Combo · ALT WIN

Flash and Gust — the two dial vectors Mind cannot produce

5 cards · mind + chaos · verified

Pieces

• Gutter Palace ×1 UNL-088 · payoff · mind

  At the start of your Beginning Phase, if you have exactly 4 cards in hand and exactly 4 units at battlefields, you win the game. Discard 1, Exhaust: Play a 1 Might Bird unit token with [Deflect]. (Opponents must pay 1 Power of any domain to choose it with a spell or ability.)

• Flash ×2 OGS-011 · enabler · chaos

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Move up to 2 friendly units to base.

• Gust ×2 OGN-169 · enabler · chaos

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Return a unit at a battlefield with 3 Might or less to its owner's hand.

Payoff

Deck

• Any Mind/Chaos legend. The pool prints FOUR names across eleven printings, measured against data/cards.json rather than typed: Swift Scout (OGN-263 / OGN-307), Prodigal Explorer (SFD-199 / SFD-248), Scorn of the Moon (UNL-197 / UNL-234), Soul's Reflection (VEN-151 / VEN-195). UNL-088 is mono-Mind and OGS-011 and OGN-169 are mono-Chaos, so the union is exactly {mind, chaos} under 103.1.b and all four are legal.
• None of UNL-088, OGS-011 or OGN-169 appears in data/legality.json, whose 21 rows were checked on 2026-09-14, and none carries the Signature supertype, so 103.2.d.2 imposes no legend of its own.

Prerequisites

• THE WHOLE LINE IS A TWO-DIMENSIONAL ARITHMETIC PROBLEM AND NOBODY HAD WRITTEN THE TABLE. The Palace asks for two EXACT counts, and every card you play moves at least one of them, starting with itself: casting a spell is already minus one card in hand. Reading every [Reaction]-speed effect legal in Mind or Chaos out of data/corpus_flat.txt and writing each as (change in units at battlefields, change in hand) with the card's own departure counted, the pool offers EIGHT distinct vectors: (-2,-1) and (-1,-1) from OGS-011 Flash; (-1,0) from OGN-104 Retreat, VEN-052 Mesmerize's first mode, UNL-128 Star-Crossed and OGN-169 Gust aimed at your own body; (0,-1) from Mesmerize's second mode and Gust aimed at an enemy; (0,0) from OGN-095 Stupefy, UNL-061 Downstage Dramatics and UNL-125 Lunar Boon; (0,+1) from OGN-083 Consult the Past cast from hand and from Downstage with its [Repeat] paid; (0,+2) from SFD-087 Premonition and from Consult the Past played out of [Hidden]; and (+1,-1) from UNL-071 Chakram Dancer's [Ambush].
• CHAOS OWNS EXACTLY TWO OF THE EIGHT AND THEY ARE THE TWO THAT MOVE BOTH COUNTS DOWN AT ONCE. (-1,-1) and (-2,-1) come only from OGS-011 Flash, in either domain. That is what a single card buys: from five bodies and five cards, Flash reaches four and four by itself, where Mind needs Retreat and then Mesmerize; from six and five it still reaches four and four by itself, where Mind needs three cards. Every extra answer is Energy that has to be banked before a window the OPPONENT chooses the timing of, so the card count is the real price and not the Energy.
• OGN-169 Gust IS TWO DIALS FOR ONE ENERGY, WHICH IS WHY IT IS HERE AND NOT SOMETHING CHEAPER. Its target is 'a unit at a battlefield with 3 Might or less' and it does not say friendly: aimed at an enemy it is (0,-1), aimed at your own it is (-1,0), and the choice is made when you cast it. The (0,-1) half matters most, because outside of playing a card there is no way to lower your hand at Reaction speed at all.
• THE WINDOW IS THE OPPONENT'S TURN AND THE COUNT IS DONE FORWARD. 315.2.a starts your Beginning Phase and the Palace checks there; 312.2.a gives a player priority only 'When the turn is in a Neutral Open State during their Main Phase', i.e. their own, so you cannot answer inside your own check. What you answer is their action: a spell of theirs on the Chain is a Closed State, 312.2.c hands out priority there, and 813.1.c.1 admits a [Reaction] card 'during Closed States on any player's turn'. So the correction is played IN RESPONSE, and you count to where the board will BE rather than where it is. Your own Draw Phase is 315.4 and comes AFTER the check, which is what makes a hand of exactly four holdable overnight.
• MOVING TO BASE IS NOT BOUNCING, AND THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF FLASH. A unit at your base is still on the board and still yours; it is simply not 'at a battlefield', so it stops being counted. 449 lets a spell cause a Move with only its own restrictions (449.1), and 420.3.a puts the exhaust on the STANDARD Move alone, so Flash moves bodies that have already acted and needs none of them ready. Retreat by contrast returns a unit to HAND, which is why its vector is (-1,0) and not (-1,-1) — the body comes back as a card.
• WHAT THIS ADDS TO gutter-palace-reaction-dials, STATED SO IT CAN BE CHECKED. That entry is mono-Mind and its three named dials are Chakram Dancer, Retreat and Premonition, which are the vectors (+1,-1), (-1,0) and (0,+2) — three of the eight. It therefore cannot lower its hand at all and cannot raise it by exactly one, so it does not reach four and four from a hand of five, from a hand of three, or from the three-body board that its own first correction leaves behind. The repairs are one card each and two of them are in its own domain: VEN-052 Mesmerize for (0,-1) and OGN-083 Consult the Past cast from hand for (0,+1). This entry is the Chaos-side completion and not a replacement; the two are alternatives, and a deck may run both sets under a Mind/Chaos legend.
• THE LEGEND CAN BE A DIAL TOO, AND IT IS A LEAD RATHER THAN A REQUIREMENT. SFD-199 Prodigal Explorer is a Mind/Chaos legend printing '[exhaust]: [Reaction] — Draw 1. Use only if you've chosen enemy units and/or gear twice this turn with spells or unit abilities.' That is a (0,+1) that costs NO CARD, only the legend's exhaust, and Gust aimed at an enemy is one of the two choosings it asks for. It is not in uses because the line runs under any of the four Mind/Chaos legends and pinning it would narrow the entry to one; an author building this deck should reach for it anyway.
• THE PALACE'S OWN ABILITY IS A (+1,-1) AND IT CANNOT BE USED HERE. 'Discard 1, [exhaust]: Play a 1 Might Bird unit token with [Deflect]' has no [Reaction], so 381 confines it to an Open State on your own turn and it is unavailable in the window this entry is about. It is how you SET UP the four bodies across earlier turns, never how you correct them.

Bodies no card supplies

UNL-088 Gutter Palace: "if you have exactly 4 cards in hand and exactly 4 units at battlefields, you win the game" — four bodies AT BATTLEFIELDS when the check fires. The count here is ONE unit CARD because the Palace's own ability mints Bird tokens and 355.2.a plays a token to your base or a battlefield you CONTROL, so a unit card has to take a battlefield before a token can stand on one; the exactness is a board state and not a deck number.

Steps

1. Earlier turns: take a battlefield with a unit card, play UNL-088 Gutter Palace (E4, and 359.2.d enters a non-unit gear READY at your base so no readiness turn is owed), and build to four units standing at battlefields — the Palace's own 'Discard 1, exhaust: Play a 1 Might Bird unit token' does it a body at a time on your own turn, since 381 keeps an activated ability to an Open State on your turn.
2. Arrive at the opponent's turn holding four cards, four bodies at battlefields, and the Energy for one or two [Reaction] answers. 315.4 puts your Draw Phase AFTER the Beginning Phase check, so a hand of exactly four survives the night.
3. Write down what each answer does as a pair of numbers. Casting any spell is already minus one card in hand, so a dial's true vector includes its own departure: Flash is (-1,-1) or (-2,-1), Gust is (0,-1) on an enemy or (-1,0) on your own body, Retreat is (-1,0), Mesmerize's second mode is (0,-1), Premonition is (0,+2), Chakram Dancer's [Ambush] is (+1,-1).
4. The opponent acts. Their spell on the Chain puts the turn in a Closed State, 312.2.c hands out priority there, and 813.1.c.1 lets a [Reaction] card be played 'during Closed States on any player's turn' — so you answer IN RESPONSE and count to where the board will be after their spell resolves, never after it has.
5. If their action leaves you with a body too many AND a card too many, that is the state only Chaos answers in one card: OGS-011 Flash, moving one friendly unit to base, is (-1,-1) and lands you exactly on four and four. Two bodies too many and a card too many is the same card with both moves taken, (-2,-1).
6. If only the hand is wrong upward, OGN-169 Gust aimed at an ENEMY unit of 3 Might or less is (0,-1) for one Energy and takes a body off their board while it is at it. If only a body is wrong, the same card aimed at your own is (-1,0).
7. 449 with 449.1 is why Flash reaches bodies that have already acted: a Move caused by a spell carries only the restrictions its own source states, and 420.3.a puts the exhaust cost on the Standard Move alone. A unit at your base is still on the board and still yours — it has simply stopped being 'at a battlefield', which is the only thing the Palace counts.
8. Your Beginning Phase begins. 315.2.a runs the start-of-Beginning-Phase effects, the Palace reads exactly four cards in hand and exactly four units at battlefields, and 195 — 'a player also wins the game if an effect instructs them to do so' — wins it.

How it ends

you win the game at the start of your Beginning Phase, with both halves of the 4/4 check correctable at Reaction speed on the opponent's turn — and with the two vectors that move BOTH counts down, which no Mind card produces

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt (UNL-088, OGS-011, OGN-169, OGN-104, SFD-087, VEN-052, UNL-071, OGN-083, UNL-061, UNL-125, UNL-128, OGN-095, SFD-199) 2026-07-16

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-14 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-14-fury-chaos-the-empty-cell.md), issue #200 — reached from the spanning axis: mind/chaos had 11 available finishers and one that spans, the lowest rate of any pair with four or more 2026-09-14 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue