Combo · ENGINE

The hide pays for itself: one rainbow down, a Gold back next turn, a free body — and 811.1.b's one-per-battlefield clause is the whole rate limit

7 cards · chaos · verified

Pieces

• Black Market Broker ×1 SFD-121 · engine · chaos

  When you play a card from face down, play a Gold gear token exhausted.

• Spiderling ×6 VEN-097 · payoff · chaos

  [Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) I have +1 Might for each other unit you control here with my name. Your deck can have any number of cards named Spiderling.

Payoff

Deck

• Both cards are mono-Chaos, so ANY legend whose two domains include Chaos runs the line (103.1.b.1). Nothing here is Signature (103.2.d.2).
• A battlefield you control to hide at, and it must not already have a facedown card on it — that clause is the entire rate limit and it is quoted in the notables.

Prerequisites

• THE RATE LIMIT IS ONE HIDE PER BATTLEFIELD, AND IT IS THE FIRST THING TO SAY BECAUSE THE CARD INVITES THE OPPOSITE ASSUMPTION. 811.1.b in full: '[Hidden] is functionally short for "While this card is in your hand or in your Champion Zone on your turn during an Open State, you may pay [rainbow] to hide this facedown at a battlefield you control THAT DOESN'T ALREADY HAVE A FACEDOWN CARD HIDDEN THERE for as long as you control that battlefield. Beginning on the next turn, this gains [Reaction] and you may play this, ignoring its base cost."' One facedown per battlefield at a time, and a Duel puts two battlefields on the table (485.4) of which you control what you have taken. Any number of Spiderlings in the deck does NOT become any number of hides a turn.
• AND THE HIDE AND THE PLAY ARE A TURN APART. 'Beginning on the next turn' — so the rainbow is paid now and the body and the Gold arrive at the earliest next turn. 811.1.c.1 is the companion: 'Hide is not a subset of Play', so hiding fires nothing, and only the later play is the event the Broker watches (811.1.c.3).
• THE PAYMENT IS A LOAN, NOT A COST, AND THAT IS THE ENTRY. Hiding costs one rainbow Power. Playing from Hidden costs ZERO Energy (811.1.b, 'ignoring its base cost'), and the Broker mints a Gold gear token — 187.5: 'A Gold gear token is a domainless gear token with "[Reaction][>] Kill this, [exhaust]: [Add] [rainbow]"'. That Gold is exactly one rainbow Power. So a Spiderling that would have cost 3 Energy costs one rainbow, hands the rainbow back, and arrives as a free body. Every other card in the Broker's [Hidden] list pays its own rainbow the same way; what makes Spiderling the one to build on is that rule 002 lets you run any number of them.
• THE GOLD IS NEXT TURN'S POWER, NOT THIS TURN'S. Every producer prints it exhausted and 187.5's ability costs its own exhaust, so an exhausted Gold cannot pay for itself; 315.1.b readies it in your following Awakening. SFD-171 Renata Glasc, Industrialist ('Your tokens enter ready') is the fix and is mono-Order, which 103.1.b puts outside a mono-Chaos shell unless the legend is Order/Chaos — VEN-155 / VEN-197 Heart of the Tempest, the only such pair in the census. The entry is priced WITHOUT her.
• WHAT THE SWARM IS WORTH, WITH THE QUANTITIES DECLARED. 'I have +1 Might for each other unit you control HERE with my name' — the count is per battlefield, so five Spiderlings standing together are M5 each and 465.2.c sums them to 25. Two of them are already M2 apiece, which is the step 143.2.a needs to put them outside the range of OGN-133 Flurry of Blades ('Deal 1 to all units at battlefields'). The swarm protects itself as it grows, with no Soul Shepherd and no Brush.
• AND IT IS SLOW, WHICH IS THE PRICE OF BEING FREE. One hide per controlled battlefield per turn, played a turn later, and a body that enters exhausted (143.4) and is readied only in your next Awakening (315.1.b). Getting five Spiderlings onto one battlefield is several turns of hiding, and 811.1.b keeps the facedown card there only 'for as long as you control that battlefield' — lose it and the hidden card is removed (323.7 puts Hidden cards not sharing a controller with the battlefield into their owner's trash).
• WHAT REFUTES IT. (a) The Broker is a M3 body with no protection and every Gold in the line depends on him being alive when the flip happens. (b) 185 and 186.1 keep the Gold tokens out of every recycle and reanimation line, and they are gear an opponent can kill. (c) Spiderling is M1 alone: the first one hidden at a fresh battlefield is the most fragile card in the deck.

Steps

1. Play Black Market Broker (E3). 143.4 makes him enter exhausted; nothing in this line asks him to act.
2. On your turn, in an Open State, pay one rainbow to hide a Spiderling facedown at a battlefield you control that has no facedown card on it (811.1.b).
3. Beginning on your NEXT turn the hidden card gains [Reaction]. Play it from face down for 0 Energy (811.1.b, 'ignoring its base cost').
4. 811.1.c.3 makes that a play from face down, so the Broker's trigger fires: play a Gold gear token exhausted.
5. The Spiderling arrives as a body at the battlefield it was hidden at; the Gold is readied in your next Awakening (315.1.b) and is then worth one rainbow Power (187.5) — the exact cost of the hide.
6. Repeat, one hide per controlled battlefield per turn. Each Spiderling standing at the same battlefield gives every other one +1 Might.

Per iteration

one free body a turn per controlled battlefield, the rainbow it cost handed back as a Gold, and every Spiderling already there one Might larger

How it ends

engine only — 811.1.b allows one facedown per battlefield at a time, so the rate is the number of battlefields you control and nothing here scores

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16

Walked here, in this project

• Synergy rule black-market-broker-hidden-family (data/synergies.json) 2026-09-06
• Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-rules-second-pass.md), issue #170 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue