Combo · ENGINE
Existential Dread repeated on itself — a conditional stun becomes an unconditional bounce
Pieces
- Existential Dread ×1
UNL-134 · payoff · chaos
[Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) [Repeat] 2 Energy (You may pay the additional cost to repeat this spell's effect.) [Stun] an attacking enemy unit. If it's already stunned, return it to its owner's hand instead. (A stunned unit doesn't deal combat damage this turn.)
- Marai Spire ×1
SFD-211 · battlefield
While you control this battlefield, friendly [Repeat] costs cost 1 Energy less.
- Ezreal, Prodigy ×1
SFD-149 · enabler · chaos
When you play me, discard 1, then draw 2. Optional additional costs you pay cost 1 Energy or 1 Power of any domain less.
Payoff
Deck
- Mono-Chaos: any legend with Chaos in its pair (103.1.b). Marai Spire is Colorless.
Prerequisites
- THE SPIRE IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE IN PLAY. 485.4.a puts only one of your three battlefields into the game, and 485.5 says a Duel picks it AT RANDOM ('Each player randomly selects one (1) of their three (3) Battlefields'). 1v1 Match play is different: 486.5 says only 'selects', so there you choose it for game 1. Whether a deck may bring three copies of the same battlefield to make the Duel case certain is the open question of issue #35 — the Core Rules never forbid it (103.2 caps copies of a Main Deck card, and a battlefield is not a Main Deck card), but this entry does not assume it.
- 820.2.a licenses this outright rather than by inference. Its worked example on Rocket Barrage says the controller 'may choose the same mode or a different one, and if they choose the same mode, may choose the same target or a different one.'
- 820.1.d.1 makes resolution read as though the card printed the instruction twice — its own Desert's Call example spells that out — so execution #2 evaluates 'If it's already stunned' against the state execution #1 left behind.
- Stun does not remove the Attacker designation: the card's own reminder says only that 'A stunned unit doesn't deal combat damage this turn', so the target is still 'an attacking enemy unit' when execution #2 resolves.
- [Action] ('Play on your turn or in showdowns') is what lets this be used on the opponent's turn, which is when enemy attackers exist.
- COSTS. Raw: E1 + 1 Power for the spell, plus E2 for the Repeat. With Marai Spire controlled and one Ezreal, the Repeat is 0 and the whole thing is E1 + 1 Power — see ezreal-marai-spire-free-repeat, which this entry is a rider on.
- NO THIRD EXECUTION. 820.1.c.3: 'Each Repeat Cost can be paid only a single time.' One extra execution, so the stun-to-bounce is the ceiling.
Steps
- An enemy unit is attacking. Play Existential Dread in the showdown ([Action]).
- Choose to pay the [Repeat] additional cost in step 2 of playing (356.2.b.1). Marai Spire takes 1 Energy off it and Ezreal takes the other, leaving 0 (356.4.c, 356.4.c.1, 356.6); 356.4.f.1 keeps it 'paid'.
- In the Make Relevant Choices step (820.2), name the SAME attacking enemy unit for both executions — permitted explicitly by 820.2.a.
- On resolution (820.1.d.1): execution #1 stuns it; execution #2 sees it already stunned and returns it to its owner's hand instead.
How it ends
engine only — one attacker removed outright per copy of the spell, for E1 + 1 Power under the discount pair; not repeatable within a single play (820.1.c.3)
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Hunt lens [Repeat]/[Accelerate]/[Add] — issue #32 (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-repeat-accelerate-add-candidates.md), issue #32, where it was filed as the thinnest of the six and explicitly handed to a human to decide whether it deserved a row. It does: the same-target trick is a fact about Existential Dread that is NOT derivable from ezreal-marai-spire-free-repeat. That entry tells you the spell doubles; it does not tell you that doubling converts a conditional stun into an unconditional bounce. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 820.1.c.3, 820.1.d.1, 820.2, 820.2.a, 820.3.a, 356.2.b.1, 356.4.c, 356.4.c.1, 356.4.f, 356.4.f.1, 356.6, 190.1 and 190.6.d all opened and read. HOLDS AS WRITTEN, with one addition: the raw cost (E1 + 1 Power + E2) is stated next to the discounted one, so the entry does not depend on holding Marai Spire to be worth knowing. Trap check: no attack trigger of our own; no [Temporary]; no recall; no rune recycled for Power; the Energy is spent as a spell cost in a showdown, not in Awaken, so 167 does not bite; one battlefield, so 485.4.a is respected. Added 2026-09-05 after the project registered 485.5/486.5: a Duel selects your one battlefield AT RANDOM, so the Marai Spire half of this line comes online 1 game in 3 there and by choice in 1v1 Match play (486.5). That is a consistency question, not a correctness one — issue #35 — and the entry states it rather than assuming the Spire.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16