Combo · ALT WIN

Gutter Palace × Keeper of Masks × Invert Timelines — 4/4 in one turn

6 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.)

• Keeper of Masks ×1 UNL-081 · enabler · mind

  [Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) [Temporary] (Kill me at the start of my controller's Beginning Phase, before scoring.) When you play me, play two Reflection unit tokens here. Then do this: They become copies of me.

• Invert Timelines ×1 OGN-201 · enabler · chaos

  Each player discards their hand, then draws 4.

• Time Warp ×1 OGN-122 · enabler · mind

  Take a turn after this one. Banish this.

• Ekko, Recurrent ×1 OGN-110 · engine · mind

  [Accelerate] (You may pay 1 Energy + 1 Mind Power as an additional cost to have me enter ready.) [Deathknell] — Recycle me to ready your runes. (When I die, get the effect.)

• Malzahar, Fanatic ×1 OGN-113 · engine · mind

  Kill a friendly unit or gear, Exhaust: [Action] — [Add] 2 Power of any domain. (Use on your turn or in showdowns. Abilities that add resources can't be reacted to.)

Payoff

Deck

• Domain is Mind + Chaos: Ezreal, Prodigal Explorer (SFD-199) or Soul's Reflection (VEN-151).

Prerequisites

• One unit already at a battlefield you control, and Keeper of Masks already Hidden from a previous turn (Hidden is paid for when you hide it, so the reveal costs 0 Energy and never passes through your hand).
• Twelve runes. The turn costs 22 Energy and 6 Power: exhaust all 12 for Energy, recycle one for Ekko's Power, then Malzahar kills Ekko and the Deathknell readies the remaining 11 for a second 11 Energy. The 6 Power comes from Malzahar's Add 2 plus four rune recycles, and recycling needs no ready. One Energy is left over.
• The three Reflection-and-Keeper bodies are [Temporary] and die at the start of your Beginning Phase, at the same instant the win check fires. Both abilities are yours, so 383.3.d hands you the order and the win resolves first. This is settled, not an open reading - see the entry notes.
• Malzahar must already be on the board, since he needs to be ready to exhaust.
• 323.7 — LOSING THE BATTLEFIELD TRASHES THE HIDDEN KEEPER. A Cleanup step 5 reads "Remove all Hidden cards from all Battlefields that are not controlled by the same player and place them in their owner's Trash", and 466.5.c repeats it the instant somebody establishes Control. The Keeper of Masks waiting facedown from an earlier turn is not merely stranded if the battlefield changes hands — it goes to the trash, and with it the four-unit count this line needs.
• ONE ENERGY ANSWERS THE MIGHT-1 BODY THIS LINE NEEDS (Keeper of Masks (M1)). OGN-133 Flurry of Blades is Body, E1: "[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Deal 1 to all units at battlefields." 143.2.a kills on marked damage at or above Might, so it kills every 1-Might body on the board SIMULTANEOUSLY however many there are - the binding constraint is Might PER BODY, not the number of bodies, so no amount of going wider answers it - and 813.1.c.1 lets it land in any Closed State on either player's turn. TWO OF THOSE THREE REPAIRS ARE ILLEGAL HERE AND THE THIRD DOES NOT WORK — the same correction made on `keeper-of-masks-flurry-plaza-window` this morning, unapplied here until 2026-09-13. `prerequisites.easy` fixes this shell at **Mind + Chaos**, so 103.1.b forbids `OGN-266 Siphon Power` (Mind/**Order**) and `UNL-T03 Brush` (Green Father’s token, and he is Calm/**Order**) outright. `UNL-077 Soul Shepherd` is legal and repairs nothing: `UNL-081 Keeper of Masks` is a unit CARD at printed Might 1, not a token, and the two Reflections are 0 Might (187.6) so the +1 leaves them at 1, which 143.2.a still kills. **BUT UNLIKE THE SIBLING, THIS IDENTITY HAS ANSWERS, AND THE PALACE’S OWN *"EXACTLY"* BITES THE BEST ONE.** `UNL-147 Baron Nashor` is mono-Chaos and board-wide +2, lifting the Keeper to 3 and the Reflections to 2, clear of Flurry entirely — but he prints *"add the Baron Pit battlefield token to the board … If you do, I enter there"*, and 187.9 makes the Pit a battlefield, so HE IS A FIFTH BODY AT A BATTLEFIELD against a win condition asking for EXACTLY FOUR. He repairs the Might and breaks the count unless a pre-existing body is dropped. The body-count-NEUTRAL answer is a counter, and exactly two are legal here, both mono-Chaos, E2, `[Reaction]`: `SFD-136 Hard Bargain` (a tax) and `UNL-131 Abandon` (*"Counter a spell. Return it to its owner’s hand instead of putting it in their trash"*). All four Prevent cards are outside this identity, as they were on the sibling. **AND THE PRICE IS IN THIS ENTRY’S OWN RUNE LEDGER**: the notable above budgets the finishing turn to the rune and ends with ONE Energy left over. Abandon costs TWO. The protection is not a spare card, it is a restructured ledger.
• THE PAYOFF IS A GEAR AND NOTHING IN THIS ENTRY ANSWERS IT (added 2026-09-13, #200). Swept over every printing for an enemy-facing removal reaching a gear or an Equipment: **FIFTEEN, and every domain prints at least one**, so no identity hides from it. The cheapest is `SFD-005 Detonate` — Fury, E1 + 1 Power — *"Kill a gear. Its controller draws 2."* `OGN-022 Thermo Beam` kills ALL gear at `[Action]` speed. And the one a kill-predicate cannot see is `SFD-011 Angle Shot` (Fury, E2, `[Reaction]`), which chooses *"a unit and an Equipment with the same controller"* — a controller who need not be you — and DETACHES it, taking the Might Bonus (137.3.a) and the appended Effect Text (718.3, 719.1) off an enemy carrier **without killing anything**, at Reaction speed, and drawing a card. It is the pool’s only Reaction-speed answer to an attached Equipment. 718.5.b is why all of this reaches: *"Attached cards still can be chosen or targeted by game effects while Attached"*, even though 718.2 makes their printed text Inactive.
• THE E10 + 4 POWER ENABLER SITS IN THE ONE WINDOW THE RULES GUARANTEE, AND THIS LINE HANDS THE OPPONENT THE HAND IT WILL BE ANSWERED FROM (added 2026-09-13, #200). **359.3.c**: *"Other players have an opportunity to play Reactions before the resolution of spells."* A UNIT or GEAR payoff never gets that window — 337.2 sends it straight to Step 4 Resolve — and a BATTLEFIELD payoff is not removable at all (170.3, 170.4). A SPELL is the one thing the process stops for, and **425.1.c** with **425.1.c.1** refunds nothing. `OGN-122 Time Warp` at **E10 + 4 Power** is the largest single cost any finisher in this catalogue pays, all of it spent before a counter resolves, and countering it ends the line outright — no extra turn, so the win check never arrives. Eleven counters exist, every one `[Reaction]`, and Calm prints five; `OGN-045 Defy` and `VEN-152 Rebuttal` are the two priced out by Time Warp's own cost, which is the one thing its size buys. AND THE LINE ARMS THE ANSWER ITSELF: step 4 plays `OGN-201 Invert Timelines`, whose text is *"Each player discards their hand, then draws 4"* — EACH PLAYER — — the step states only your own half. The opponent gets no turn, but 312.2.c hands them priority in every Closed State this combo opens on your turn, so FOUR FRESH CARDS ARE FOUR FRESH CHANCES to be holding one of the eleven, or `SFD-005 Detonate` at E1 + 1 Fury Power aimed at the Gutter Palace itself.

