Combo · ENGINE
Black Market Broker x Bandle Tree with Renata Glasc, Industrialist — two flips a turn, six ready Gold
Pieces
- Black Market Broker ×3
SFD-121 · engine · chaos
When you play a card from face down, play a Gold gear token exhausted.
- Renata Glasc, Industrialist ×1
SFD-171 · engine · order
Your tokens enter ready.
- Bandle Tree ×1
OGN-278 · battlefield
You may hide an additional card here.
- Guards! ×3
SFD-154 · payoff · order
[Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) Play a 2 Might Sand Soldier unit token. Then do this: You may pay 1 Order Power to ready it.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend is Heart of the Tempest (VEN-155) — the only Order/Chaos legend in the pool, confirmed again on 2026-09-05 by listing every Legend row in the corpus.
- Cards with [Hidden] in hand to feed the slots. Order/Chaos has 15 legal names (16 print [Hidden]; OGN-168 Fight or Flight is banned in constructed and 2v2).
Prerequisites
- Battlefield entries: a player provides three battlefields and only one is used (485.4.a) — randomly in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5) — and 103.4.c plus Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid bringing two of the same name, so there is no way to raise the odds. Bandle Tree and The Grand Plaza are both yours, so this entry and spiderling-swarm-grand-plaza cannot share a board.
- A battlefield you provide starts UNCONTROLLED (190.1) and 190.6.d switches its text off while it has no Controller: "If the battlefield has no Controller, 'you' refers to no one, and all such instructions are ignored." Walking a body there and establishing Control (466.5) is part of this entry's cost, and 811.1.b only lets you hide at a battlefield you control. Until you control the Tree there is no first slot either, let alone the additional one.
- 323.7 IS THE REAL PRICE OF HIDING. A Cleanup step 5 reads "Remove all Hidden cards from all Battlefields that are not controlled by the same player and place them in their owner's Trash", and 466.5.c repeats it the instant somebody establishes Control. Losing the battlefield does not put the hidden card on hold — it TRASHES it. Lose the Bandle Tree and both facedown cards go to the trash, so the engine does not merely stall — it eats two cards.
- THE SCARCE RESOURCE IS THE CARD, NOT THE SLOT. Every flip consumes one card with [Hidden]; 811.1.b's "Beginning on the next turn" caps flips at the number of slots you control, and there are only two battlefields on the table in a Duel (485.4). The engine runs while [Hidden] cards last — it is not perpetual, and that is why it is not INFINITE.
- THE FLIP CAN LAND ON THE OPPONENT'S TURN. 811.1.b opens the window "beginning on the next turn" and 811.6 gives the facedown card [Reaction], so you do not have to wait for your own turn. With Renata the Gold enters ready either way, so this just moves the Power a turn earlier, into the opponent's window.
- 419.4.a is the fine print: a trigger on playing a card fires "when the act of playing the card has been completed by the resolution of the card", and 419.4.a.1 kills it outright if the flipped card is countered. No Gold from a countered flip.
- Neighbouring values, written out: 1 Broker nets 0 per turn (2 Gold for 2 hides — the engine only pays for itself), 2 Brokers net +2, 3 Brokers net +4, and 3 Brokers on 3 slots (the enemy battlefield conquered too) net +6.
Steps
- Establish Control of the Bandle Tree; only then does 'You may hide an additional card here' do anything (190.6.d), giving 2 slots there.
- In an Open State on your turn, hide two cards with [Hidden] at the Tree: 1 rainbow Power each (811.1.b), −2 Power.
- From the next turn on (yours or the opponent's — 811.6 gives the facedown card [Reaction]), play both, ignoring their base cost.
- Each flip is 'a card played from face down' (811.1.c.3): 2 flips × 3 Brokers = 6 Gold gear tokens.
- Renata Glasc, Industrialist makes the six enter ready (R25 = A), and 187.5 makes each one 'Kill this, exhaust: [Add] 1 rainbow Power' on demand.
- Re-hide two cards: −2 Power. Net +4 Gold banked per turn, and the Gold is gear, so 167's Rune Pool wipe never touches it.
Per iteration
+4 Gold gear tokens (4 rainbow Power, banked) per turn with 3 Brokers and 2 slots, plus whatever the two flipped cards do
How it ends
engine only — 811.1.b's "Beginning on the next turn" caps flips at one per slot per turn, and each flip burns a card with [Hidden]; a two-domain deck has 15 such names, so the engine runs for a stack of turns and then stops
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Hunt lens [Hidden]/[Ambush] — issue #40 (GitHub) 2026-09-05
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-05 2026-09-05 record
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 2026-09-05 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-05-hidden-ambush-candidates.md), issue #40 candidate 1. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. REWRITTEN from the #40 candidate in three places: (1) the ceiling is the [Hidden] card count, not the slot count — #40 wrote the cycle as a perpetual steady state and it is not; (2) the flip can be taken on the opponent's turn (811.1.b + 811.6), which #40 never says; (3) Bandle Tree and The Grand Plaza exclude each other by 485.4.a, so this entry and spiderling-swarm-grand-plaza are alternatives. Stands on R25 = A only, already ruled. Distinct from treasure-hunter-industrialist-gold and yeti-brambleback-renata-gold, which share Renata but make their Gold off a move and off a conquer respectively.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16