Combo · INFINITE
The Jhinpendium — Virtuoso, Ekko, Malzahar and Vi loop into Renata's points
Pieces
- Virtuoso ×1
UNL-181 · legend · fury/mind
When you play a spell, if you spent 4 Energy or more, you may banish it. Then, if there are four spells banished with me, put each in its trash, channel 4 runes, and draw 1.
- Ekko, Recurrent ×1
OGN-110 · engine · mind
[Accelerate] (You may pay 1 Energy + 1 Mind Power as an additional cost to have me enter ready.) [Deathknell] — Recycle me to ready your runes. (When I die, get the effect.)
- Malzahar, Fanatic ×1
OGN-113 · engine · mind
Kill a friendly unit or gear, Exhaust: [Action] — [Add] 2 Power of any domain. (Use on your turn or in showdowns. Abilities that add resources can't be reacted to.)
- Upstage Comedy ×1
UNL-009 · ready · fury
[Repeat] 2 Energy (You may pay the additional cost to repeat this spell's effect.) Ready a unit.
- Vi, Destructive ×1
OGN-036 · engine · fury
[Ganking] (I can move from battlefield to battlefield.) Recycle 1 from your trash: Give me +1 Might this turn.
- Consult the Past ×1
OGN-083 · enabler · mind
[Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Draw 2.
- Progress Day ×1
OGN-114 · enabler · mind
Draw 4.
- Renata Glasc, Mastermind ×1
SFD-088 · payoff · mind
1 Energy + 1 Mind Power: Draw 1. 4 Energy + 4 Mind Power, Exhaust: Score 1 point. Use my abilities only while I'm at a battlefield.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend is Virtuoso (UNL-181, Fury/Mind).
Run play
Prerequisites
- Same skeleton as the verified Lux loop: the Main Deck is empty, so a recycled card is the next draw; Ekko's death readies all twelve runes. What replaces Forge of the Future is Vi's free, unlimited recycle. Vi grows a point of Might per recycle and takes a battlefield for Renata; Brynhir Thundersong (OGN-026, 'opponents can't play cards this turn') protects the turn.
- Cost lines per pass: the Draw-2 cycle spends 11 Energy + 1 Power (Ekko 5E+1P, Upstage Comedy 2E, the 4-Energy draw spell) and takes back one full readying of every rune on the board plus Malzahar's 2 rainbow. Rainbow is universal Power (163.2.b) and pays Ekko's Mind cost, so no rune is recycled after the first pass and the board stays full. Net: (runes on board − 11) Energy and +1 Power per pass — break-even at 11 runes, +1 Energy at 12, so twelve runes on the board is a hard precondition. The Progress Day cycle spends 13 Energy + 2 Power for 12 Energy + 2 Power: −1 Energy, a draw pump for the passes that need spare draws, not an engine.
- Draw budget (filed as R7, RETIRED on 2026-09-04 as arithmetic rather than ruled - the joint loop ledger, issue #21 - and the ledger's answer is the one used here). Two cards return through the deck each pass (Ekko via his Deathknell, Upstage Comedy via Vi) and the 4-Energy spell draws exactly two, so the deck holds exactly two at the draw and never burns out. The debt arrives on the fourth pass, when Virtuoso puts all four banished spells in the trash at once: Vi recycles them for free but they need four draws, of which Virtuoso supplies one — the rest come from Renata's 1 Energy + 1 Mind Power: Draw 1. Recycle order is deterministic because Vi recycles one card at a time; 416.5 randomises only simultaneous recycles.
- TOURNAMENT RULES 505 IS WHY THIS LOOP MAY BE SHORTCUT AT AN EVENT, AND IT WAS CITED BY NOTHING (upgrade 2026-09-12, #191 batch 27; Tournament Rules, labelled). **505.2** - *"Players performing a loop must have each iteration of the loop be identical with no conditional actions"* - and **505.9** - *"If a sequence of actions is non-deterministic, it may not be shortcut and iterations must be performed manually."* Read against Core Rules 416.5, two or more cards recycled to the Main Deck simultaneously go to the bottom in RANDOM order, so a loop that recycles 2+ per pass is non-deterministic unless it draws all of them back. **The condition is checkable and this entry meets it**: the Main Deck is empty by construction, so every card recycled in a pass is drawn back inside that same pass and the random order never selects a subset. That means the *"zero spare draws"* invariant this catalogue maintains for a different reason - a fifth draw is Burn Out (431.1.a) on one side and a stranded random card on the other - is load-bearing a SECOND time, against a procedural rule it was not written for: it is exactly what makes the loop shortcuttable rather than hand-iterated at a table.
- NOTHING CAN FEED THE FOUR FROM OUTSIDE, AND THE PARAGRAPHS THAT SAY SO WERE NOT CITED (upgrade 2026-09-12, #187 batch 19). Swept: 27 non-[Flow] cards banish something, plus fourteen [Flow] spells that banish themselves under 829.1.b - and **not one can contribute**, because 411.6 requires the banish to be ATTRIBUTED to that Game Object`s own ability and 397 confines a component Linked Ability to Game Objects affected by the abilities it is linked with (394.1, 395 and 396 complete the set). Reaching for a second banisher is the obvious first move with this legend and it does not work. **The contrast is two words wide**: *"banished with me"* is 411.6 and as narrow as a check gets, while `VEN-143 Master of Shadows`` *"When you banish a card you own"* is 411.4 - responsibility rather than attribution - and is fed by all 41 sources including every Flow replay.
- 411.5.a DEFINES THE WORD 411.6 TURNS ON, AND RIDES WITH IT (self-audit upgrade 2026-09-12, #187 batch 20). 411.6`s first condition is that the action be ATTRIBUTED to the Game Object`s spell or ability, and **411.5.a is what that means: *"Spells and abilities have attribution for game actions, while players have responsibility."*** Without it a reader cannot tell 411.6`s first condition from its third, which is the responsibility one - and the pair is the whole reason that paragraph has three conditions rather than one.
- THE EMPTY MAIN DECK IS A ONE-TURN STATE THAT DESTROYS ITSELF, WHICH NO ENTRY SAYS AND NONE CITED. This loop’s premise is an empty Main Deck, and the Core Rules put a clock on it that is separate from 431.1.a’s Burn Out on a fifth draw. 315.4.b is the Draw Phase task, "The Turn Player draws 1", and 315.4.b.1 is automatic: "If there are no cards remaining in their Main Deck to draw, the Turn Player has been Burned Out." There is no "may". The Burn Out then costs three things in sequence — 431.2.b, "Recycles their trash into their Main Deck", whose own reminder reads "When multiple cards are Recycled to the Main Deck at the same time, those cards must be randomized", which ERASES the known bottom this loop stands on; 431.2.c, "Chooses an opponent to gain 1 point"; and 431.2.d, "Completes the remainder of the action that caused them to burn out", restated at 315.4.b.2 as "After completing the Burn Out the Turn Player still Draws 1." Riot’s worked example at 431.2.d IS this situation, word for word: "A player attempts to draw 1 during their Draw Phase while their Main Deck is empty." Since 315.4 Draw Phase precedes 316 Main Phase, THE DECK MUST BE EMPTIED AND THE LOOP MUST WIN INSIDE THE SAME MAIN PHASE — an empty Main Deck cannot be carried across a turn boundary at all, and the landing is exact rather than approximate: the turn before the kill must end with enough cards for that turn’s forced removals and no more. A mandatory mill makes it tighter, because 431.1 is written over moving cards "to any other zone in excess of the number of cards remaining", so 431.1.b Burns you Out for a [Burn N] exactly as 431.1.a does for a draw. And the one escape does not exist: VEN-022 Endless Riches is the pool’s ONLY card printing "Skip" (one row in the corpus), it is Fury, it banishes your hand and trash on entry, and its own "[Burn 7]" is itself a Burn Out under 431.1 against an empty deck — so it cannot save a loop even in principle.
Steps
- Play Ekko (5 Energy + 1 Power). Upstage Comedy (2 Energy) readies Malzahar. Malzahar kills Ekko: +2 rainbow; Ekko's Deathknell recycles him and readies your runes.
- Vi: recycle Upstage Comedy from the trash (free, +1 Might). Play Consult the Past or Downstage Dramatics for 4 Energy: draw 2 — Ekko and Comedy come back off the bottom of the empty deck. Banish the spell under Virtuoso.
- Alternate with the Progress Day cycle (draw 4) so the spells rotate; the fourth banish returns them to the trash, channels 4 runes and draws 1. Repeat.
- Once per four passes, recycle four already-exhausted runes for 4 Power just before the fourth banish resolves — a rune's Recycle this: Add Power has no exhaust in its cost — then let Virtuoso channel them straight back ready. That is +4 Energy and +4 Power for nothing, and it is the only thing that makes channel 4 runes do anything once all twelve runes are on the board (430.3). Supercycle net: +4 Energy, +4 Power per four passes after paying for the redraws.
- With Vi at a battlefield and Renata there: Renata scores 1; Comedy readies her; Vi recycles Comedy; Renata's Draw 1 gets it back. Repeat to 8.
How it ends
8 points
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Reddit r/riftboundtcg — "The Jhinpendium - Embrace Jhinfinity: A Primer for the Jhin - Virtuoso Ekko Combo", Enhame_ 2026-07-13
- Google Doc primer "Jhin-Virtuoso/Ekko Infinite Combo Summary" (Enhame_), cycles and costs quoted from the plain-text export 2026-07-13
- riftbound.gg deck "The Jhinpendium – Infinite Ekko Combo (Primer)" 2026-07-13
Walked here, in this project
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.
Community-documented as a pre-existing video combo refined into a written primer; the primer author says the video tutorial had mistakes, so walk the primer's lines, not the video. Lens L3 refuted every second-domain Ekko loop it tallied (L3-08) on Power deficit; none of those had Vi's free recycle or Virtuoso's channel, which is exactly what this route adds — the walk should re-tally with them. Aspirant's Climb, which the deck used to run, is banned and is not part of the loop. Card text verified against the corpus. REFUTE 2 (2026-09-03): WOUNDED but unbounded — the Draw-2 pass nets (runes − 11) Energy and +1 Power, Progress Day is −1 Energy, the R7 debt lands every fourth pass, and the rune-churn against Virtuoso's channel (missing from the primer) is the real gain: about +4E +4P per four passes. HAND-WALKED 2026-09-04 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-04-loop-budget-ledger.md, appendix 2, issue #21). It rides NO Lux loop: Vi, Destructive's "Recycle 1 from your trash: Give me +1 Might this turn" carries no exhaust and no Energy, so it is an unlimited one-at-a-time recycle that replaces Forge of the Future. The Draw-2 pass nets (runes - 11) Energy and +1 Power, so +1 Energy at twelve runes, and the draws balance exactly - two cards return per pass and the 4-Energy spell draws two. 416.5 does not bite because it randomises only SIMULTANEOUS recycles and Vi recycles one at a time. Malzahar's rainbow is Universal Power (163.2.b, 135.2.e.5) and pays Ekko's Mind cost, which is why no rune is recycled after the first pass. The rune supercycle is the real gain and it checks out: with twelve runes the Rune Deck is empty so Virtuoso's channel 4 would do nothing (430.3), but recycling four already-exhausted runes first (164.2.b has no exhaust in its cost) banks 4 Power and lets Virtuoso channel the same four back READY (430.2.a) - +4E +4P for nothing. Four passes come to about +5 Energy and +5 Power after the fourth-pass redraw debt. REDDIT CITATIONS ARE UNREACHABLE AND NO `accessed` DATE CAN HONESTLY BE STAMPED ON THEM (#137, re-verified 2026-09-14). CLAUDE.md defines `accessed` as "the date somebody on this project opened the url and read it there", so stamping one for a page nobody can open would be a fabrication rather than hygiene. Reddit was re-tested today by three independent routes and all three are shut: plain curl to old.reddit.com returns HTTP 403, www.reddit.com/.json returns HTTP 403 with reddit's own "Blocked" page, and r.jina.ai returns HTTP 200 while RELAYING the 403 in its body - a status-code check on that proxy is a false pass. This entry does not rest on the thread: its verification is the hand walk and the Core Rules paragraphs cited above, and the link is kept as a LEAD, which is the distinction #137 exists to make legible.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16