Combo · ENGINE
Dark Child × Abandon — two runes handed back is exactly one counterspell a turn
Pieces
- Dark Child - Starter ×1
OGS-017 · legend · fury/chaos
At the end of your turn, ready up to 2 runes.
- Abandon ×1
UNL-131 · payoff · chaos
[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Counter a spell. Return it to its owner's hand instead of putting it in their trash. [Predict]. (Look at the top card of your Main Deck. You may recycle it.)
Payoff
Deck
- Dark Child (OGS-017) IS the legend, and Abandon is mono-Chaos, so the identity is satisfied by construction (103.1.b).
Prerequisites
- THE TWO NUMBERS MATCH EXACTLY, WHICH IS THE WHOLE ENTRY. 164.2.a gives every rune '[Energy]: [Reaction] — Add [1]', so two readied runes are two Energy at instant speed, and Abandon costs two Energy and no Power. Dark Child therefore guarantees a counterspell on every opponent turn, for free, whatever you spent your own turn doing.
- WITHOUT HER THE RUNES ARE DEAD AND THE RULES SAY SO IN TWO PLACES. 415.3.a: 'A player Readies all non-spell Game Objects they Control during the Awakening Phase on their turn' — so a rune exhausted on your own turn stays exhausted for the whole of the opponent's. 167 empties the POOL and not the runes (#153's correction), so what Dark Child hands back is genuinely spendable then and there.
- COUNTERING BACK TO HAND IS NOT A DRAWBACK YOU CAN IGNORE. 'Return it to its owner's hand instead of putting it in their trash' means the spell is not spent — they may cast it again next turn, and it never reaches the trash, so nothing that keys on a card entering the trash fires. Against a deck built on [Flow] (829.1.b plays from the trash) that is actually an upgrade for you; against a deck that just recasts, it is a tempo tax rather than an answer.
- The [Predict] rider is free value and cannot hurt: 436.1 defines Predict with 'look at', and 431.1.c.1 plus 436.4.a mean looking at or predicting with too few cards in the deck does NOT Burn Out, so it is safe at any deck size.
- Three copies (103.2.b) is three counters a game, which is the real cap — Dark Child funds one per turn but the deck only holds three. The legend costs nothing and is always available, so the honest claim is 'the three counters in your deck are always castable', not 'a counter every turn forever'.
- This is the cheapest instance of dark-child-off-turn-reactions' 62-partner list, and the only one whose cost matches the two runes exactly. Anything dearer needs 164.2.b as well — 'Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]', which carries no exhaust, so an already-exhausted rune still pays Power (#44's free floor).
Steps
- Dark Child is your legend; keep Abandon in hand.
- Play your own turn out normally, exhausting runes for Energy as you like.
- At the end of your turn her trigger readies up to 2 runes (415.3.a would not have).
- On the opponent's turn, when they cast something worth answering, tap those two runes for 2 Energy (164.2.a, [Reaction]) and cast Abandon.
- Counter the spell; it returns to their hand rather than their trash, and [Predict] looks at your top card. Repeat every turn until the three copies are spent.
Per iteration
+2 Energy of off-turn mana per turn, which is exactly one Abandon
How it ends
engine — a counterspell every opponent turn while copies last; it scores nothing
Sources
Walked here, in this project
- Walk of the unwalked partners of the 66 proven synergy rules, rule dark-child-off-turn-reactions 2026-09-06 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.
AUTHORED 2026-09-06 from issue #160. UNL-131 was an uncatalogued partner of dark-child-off-turn-reactions (62 partners, 1 entry). Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.2.b, 164.2.a, 164.2.b, 167, 415.3.a, 431.1.c.1, 436.1, 436.4.a and 829.1.b opened in the Core Rules file. No unruled reading. The entry is deliberately modest about its own claim — three copies, not an infinite lock — because dark-child-off-turn-reactions' predicate matches every [Reaction] in the pool and the temptation is to publish 'a free counter every turn forever'.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16