Combo · ALT WIN

Heimerdinger copying the Vanguard Armory — ten bodies at the Plaza for one Armory

3 cards · order + mind · verified

Pieces

• Vanguard Armory ×1 SFD-168 · engine · order

  Exhaust: Play three 1 Might Recruit unit tokens. (You may play them to different locations.)

• Heimerdinger, Inventor ×1 OGN-111 · engine · mind

  I have all Exhaust abilities of all friendly legends, units, and gear.

• The Grand Plaza ×1 OGN-293 · payoff

  When you hold here, if you have 7+ units here, you win the game.

Payoff

Deck

• Legend domains must cover Mind and Order — the mind/order legends are OGN-265 / OGN-308 Herald of the Arcane, OGS-021 Lady of Luminosity - Starter, SFD-201 / SFD-249 Chem-Baroness, UNL-199 / UNL-235 Deceiver. (Rebuilt from the census by test/legend-lines.test.ts, 2026-09-07; an earlier line named a legend that cannot hold one of the entry's domains.)
• Control the Plaza before the winning Beginning Phase — 469.2 defines a Hold as maintaining Control.

Prerequisites

• THIS IS plaza-armory-miss-fortune AT HALF THE PRICE, and the delta is one card. That entry reaches ten bodies with TWO Vanguard Armories and Miss Fortune, Captain: E7+1P + E7+1P + E5+1P = 19 Energy and 3 Power. Heimerdinger copies the second Armory instead of buying it, so this is E7+1P + E3+1P = 10 Energy and 2 Power for the same ten bodies, and it keeps producing six a turn instead of relying on Miss Fortune's once-a-turn ready.
• It is also the ALT_WIN half of a catalogued ENGINE. heimerdinger-vanguard-armory-recruits walks exactly these two cards and its own terminatesIn says 'it wins through a Grand Plaza hold at 7+ units, not on its own'. This entry is that sentence made explicit, with the count and the turn structure walked.
• The composition through ready-recruits-grand-plaza OVER-CHARGES and that is why this is written out. That bridge entry carries SFD-171 Renata Glasc, Industrialist because a token minted at your base enters exhausted (143.4) and cannot pay 144.2's move cost the same turn. The Armory needs neither: its own reminder text says 'You may play them to different locations', and 355.2.a already lists 'a Battlefield the controller controls' among the default valid locations, so the Recruits are born AT the Plaza. No walk, no Industrialist, no Order requirement beyond the Armory's own.
• The turn structure, counted against its own quantities. Big turn: play the Armory (E7 + 1 Order Power) and activate it at once for 3 Recruits at the Plaza; play Heimerdinger (E3 + 1 Mind Power) to the Plaza, where he enters exhausted (143.4) and cannot copy anything yet. Four units there. Next Main Phase: Awaken (315.1.b) readies both, the Armory gives 3 and Heimerdinger's copy gives 3 — ten units at the Plaza. Survive the opponent's turn with seven of the ten. Your Beginning Phase Holds (315.2.b.2), the Trigger Condition finds 7+ (383.2.a.1) and 195 wins the game.
• Three spare bodies is the margin, and it is the point of preferring this to a seven-exactly line. 465.2.c.3 forces the attacker to assign lethal damage in full to one unit before moving to the next, so clearing ten bodies (nine 1-Might Recruits plus Heimerdinger at 3) costs 12 damage, not 10. CORRECTED 2026-10-27 (#503): 12 is the full-clear figure. The attacker has to kill only N - 6 = 4 of the ten and picks the cheapest, four 1-Might Recruits: 4 damage (465.2.c, 465.2.c.3), not 12; Heimerdinger need not be touched.
• R30 = B is not engaged. That ruling was about Heimerdinger copying an ability that carries its own 'Use my abilities only while I'm at a battlefield' clause (Renata Glasc, Mastermind). The Vanguard Armory prints no such sentence, so the copy carries no location condition — Heimerdinger could stand at your base. He stands at the Plaza anyway, because there he is one of the seven.
• The Grand Plaza must be the battlefield in play: each player provides three and only 1 is used (485.4.a), randomly in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5); 103.4.c and Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid a second copy by name. And it is symmetric — an opponent who parks seven units on it wins the same way.
• UNL-077 Soul Shepherd (Mind, "Your token units have +1 Might") is a CONTINUOUS MODIFIER, not a 702 buff, so it applies to every token at once: 143.2.a + 465.2.c.3 make seven 1-Might Recruits cost 7 damage to clear and seven 2-Might Recruits cost 14, and it makes the whole 1-Might Plaza family immune to OGN-133 Flurry of Blades ("Deal 1 to all units at battlefields"). He is Mind, so he narrows an all-Order line to Mind/Order (#159, 2026-09-06). CORRECTED 2026-10-27 (#503): those totals price a full clear, and a full clear is not what stops the Plaza. It needs 7 units at the Hold (383.2.a.1), so against seven the opponent kills one and picks which (465.2.c, 465.2.c.3; with no [Tank] nothing orders the assignment, 465.2.c.6): the Shepherd raises that price from 1 damage to 2, not from 7 to 14. The doubling stands; the totals do not.
• CROSS-REFERENCE: herald-heimerdinger-armory-plaza is the one-turn version of this line under Herald of the Arcane (seven Recruits in a single Main Phase); this three-card row is the version for the other Mind/Order legends and takes two turns (#166, 2026-09-07).
• A BLOODLESS CONQUER IS NOT A FAIT ACCOMPLI, AND 46 OF THE 47 ENTRIES CITING 344.2 DID NOT SAY SO (added 2026-09-12, #187 batch 25). **316.8.b.1.a**: during a Non-Combat Showdown *"units controlled by a different player may become present at the Battlefield where the Showdown is"*, which converts it to a COMBAT Showdown in the following cleanup - so the opponent can turn your uncontested walk-in into a fight. 316.8.c is the permission (a Showdown is a Window of Opportunity for [Action] and [Reaction] cards). **The answer set is THREE CARDS, swept on the ACTOR rather than on the destination**: `OGN-173 Ride the Wind` (Chaos, E2+1), `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` (Calm/Order, E3+2) and `SFD-184 Relentless Pursuit` (Fury/Body, E2+1) - twelve printings move a friendly unit, and nine of them send it to base or need a body already there. They span three identities, so **no identity is safe**; and `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` is the worst to walk into, because it STUNS your body on the way in, and 423.1.b removes a stunned unit`s contribution to the damage step while 423.1.c keeps its full Might as the price to kill it - one 3-Energy card takes the unit and the battlefield. **[Ambush] is not a fourth answer**: 822.1.b needs a battlefield where the player already has units, and the defining feature of that board is that they have none there. **THE REMEDY IS A COUNTERSPELL, AND A FIRST VERSION OF THIS NOTABLE SAID SOMETHING FALSE THAT IS WITHDRAWN HERE (corrected within the hour, 2026-09-12).** It said that because all three answers are [Action] and 358.4 admits an Action card only as the card that CLOSES the state, the attacker - who holds Focus by 345 and priority by 335.1 - could shut them out by playing any cheap Action card first. Every step is true and the conclusion is false, because **a Showdown is a LOOP, not a single window**: 346 - *"When the last item on the chain resolves and the turn returns to an Open State during a Showdown, Focus passes, and the next Player gains both Focus and Priority"* - with 347.1.b and 347.2.a. Closing the state buys a lock-out lasting exactly that CHAIN; when it resolves the Showdown reopens, Focus passes TO THE DEFENDER, and they play their answer into an open Showdown after all. **The real sequence**: walk in, take Focus, **PASS** (acting first gains nothing); they play the answer, which closes the state as it is played; **you COUNTER it**, since 358.4`s other half now admits only [Reaction] and all eleven of the pool`s counters are Reaction, and 425.1.c refunds them nothing; all players then pass in sequence, 347.2.a ends the Showdown, and 348.2.a with 348.2.a.1 give you Control and the Conquer. The cheap counter is `OGN-045 Defy` (Calm, E1 + 1 Power, *"counter a spell that costs no more than 4 Energy and no more than one rainbow"*), which covers all three answers; `OGN-064 Wind Wall` is the unconditional one. **So the protection narrows to pairs containing CALM** - it is not the one-Energy insurance any deck can buy.
• OPPONENT BOARD AND KILL PRICE - ADDED 2026-10-27 (#503). THE BOARD IT WINS ON: the opponent has no ready body in their base on their turn that can reach the Plaza and deal 4 damage, because the ten complete in your second main phase, their whole turn intervenes, and the Hold is your next Beginning Phase (315.2.b.2, 383.2.a.1). Any enemy unit in their base is readied in their Awaken and can Standard Move to the Plaza (144.2, 144.4.a); units at their own battlefield cannot (144.4.a, 144.4.b) unless they have Ganking (144.4.c.1), and units they play that turn enter exhausted (143.4) unless [Accelerate]. N is 10 (nine 1-Might Recruits, 187.1, and Heimerdinger at M3), none with [Tank] or [Backline], so nothing orders the assignment (465.2.c.6). Four 1-Might Recruits die to 4 damage (142.4.b, 465.2.c.3), leaving six, so the price is the N - 6 = 4 cheapest units, here 4, not 12. The weakest window is the turn before, when only three Recruits and Heimerdinger are there: killing Heimerdinger (3 damage) leaves 3 + 3 = 6 Recruits after the Armory fires again, one short.

Steps

1. Establish Control of The Grand Plaza. A battlefield you provide starts uncontrolled (190.1): walk a body in, 190.3.a.1 applies Contested, 344.2 stages the Showdown, 348.2.a establishes Control and 348.2.a.1 makes it a Conquer worth 1 point.
2. Big turn: play the Vanguard Armory for E7 + 1 Order Power. Gear is not a unit, so 143.4 does not exhaust it — activate it the same turn for three 1 Might Recruits, played to the Plaza (its own reminder text plus 355.2.a).
3. Same turn: play Heimerdinger, Inventor for E3 + 1 Mind Power to the Plaza. He enters exhausted (143.4) and cannot use a copied exhaust ability yet. Four units at the Plaza.
4. Next Main Phase: 315.1.b has readied both. Exhaust the Armory for three Recruits, then exhaust Heimerdinger for three more off his copy of the same ability. Ten units at the Plaza.
5. Survive the opponent's turn with at least seven of the ten still there.
6. Your Beginning Phase: 315.2.b.2 Holds the Plaza, the Trigger Condition finds 7+ units here (383.2.a.1) and rule 195 wins the game.

How it ends

win the game on the second Hold after the Armory lands — ten bodies against a bar of seven, for 10 Energy and 2 Power across two Main Phases

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 36 finishers 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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