Combo · ENGINE

Frozen Fortress sweeps every 1-Might body twice a round, and Soul Shepherd is what makes the sweep one-sided

2 cards · mind · verified

Pieces

• Frozen Fortress ×1 UNL-212 · battlefield

  At the start of each player's Beginning Phase, deal 1 to each unit here. (This happens before scoring.)

• Soul Shepherd ×1 UNL-077 · enabler · mind

  Your token units have +1 Might.

Payoff

Deck

• The line is mono-Mind (Soul Shepherd; the Fortress is Colorless), so 103.1.b.3 admits any legend with Mind in its pair: UNL-189/UNL-230 Bashful Bloom, SFD-201/SFD-249 Chem-Baroness, VEN-145/VEN-192 Curator of the Sands, OGN-247/OGN-299 Daughter of the Void, UNL-199/UNL-235 Deceiver, VEN-149/VEN-194 Defender of Tomorrow, SFD-189/SFD-244 Fire Below the Mountain, OGN-265/OGN-308 Herald of the Arcane, OGS-021 Lady of Luminosity, SFD-181/SFD-240 Mechanized Menace, OGN-255/OGN-303 Nine-Tailed Fox, SFD-199/SFD-248 Prodigal Explorer, UNL-197/UNL-234 Scorn of the Moon, VEN-151/VEN-195 Soul's Reflection, OGN-263/OGN-307 Swift Scout, UNL-181/UNL-226 Virtuoso.

Run play

• The Fortress killed nothing: their Recruits stayed off it until Darius stood there

Prerequisites

• ONE DAMAGE IS LETHAL TO A 1-MIGHT BODY AND TO NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE DAMAGE NEVER ACCUMULATES ACROSS TURNS. 143.2.a: 'If a Unit ever has nonzero damage marked on it equalling or exceeding its Might, it is Killed.' 143.3.b.1: 'Damage is Healed from Units at two specific times: At the end of each player's turn.' So the Fortress is a permanent 1-Might FILTER, never a clock — a 2-Might body standing there forever is never in danger. CORRECTED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md): "never in danger" does not hold. The tick's damage stays marked until the end of the turn it starts in (143.3.b.1: "At the end of each player's turn."), and it fires in both Beginning Phases, so through every turn, theirs and yours, each of your 2-Might tokens there carries 1 damage and dies to 1 more (143.2.a). 465.2.c.4's example is that arithmetic: "If a player has 5 damage to distribute among four 3 Might units and those units each have 1 damage already marked on them, that player may not assign more than 2 damage to any of those units." If Soul Shepherd dies in such a turn, every token there is a 1 with 1 marked and all die at once (143.2.a).
• AND IT DENIES THE BATTLEFIELD TO A TOKEN GARRISON OUTRIGHT. The kill lands at 315.2.a, before 315.2.b's Scoring Step; the deaths make a Cleanup Outstanding (319.6) and 323.6 then strips Control from a player 'without their Units occupying them'. An opponent who takes Frozen Fortress with 1-Might tokens loses it again in their own Beginning Phase and never Holds it once. CORRECTED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md): the phase is wrong. They take it in their turn, and the first Beginning Phase after any turn is the other player's: they lose it in YOURS, which comes first. The battlefield is then empty and uncontrolled for your Main Phase, and a unit of yours in base takes it by walking in, a Conquer with no combat (316.8.b.1: "Showdowns that occur as a result of a player moving to an empty Battlefield are a stand-alone Phase and do not create a Combat."; 469.1: "Conquer: A player gains Control of a Battlefield they did not yet Score this turn."). The Shard of Undoing notable already says the same of your own bodies.
• THIS IS THE PERMANENT, FREE VERSION OF OGN-133 FLURRY OF BLADES, scoped to one battlefield. It is the same mechanism CLAUDE.md records as the binding constraint on every 1-Might Grand Plaza line — Might per body, not number of bodies — and an unbounded token engine does not beat it.
• REFUSED HERE, AND THE PARAGRAPH THAT KILLS IT: Frozen Fortress cannot feed UNL-174 Shard of Undoing ('The first time a friendly unit dies during your Beginning Phase each turn, each opponent must kill one of their units'). Any 1-Might body you send there in your Main Phase is killed at the OPPONENT's Beginning Phase, which comes first, so it is never alive for yours; and 143.3.b.1 heals the damage at the end of every turn, so a 2-Might body cannot die on a second tick either. The Fortress can only ever kill a friendly body in the opponent's window.
• IT IS SYMMETRIC ON YOUR OWN NON-TOKEN 1-MIGHT CARDS — Watchful Sentry, Carrion Dredger, Soaring Scout and every other M1 printed body die there too. Soul Shepherd only says 'your TOKEN units'.
• FROZEN FORTRESS IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE ON THE TABLE: 485.4.a, 485.5, 486.5 and 103.4.c as for every battlefield entry. CORRECTED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md): the numbers. In a Duel each player's battlefield is drawn at random from three (485.5: "Setup: Each player randomly selects one (1) of their three (3) Battlefields."), so the Fortress is on the table in 1 game in 3. In a match of three you choose it (486.5: "Each player selects one (1) of their three (3) Battlefields."), and after a game a player won, the battlefields used "are to be removed and not selected again for this Match", so it is in one game of the match, unless no one won that game (486.5.a).
• NO STEP NAMED AN ANSWER - ADDED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md). Against a token deck the filter is answered by: staying off it, which is free and is what the play's Recruit deck did; OGN-243 Darius, Executioner (Order, E6 + 1 Power, M6; the Chosen Champion of the Fury/Order legend OGN-253 Hand of Noxus), "Other friendly units have +1 :rb_might: here.", which makes their Recruits 2s at the Fortress; VEN-018 Rage Amplifier (Fury gear, E4 + 1 Power), "Your units have +1 :rb_might:.", which covers every location; and a [Reaction] +Might cast in answer to the tick, since the tick waits on the chain and 309.1 says "If a Chain exists, the turn is in a Closed State." (813.1.c.1: "This can be played during Closed States on any player's turn."). Each such card saves only the units it names. Against a body that already carries a buff, OGN-207 Call to Glory (Order, E3, [Reaction]) costs nothing: "As you play this, you may spend a buff as an additional cost. If you do, ignore this spell's cost. Give a unit +3 :rb_might: this turn."

Steps

1. Bring Frozen Fortress as one of your three battlefields. It needs no Control: there is no 'you' in its text.
2. Play Soul Shepherd (E5). His clause is a static continuous modifier and needs nothing further; every token you own is now 2 Might or more.
3. Garrison Frozen Fortress with tokens. At each player's Beginning Phase the battlefield deals 1 to each unit there; 143.2.a leaves your 2-Might tokens alive and kills every 1-Might body the opponent has walked in. CORRECTED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md): the step is conditional, and in the play it killed none. A Recruit deck keeps its 1-Might bodies off the Fortress for free, and when it wants the battlefield its Chosen Champion OGN-243 Darius, Executioner makes them 2s there; see the notable on answers.
4. Their deaths make a Cleanup Outstanding (319.6); in the Neutral Open State of 310.1, 323.6 takes their Control of the battlefield away before 315.2.b's Scoring Step, so they never Hold it.
5. 143.3.b.1 heals all marked damage at the end of each turn, so the filter resets and repeats forever with no upkeep. CORRECTED 2026-10-16 (#379, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-the-fortress-killed-nothing-their-recruits-stayed-off-it-until-darius-stood-there.md): the filter resets, but "no upkeep" is not "no cost": between a tick and the end of that turn every 2-Might token of yours there dies to 1 more damage, or to Soul Shepherd's death; see the first notable.

How it ends

engine only — a permanent, free, one-sided 1-Might filter at one battlefield, firing twice per round; nothing here scores and nothing about it is unbounded

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

• Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncatalogued-cards.md), issue #171 2026-09-07 record
• Run play 2026-10-14, issue #373 2026-10-14 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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