Combo · ALT WIN

Gutter Palace held at exactly 4/4 — both counters moved at Reaction speed

10 cards · mind · 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.)

• Chakram Dancer ×3 UNL-071 · engine · mind

  [Ambush] (You may play me as a [Reaction] to a battlefield where you have units.) When you play me, give your other units here [Shield] this turn. (+1 Might while they're defenders.)

• Retreat ×3 OGN-104 · engine · mind

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Return a friendly unit to its owner's hand. Its owner channels 1 rune exhausted.

• Premonition ×3 SFD-087 · engine · mind

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Draw 3.

Payoff

Deck

• Every card is mono-Mind, so 103.1.b.1 admits the whole line under any of the Mind legends.
• No battlefield of yours is needed at all: the Palace counts 'units at battlefields', not units at battlefields you control, so it never competes for the one battlefield slot 485.4.a allows.

Prerequisites

• THE PROBLEM THE FEEDERS SOLVE IS THAT gutter-palace HAS TO PASS AT 4/4 AND SURVIVE. The catalogued one-card entry adjusts with the Palace's own discard/exhaust ability and then waits, but that ability has no [Reaction], so from the end of your Main Phase to the check at 315.2.a you cannot touch either counter. One removal spell on the opponent's turn takes you to 3 units and the check fails.
• THE FOUR DIALS SPAN THE LATTICE AND THAT IS NOT THE SAME AS ANSWERING A STATE, WHICH IS WHAT COSTS CARDS (amended 2026-09-14, #200). Written as (change in units at battlefields, change in hand) with the card's OWN departure from hand counted, Retreat is (-1,0) — hand -1 on the play and +1 on the return; Chakram Dancer is (+1,-1); Premonition is (0,+2) — hand -1 on the play and +3 on the draw; the Palace's own ability is (+1,-1) and has no [Reaction], so 381 confines it to your own turn and it is unavailable in this window. Those three Reaction vectors do generate every displacement, so nothing here is unreachable — but a BFS over them, each capped at 3 copies by 103.2.b, prices the reaching: a hand one too many costs TWO cards, a hand one short costs THREE, and a board one body short costs FOUR. Every one of those is Energy that had to be banked through your own turn (167 empties the Pool, not the runes) for a window the OPPONENT times, so a four-card answer is not an answer. Nothing else in mono-Mind moves the unit count UPWARD at Reaction speed, which is why Chakram Dancer is load-bearing; what the set lacks is a move on the HAND axis alone.
• THE REMOVAL OPENS THE WINDOW IT NEEDS. A [Reaction] card 'can be played during Closed States on any player's turn' (813.1.c.1), and 312.2.c hands out priority in a Closed State — which is exactly what the opponent's own spell or ability creates when it goes on the Chain. 316.5.b means you get nothing in their Neutral Open State, so the correction has to be made IN RESPONSE to their action, not after it: count forward. They kill one of your four, you answer with Chakram Dancer to five, their removal resolves and you are back at four UNITS — and at THREE CARDS, because Chakram Dancer is a unit played from your hand and its vector is (+1,-1). That is the state the notable above prices at three more cards from this entry's own dials, and at ONE from OGN-083 Consult the Past cast from hand; the correction is not finished when the bodies are right.
• You must bank runes through your own turn to pay for it. 167 empties the Rune Pool 'at the start of each player's Main Phase and the end of each player's turn' — the POOL, not the runes — so ready runes survive into their turn, and 164.2.a and 164.2.b are both [Reaction]. Premonition's 3 Power comes from recycling three of them (164.2.b carries no exhaust in its cost), at the price of sending them to the Rune Deck (161.2.b).
• The Bird the Palace makes is a token, and it counts: 185.1 makes 'token' an intrinsic category of Game Objects and 185.2.b says 'Token units have a Might', so it is a unit at a battlefield. It also carries [Deflect], so 809.1.c taxes an opponent a rainbow to choose it — the cheapest of the four bodies to protect.
• The check is measured at 315.2.a and nothing can be added at that instant: 383.2.a.1 makes 'if you have exactly 4 cards in hand and exactly 4 units at battlefields' part of the Trigger Condition rather than the Effect. Your Draw Step is 315.4, AFTER the check, so the hand you pass with is the hand you are checked on — that is what makes a fixed hand size holdable at all.
• Sibling entries: gutter-palace is the one-card version and is left in place as the floor; gutter-palace-keeper-time-warp reaches the same check inside an extra turn, where the opponent never acts and none of these dials are needed. This is the version for a game where they do act.
• ONE ENERGY ANSWERS THE DIAL ITSELF, AND *EXACTLY* IS WHY ONE BODY IS ENOUGH (added 2026-09-13, #200). `UNL-088 Gutter Palace` makes its own bodies — *"Discard 1, :rb_exhaust:: Play a 1 :rb_might: Bird unit token with [Deflect]"* — and 187.7 fixes that token at 1 Might by rule, so `OGN-133 Flurry of Blades` (Body, E1, `[Reaction]`, *"Deal 1 to all units at battlefields"*) kills every Bird on the board at once under 143.2.a. [Deflect] does not help: 355.10.d makes a deal-to-ALL programmatic rather than targeted, so 809.1.c charges nothing however many Birds are standing. AND THIS WIN CONDITION IS THE ONE THE CATALOGUE HAS THAT CAN BE OVERSHOT: the Palace asks for *"exactly 4 cards in hand and exactly 4 units at battlefields"*, so an opponent does not have to clear the board — REMOVING ONE BODY IS ENOUGH, and so is HANDING YOU A CARD. Every other finisher here asks for MORE of something — with ONE exception, `VEN-138 Shen, Leader of the Kinkou Order`, which pays *"if there is exactly one other unit you control here"* and heads two finishers (narrowed 2026-09-13). What is still unique to the Palace is the axis: **Shen’s count is something the opponent can only push DOWN, while the Palace’s hand size is one they can push UP BY HELPING YOU.** And that half has a card: `SFD-005 Detonate` (Fury, E1 + 1 Power) reads *"Kill a gear. Its controller draws 2."* — **the Gutter Palace IS a gear**, so one Energy and one Fury Power destroys the win condition AND pushes the hand dial in the same card. `OGN-033 Shakedown` (Fury, E2 + 1 Power, `[Reaction]`) offers *"Deal 6 to it unless its controller has you draw 2"* — either axis, the OPPONENT’s choice, inside the window. Before this note no Gutter Palace entry named gear removal at all, against a win condition that IS the gear. The timing is what makes it hard to defend rather than merely fragile. The clause sits immediately after *"At the start of your Beginning Phase"*, so 383.2.a.1 makes it part of the Trigger Condition and it is READ WHEN THE TRIGGER IS PLACED — there is nothing to respond to afterwards. And the Palace’s own dial is an Activated Ability with an exhaust in its cost, so 381 (*"All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player’s Turn and during an Open State"*) confines it to YOUR turn, which is never the turn on which the opponent moves a dial. The answer therefore has to be BANKED and held through their whole turn — WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS ENTRY BUYS (corrected 2026-09-13: this sentence was copied verbatim from `gutter-palace`, where it is true, and on this entry it denied its own thesis against its own steps 2 to 4, four of its other notables and its own `terminatesIn`).
• THE TWO ONE-CARD DIALS THIS ENTRY DOES NOT RUN ARE BOTH MONO-MIND, SO THIS IS AN AMENDMENT AND NOT A DIFFERENT DECK (2026-09-14, #200). VEN-052 Mesmerize (E1 + 1 Power, [Reaction]) reads 'Choose one — • Return a friendly unit to its owner's hand. • Give an enemy unit -2 Might this turn': its FIRST mode duplicates Retreat at (-1,0), and its SECOND is (0,-1), the pure hand decrement the set has no other route to. OGN-083 Consult the Past (E4, [Reaction]) is (0,+1) cast from hand — one card leaves, two arrive. Adding them takes the worked states from two, three and four cards to one, one and two. AND CONSULT THE PAST MUST BE CAST FROM HAND HERE, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF HOW THE CARD NORMALLY WANTS TO BE USED: it carries [Hidden], and 811.1.b plays a hidden card ignoring its base cost — but a card played from face down never leaves your hand, so from [Hidden] it is (0,+2) and overshoots the very state it was brought for. Free is the wrong price here.

Bodies no card supplies

Count FORWARD and correct in that same window: removal aimed at one of your four is answered with Chakram Dancer as an [Ambush] (822.1.b), so their spell resolves back down to four; an unwanted fifth body is answered with Retreat; a hand short of four is answered with Premonition for E2 and 3 Power recycled off your banked runes

Steps

1. Play Gutter Palace (E4). Gear is not covered by 143.4, so it enters ready and its dial is available the same turn.
2. In your Main Phase, set the two counters to exactly 4 and 4, using the Palace's own ability (discard 1, exhaust: a [Deflect] Bird at a battlefield) as the free adjustment.
3. End your turn holding ready runes rather than spending them: 167 empties the Rune Pool, not the runes.
4. On the opponent's turn, whenever they put a spell or ability on the Chain the state closes and 312.2.c gives you priority (813.1.c.1 admits a [Reaction] card there).
5. Count FORWARD and correct in that same window: removal aimed at one of your four is answered with Chakram Dancer as an [Ambush] (822.1.b), so their spell resolves back down to four; an unwanted fifth body is answered with Retreat; a hand short of four is answered with Premonition for E2 and 3 Power recycled off your banked runes.
6. At the start of your Beginning Phase (315.2.a) the Palace's trigger is placed, 383.2.a.1 finds exactly 4 and exactly 4, and rule 195 wins the game.

How it ends

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

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Issue #161 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #161 — uncatalogued feeders of the finishers 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue