Combo · ENGINE
A floored DISCOUNT and an unfloored REFUND are different objects — together they make the pool's cheapest Dragon pay you to cast it
Pieces
- Herald of Scales ×1
OGN-140 · engine · body
Your Dragons' Energy costs are reduced by 2 Energy, to a minimum of 1 Energy.
- Gentle Gemdragon ×1
UNL-104 · engine · body
When you play me or another Dragon, ready up to 2 runes.
- Eager Drakehound ×3
SFD-006 · payoff · fury
I enter ready.
Payoff
Deck
- Herald of Scales and Gentle Gemdragon are mono-Body and Eager Drakehound is mono-Fury, so 103.1.b.1 needs a Fury/Body legend: OGN-249 / OGN-300 Relentless Storm, SFD-183 / SFD-241 Purifier, UNL-183 / UNL-227 Pridestalker, or VEN-141 / VEN-190 Butcher of the Sands. None of the three cards is Signature, so 103.2.d.2 imposes nothing and all four names are open.
Prerequisites
- THE ARITHMETIC, ON EAGER DRAKEHOUND. Printed E3 + 1 Fury Power. Herald of Scales takes the Energy to max(1, 3 − 2) = 1. Gentle Gemdragon's trigger then readies two runes, which 164.2.a turns back into 2 Energy. Net: you pay 1 Energy and 1 Fury Power, and you get 2 Energy back — the body is Energy-POSITIVE, and the only real cost is the Power.
- AND THE FLOOR IS EXACTLY WHY THE TWO CARDS ARE NOT REDUNDANT. 356.4.e: 'If a discount applies a minimum cost, that minimum applies only to that discount.' A second Herald of Scales would floor at 1 again and buy nothing on a 3-Energy body; the Gemdragon's refund is not a discount at all, so no minimum can see it and it is worth a flat 2 Energy on every Dragon in the deck, cheap or expensive.
- THE REFUND FIRES ON THE GEMDRAGON ITSELF. 'When you play me or another Dragon' — so its own E8, taken to E6 by the Herald, is refunded 2 the moment it lands: net E4 for an 8 Might body.
- AND ON THE EXPENSIVE END IT IS A FLAT 4. `UNL-118 Elder Dragon` at E12 + 4 Power becomes E10 paid and 2 back, i.e. E8; `OGN-142 Mountain Drake` at E9 becomes E7 paid and 2 back, i.e. E5 for a 10 Might body. The floor never engages above E3, so the pair is worth exactly 4 Energy on every Dragon printed at E4 or more.
- 'READY UP TO 2 RUNES' IS BOUNDED BY WHAT YOU EXHAUSTED. 415.1.b: 'A Unit that is already Ready cannot be Readied again', and the same is true of a rune — a turn in which you have spent fewer than two runes gets less than the full refund. On a curve where the Dragon itself is the turn's big play, the runes are exhausted, so the refund is real.
- EAGER DRAKEHOUND IS ALSO A DOG. Its tags are Dog, Dragon and Noxus, so a single E1 body counts for `UNL-046 Friendship`, `UNL-167 Starhound`, `UNL-168 Undying Loyalty` and `UNL-177 Ivern, Friend to All` as well as for every Dragon rule — and no card in the pool carries two of Bird/Cat/Dog/Poro, so it is the cheapest way to fill the Dog slot in any deck that also wants Dragons.
- AND IT IS WHAT TURNS `SFD-094 Direwing` ON: 'I enter ready if you control another Dragon' costs E1 here to satisfy. This entry is the ramp; `direwing-dune-drake-ready-attacker` is one of the things the ramp pays for.
- IT DOES NOT SCORE. Nothing in Fury or Body converts a rune refund into points; the product is bodies on the board a turn or two earlier than the curve allows.
Steps
- Play Herald of Scales (E4). From now on every Dragon in the deck costs 2 Energy less, floored at 1 by its own clause.
- Play a Dragon. Pay max(1, printed − 2) Energy plus its printed Power in full — the discount is written on Energy only.
- If Gentle Gemdragon is already on the board, its trigger fires on that play: ready up to 2 runes. 164.2.a lets each of them pay 1 Energy again this turn.
- For Gentle Gemdragon's own entry, the order is the other way round and still works: the Herald takes it from E8 to E6, and its own 'when you play me' trigger refunds 2 of that.
- On Eager Drakehound the net is +1 Energy for the turn: 1 paid, 2 returned, and a 3 Might body that entered ready and can pay 144.2's exhaust to walk to a battlefield immediately.
- The refund does not carry: 167 empties the Rune Pool at the start of your next Main Phase, so the returned Energy has to be spent this turn.
How it ends
engine only — a flat 4 Energy off every Dragon printed at E4 or more, and a net gain of 1 Energy on Eager Drakehound; bounded per turn by how many runes were exhausted to ready back, and nothing here scores
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
- 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-rules-second-pass.md), issue #170 2026-09-07 record
How this entry was audited
REFUTE = a refutation pass, with its date and verdict · WOUNDED = the pass found a flaw and the entry was rewritten · BUDGETED = the pass checked the recycle-and-draw ledger · lens = the hunt that proposed it.
HAND-WALKED 2026-09-07, issue #170, from `herald-of-scales-dragon-discount` and `gentle-gemdragon-dragon-ready`; SFD-006 Eager Drakehound was in ZERO entries and is the cheapest Dragon in the pool. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; the Dragon population (19 names) was enumerated from data/cards.json by tag. The content is the discount/refund distinction: 356.4.e is usually cited to stop two discounts stacking below a floor, and the constructive reading is that a REFUND is not a discount and no floor reaches it. Trap check: the Power component is stated as unreduced (the Herald's clause says Energy); the refund is bounded by 415.1.b on already-ready runes; 167 is cited so the Energy is not claimed to bank; the Dog tag is checked against the measured fact that no pool card carries two of the four tags.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16