Bodies no card supplies

Reveal Keeper of Masks from Hidden for 0 Energy, playing it to the battlefield you control: it plus two Reflection copies join the unit already there. Four units at battlefields

Steps

1. Play Ekko, Recurrent (5 Energy + 1 Mind Power).
2. Play Gutter Palace (4 Energy). Gear enters ready (143.4), but its adjust ability is not needed here.
3. Malzahar: kill Ekko, exhaust, Add 2 Power. Ekko's Deathknell recycles him and readies your runes.
4. Play Time Warp (10 Energy + 4 Power): you get the next turn with no opponent turn in between.
5. Play Invert Timelines (3 Energy + 1 Power): discard your hand, draw 4. Hand is now exactly 4.
6. Reveal Keeper of Masks from Hidden for 0 Energy, playing it to the battlefield you control: it plus two Reflection copies join the unit already there. Four units at battlefields.
7. Pass. At the start of your extra turn's Beginning Phase, order the win check ahead of the three Temporary kills: you win (195).

How it ends

win the game on your extra turn, with no opponent turn in between

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Reddit r/riftboundtcg — "Ezreal (blue/purple) OTK from 1 point", the 7-card list and step-by-step 2026-06-23
• Reddit r/riftboundtcg — "The Gutter Palace List" (RQ Vancouver report, witnesses in-thread) 2026-06-04
• YouTube - Turn 'em Sideways!, same interview - the Beginning Step has no window, said in a player's own words (rule 335) 2026-06-25

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-04 2026-09-04 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue