NOT AN ALTERNATIVE (issue #117 candidate 2, walked 2026-09-06 in docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-issue117-deck-manipulation.md). UNL-053 Scuttle Crab (Calm, E2 M0) as the fuel caps the Hook's fetch at Might 1, and in Calm ∪ Order exactly seven unit bases sit at Might ≤ 1 — OGN-216 Soaring Scout (E2), UNL-036 Mutated Mouser (E2), UNL-053 itself (E2), UNL-056 Yuumi Magical Cat (E3 P1), UNL-153 Carrion Dredger (E2), VEN-043 Steel Paws (E1), VEN-117 Disciple of Shen (E2) — so 1 Energy + 1 Order Power + the exhaust buys less than it costs. It is also not an engine: the Crab is a card, 103.2.b caps it at 3 copies and each dies once, against the Sprite that 816.1.b replays every Beginning Phase for free. And its Deathknell (808.1.c, 'When I die') fires from ANY death, so nothing about it needs the Hook. Killing UNL-153 Carrion Dredger instead lifts the ceiling only to Might 2, and 187.7 makes its Bird token Might 1, which returns to the same ceiling.
• 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). It enters ready — 143.4 exhausts units, and 359.2.d puts non-unit gear on the board ready at your base.
2. Play Sprite Queen (7 Energy + 1 Power). Her play trigger gives the first ready 3-Might Sprite with [Temporary], at your base.
3. Each Beginning Phase: 315.1.b readies the Hook; the old Sprite dies (816.1.b) and a fresh ready Sprite is played. Both triggers are yours, so 383.3.d lets you order them.
4. In your Main Phase (312.2.a), pay 1 Energy + 1 Order Power and exhaust the Hook. Kill the Sprite — free, since 816.1.b was going to kill it at the start of your next Beginning Phase anyway.
5. Look at the top 5 of your Main Deck. Banish a unit among them with Might up to 4 and play it ignoring its cost: 355.2.a puts it at your base or a battlefield you control, 359.2.c exhausted. Recycle the other four to the bottom of your own deck (416.1.a, 416.1.c, 416.5).

Per iteration

+1 unit of Might up to 4 from your own deck, played free, for 1 Energy + 1 Order Power and a token that was going to die anyway

How it ends

engine only — one free body a turn plus a 5-card dig; the bodies still have to walk to a battlefield to be worth points

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riot gallery card text (data/corpus_flat.txt, 2026-09-04, errata applied) 2026-09-04
• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Scoring-text and free-play lens — issue #115 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue