Combo · ENGINE

Isolate and Sneaky Deckhand — the Conquer that never leaves your hand

2 cards · chaos · verified

Pieces

• Isolate ×1 UNL-124 · engine · chaos

  Move an enemy unit from a battlefield to its base. Then, if there's an enemy unit alone at that battlefield, draw 1.

• Sneaky Deckhand ×1 OGN-176 · payoff · chaos

  You may play me to an open battlefield.

Payoff

Deck

• Any legend with Chaos. Both cards are mono-Chaos and 103.1.b.3 admits a single-domain card into any Domain Identity containing that domain, so all 16 Chaos legends in the pool run this pair — OGN-251, OGN-259, OGN-263, OGN-267, OGS-017, SFD-185, SFD-195, SFD-199, SFD-203, UNL-185, UNL-193, UNL-197, UNL-201, VEN-143, VEN-151, VEN-155.
• Five Energy in one Main Phase and nothing else. 164.2.a gives each Basic Rune '[E]: [Reaction] — Add [1]', so the gate is five ready runes; no Power is spent, no card is exhausted and no body has to be on the board first.
• An opponent's battlefield whose garrison is exactly one unit.

Prerequisites

• WHY THIS IS A DIFFERENT LINE FROM charm-evacuate-conquer AND NOT A VERSION OF IT. That entry pays 1 Energy + 1 Calm Power and then spends a Standard Move — which means a body that was already deployed and has been readied since (143.4 makes a unit enter exhausted, 315.1.b readies it in your next Awakening, 144.2 / 420.3.a make its own exhaust the cost of the move). This one pays 5 Energy and two cards and needs NO board presence at all: the walker arrives from hand. The two are a tempo/Energy trade with different prerequisites, which is why both are catalogued. They are also different decks: Charm is mono-Calm, so running the walkers beside it needs a Calm/Chaos legend, while this pair is mono-Chaos under any of the sixteen.
• THE PERMISSION, AND WHY IT IS THE PERMISSION THAT FORCES THE ORDER. 355.2.a: 'By default, Valid locations include the controller's Base or a Battlefield the controller controls.' 355.2.b: 'Some Game Effects may grant players permission to play Units to locations that are not normally Valid. Such locations become Valid for the purposes of Playing the Unit.' Four printings in the pool carry that permission and all four are mono-Chaos — OGN-176 Sneaky Deckhand (E3 M2), OGN-193 Miss Fortune, Buccaneer (E4 P1 M4, whose second sentence extends it to every friendly unit), OGN-174 Sai Scout (E6 M5) and VEN-115 Ocean Drake (E8 P2 M7). The entry declares the cheapest. Note the contrast with charm-evacuate-conquer's own first notable: THERE the order has to be argued (entering first stages the Combat at 323.9 and opens it at 323.13 in the same Cleanup, and 155 then bars the spell). HERE the order is not a trap to avoid but a precondition of the card: the battlefield is not open until Isolate has resolved, so playing the Deckhand first is simply not a legal choice of location. 822.1.c says where the check happens — a permission of this kind 'adds options to locations that are valid for a Unit to be played to during the Make Relevant Choices step of Playing a Card', which is 355.2.
• 'OPEN' IS TWO CONDITIONS AND BOTH ARE MET. 170.11.c: 'Battlefields can be "open." This means they are unoccupied and uncontrolled.' 170.11.a ('occupied … means they have a Unit present') fails because the garrison of exactly one has gone to its own base and your Deckhand has not been played yet; 170.11.b ('uncontrolled … means no player controls them') holds because the Cleanup after the Move strips their Control at 323.6 — 'Players lose control of any controlled Battlefields without their Units occupying them if the turn is in an Open State and there is no Showdown or Combat ongoing there.' Reading the word as 'uncontrolled' alone is a half-definition; it is the correction applied to two sibling entries on 2026-09-06 (issue #146), and this entry is written against the full text from the start.
• THE CLEANUPS ARE NAMED, NOT ASSUMED. Isolate's effect is a Move by effect (449), so 319.8 and 453 ('When a Move action is complete, perform a Cleanup') make the first Cleanup an Outstanding Task, held until the chain finishes resolving by 321 / 321.1. That is the Cleanup that runs 323.6. The Deckhand then enters the Board, which is 319.6 — 'After any number of Game Objects enter or leave the Board' — and that is the second Cleanup, the one that stages the Showdown.
• CONTESTED IS APPLIED BY BEING PLAYED, WHICH THE RULES SAY IN TERMS. 190.3.a.1: 'Units moving to or being played to a battlefield apply Contested status if that battlefield is not already Contested and that Unit's controller does not already control that battlefield.' 190.3.a states the general form the same way ('Moves or otherwise becomes present there'). 450 is NOT cited anywhere in this entry: it is written about 'the Unit or Units that moved' and no unit of yours moves in this line.
• THE CONQUER, RULE BY RULE, AND NO COMBAT IS EVER STAGED. 323.8 stages a Showdown at each Battlefield Contested was applied to; 323.9 stages NO Combat, because it requires 'Units present controlled by opposing players' and the opponent has none there. 344.2 is the paragraph written for exactly this board — 'If Control of a Battlefield is Contested, there aren't units controlled by different players there, and the turn is in a Neutral Open State, a Showdown is opened during the next Cleanup' — and 323.12 is its Cleanup step. 345 gives you Focus as the player who applied Contested, 348 closes it when all pass, 348.2.a establishes Control and 348.2.a.1 says outright 'This results in a Conquer if that player has not yet scored that Battlefield this turn.' 469.1 makes it a Score and 471.1 gives the point. 466.5 is not the route and is not cited: it is a step of the Combat Resolution Step.
• TRAP 1 IS AVOIDED, NOT WORKED AROUND. No Combat is ever staged, so no Attacker designation is handed out (464.2.c.3) and this entry declares no attack — which is what 383.4.e, 807.1.d and 461 require of an entry that takes an empty battlefield. 143.4 makes the Deckhand enter exhausted and it costs nothing here, precisely because there is no Combat and he never moves.
• ISOLATE'S OWN DRAW NEVER FIRES IN THIS LINE, AND THE CARD IS ANTI-SYNERGIC WITH IT. The rider is 'Then, if there's an enemy unit alone at that battlefield, draw 1', and the pool settles 'alone' in its own reminder text — SFD-036 Lonely Poro, '(I'm alone if there are no other friendly units here.)' — so it is an own-side measurement and the clause asks for the OPPONENT to still have exactly one unit there. This line empties the battlefield to zero, so there is no enemy unit to be alone and no card comes back. Isolate pays its rider in the case this entry cannot use (a garrison of two, one moved) and pays nothing in the case it needs. Budget accordingly: 5 Energy for two cards and one point, with no replacement.
• IT MOVES ONE UNIT, SO IT CLOSES ONLY AGAINST A GARRISON OF EXACTLY ONE. Against two or more, 323.6 never fires, the battlefield stays occupied and controlled, the Deckhand has no legal location and the 3 Energy is not spent — you are out one card and 2 Energy, and you drew one back. The same ceiling charm-evacuate-conquer and amateur-recital-free-evacuation declare; UNL-107 Stare Down and renekton-stare-down-evacuate are the lines that scale, and they are Body.
• THE OPPONENT HAS EXACTLY ONE WINDOW, AND IT IS NOT BETWEEN THE TWO CARDS. 312.2.a gives Priority in a Neutral Open State only 'during THEIR Main Phase', so on your turn the opponent never holds it there — the gap between the Cleanup that opens the battlefield and your play of the Deckhand is not a window at all. What they do get is the Closed State that playing Isolate itself opens (312.2.c / 312.2.d), where 813.1.c.1 lets a [Reaction] card be played 'during Closed States on any player's turn'. The concrete counterplay is an [Ambush] body: 822.1.b makes it 'I may be played to a battlefield where you control Units' with '[Reaction] as long as I'm being played to a battlefield where you control Units', and at that moment they still control units there. A second body lands, Isolate moves one and leaves one — the battlefield stays theirs, the Deckhand has no open location, and the rider above finally fires, so the line degrades into a 2-Energy cantrip rather than a blowout.
• THE SUBSTITUTIONS, AND WHAT EACH COSTS. Evacuator: OGN-043 Charm is Calm (1 Energy + 1 Calm Power, and needs a Calm/Chaos legend); UNL-038 Skyward Strike is Calm; SFD-129 Temptation is Chaos and moves TWO, at E2 + E2 [Repeat] and not more (820.1.c.3, 'Each Repeat Cost can be paid only a single time'), which is the version that closes against a garrison of two; UNL-107 Stare Down is Body. Two Chaos bodies also evacuate — OGN-191 Maddened Marauder (E5 M4, 'move a unit from a battlefield to its base') and OGN-188 Zaunite Bouncer (E4 P2 M2, 'return another unit at a battlefield to its owner's hand') — and 355.9.a.1 ("'Unit,' 'gear,' and 'rune' refer to objects on the Board unless specified otherwise") is why their unqualified 'a unit' reaches an enemy, with OGN-168 Fight or Flight as the pool evidence: it prints the same sentence and is banned in both formats as removal. Neither can be the walker as well as the evacuator, because 355.2 fixes the play location during the play steps, before their own trigger has resolved and before the Cleanup of 323.6. Walker: the three dearer printings named above. Every combination stays inside one Domain Identity except the Calm evacuators.
• 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.

Steps

1. Your Main Phase, in a Neutral Open State (310.1, 155, 312.2.a). The opponent's battlefield is garrisoned by exactly one unit; you need nothing on the board.
2. Play Isolate for 2 Energy. It resolves and moves that single defender to its OWN base (449, a Move by effect; not a Recall, 455). Its draw rider does not fire — no enemy unit is left there to be alone.
3. The Cleanup that 319.8 / 453 make outstanding runs once the chain empties (321 / 321.1): 323.6 strips their Control. The battlefield is now unoccupied and uncontrolled, i.e. open in the full sense of 170.11.c.
4. Still the same Main Phase: play Sneaky Deckhand for 3 Energy, choosing that battlefield as his location (355.2, permitted by 355.2.b and his own text; 822.1.c is where such a permission applies). 143.4 makes him enter exhausted, which costs nothing here.
5. 190.3.a.1 applies Contested, because he was BEING PLAYED TO a battlefield his controller does not control. He carries no trigger, so the chain empties and the state is Neutral Open.
6. The Cleanup that 319.6 makes outstanding stages a Showdown (323.8) and NO Combat (323.9 needs units of opposing players), and 323.12 / 344.2 open it. 345 gives you Focus.
7. Everyone passes, the Showdown closes (348), 348.2.a establishes your Control and 348.2.a.1 makes it a Conquer: 469.1 Scores it and 471.1 gives the point.

Per iteration

one Conquer for 5 Energy and two cards, with nothing on the board beforehand, no exhaust paid, no Power spent and no combat damage dealt or taken

How it ends

engine only — one point per pair, bounded by the 3 copies each of 103.2.b and by 470 (one Score per Battlefield per turn), which a Duel's two battlefields (485.4) cap at 2 a turn; it never compounds and it does nothing against a garrison of two

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Combo hunt: uncatalogued Chaos units — issue #146 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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