Combo · ENGINE
Jayce kills a gear to play the Vanguard Armory for its Power cost alone — three Recruits a turn from turn two
Pieces
- Jayce, Man of Progress ×1
SFD-084 · engine · mind
When you play me, you may kill a friendly gear. If you do, you may play a gear with Energy cost no more than 7 Energy from hand this turn, ignoring its Energy cost. (You must still pay its Power cost.)
- Vanguard Armory ×1
SFD-168 · payoff · order
Exhaust: Play three 1 Might Recruit unit tokens. (You may play them to different locations.)
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains are Mind and Order; the source builds it under Renata Glasc, and names the Gold generation of the early game as what pays the Armory's Power.
Prerequisites
- SEVEN IS THE BRACKET AND THE ARMORY IS EXACTLY SEVEN. 'a gear with Energy cost no more than 7' against E7 - one point more and Jayce cannot cheat it. The Power cost is NOT waived: the card says 'ignoring its Energy cost' and its reminder says 'You must still pay its Power cost'.
- IT COSTS A GEAR TO DO IT. 'You may kill a friendly gear' is a cost of the trigger, so the deck needs a spare gear on the board - which in the source's shell is the Gold tokens its early game makes, and a Gold token is a gear (187.5).
- AFTER THE FIRST TURN IT IS THREE BODIES A TURN FOR NOTHING. The Armory's own cost is just its exhaust, so it readies in every Awaken (315.1.b) and pays three Recruits a turn thereafter.
- THE RECRUITS ENTER EXHAUSTED (143.4) and 'you may play them to different locations' - 355.2.b makes those locations valid, so they can be placed at a battlefield you control rather than walked there. That is the same relief desert-call-vi-sand-soldier-plaza gets from 355.2.a.
- THE SOURCE PULLED IT OUT OF ITS OWN DECK, and the entry says so: 'I more recently took it out because it felt inconsistent'. It needs Jayce, the Armory and a spare gear in hand at the same time.
- The Armory is already in two entries - heimerdinger-vanguard-armory-recruits and plaza-armory-miss-fortune - and neither of them addresses its 7 Energy cost. This one is about paying for it.
Steps
- Have a spare friendly gear on the board (a Gold token qualifies) and the Vanguard Armory in hand.
- Play Jayce, Man of Progress (4 Energy). His play trigger: kill the spare gear.
- This turn you may play a gear costing no more than 7 Energy from hand ignoring its Energy cost - play the Vanguard Armory for its 1 Power only.
- From your next turn on, exhaust the Armory: three 1 Might Recruit tokens, placed at your base or at any battlefield you control (355.2.b).
- It readies every Awaken (315.1.b), so that is three bodies a turn for free.
Per iteration
the Vanguard Armory in play for 4 Energy + 1 Power instead of 7 + 1, and three Recruits a turn thereafter
How it ends
engine only - three tokens a turn once the Armory lands, and the discount is one-shot per Jayce
Sources
Published elsewhere
- YouTube — Turn 'em Sideways!, "Aggro Renata? Rethink how you build Renata Glasc | First 40" 2026-01-14
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
- Minería por leyenda — issue #62 (GitHub) 2026-09-06
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 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 2026-09-06 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-issue62-section3.md), issue #62 section 3. SFD-084 Jayce, Man of Progress appeared in no entry before this. The source's own caution is carried in the entry rather than smoothed away - the author removed it from his list for inconsistency - and the walk's addition is the arithmetic that makes it work at all: the Armory is exactly at the top of Jayce's 7 Energy bracket, and the Power cost is explicitly not part of what he waives. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Trap check: no attack designation; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; the Recruits are tokens but nothing here recycles one (185); no recall; 143.4 is respected - they enter exhausted. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16