Combo · ENGINE

Unlicensed Armory is Jinx's only permanent outlet — and 381 keeps the shield it buys inside your own turn

2 cards · chaos + fury · verified

Pieces

• Jinx, Rebel ×1 OGN-202 · payoff · chaos

  When you discard one or more cards, ready me and give me +1 Might this turn.

• Unlicensed Armory ×1 OGN-023 · engine · fury

  Discard 1, Exhaust: Choose a friendly unit. The next time it would die this turn, you may pay 1 Fury Power to heal it, exhaust it, and recall it instead. (Send it to base. This isn't a move.)

Payoff

Deck

• Chaos + Fury, so five legend names (103.1.b.2): Loose Cannon (OGN-251), Dark Child - Starter (OGS-017), Glorious Executioner (SFD-185), Bloodharbor Ripper (UNL-185), Master of Shadows (VEN-143).
• One card in hand per turn to feed the cost, and 1 Fury Power in reserve for the turns the shield actually fires.

Prerequisites

• IT IS THE ONLY OUTLET OF THE TWENTY-ONE THAT NEVER LEAVES THE BOARD. Every other partner in Jinx's matrix row is a spell you cast once or a body whose play trigger discards once; the Armory is a 2-Energy gear whose discard sits in an activated ability's COST, so it produces one Jinx trigger every turn for as long as it lives, readied each Awakening by 415.3.a. What it does NOT save you is the card: 203.3 — 'If the game action associated with a Cost is impossible for any reason such that a player cannot' complete it, the cost cannot be paid — so an empty hand switches the whole gear off.
• 381 IS WHAT MAKES THIS A YOUR-TURN CARD, AND IT IS EASY TO MISREAD IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. 'All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State.' The Armory carries neither [Action] nor [Reaction], so it can only be used in your own Main Phase — and its shield reads 'the next time it would die this turn'. Put those together and the gear can never answer the opponent's removal on the opponent's turn: it is a shield for your own attack, armed before you attack, and it expires unused at the end of your turn. Compare jinx-rebel-lunar-boon-reaction, which is the mirror image.
• THE SHIELD IS THE HEAL / EXHAUST / RECALL FAMILY, WITH BOTH OF ITS TRAPS. 808.1.d.1 removes a Deathknell's triggered ability from the chain when the permanent never reaches the Trash, so saving a body with a Deathknell ERASES that Deathknell. And 455 — 'A Recall is when a Permanent is relocated from anywhere to its Base without it being a Move' — sends the saved unit home, which switches off any 'While I'm at a battlefield' text it carries and, by 323.6, hands the battlefield back at the next Cleanup if that unit was the only body standing there.
• The exhaust in the Armory's cost is the gear's own, not the saved unit's; the saved unit is exhausted separately by the replacement when it fires. Neither exhaust touches Jinx: her ready comes from the discard, not from the gear.
• Priced whole, per turn: one card out of hand and the gear's exhaust buy one Jinx ready plus +1 Might this turn, and a conditional save that costs a further 1 Fury Power only if something would actually die. The 2 Energy for the gear is paid once. Three copies (103.2.b) is three triggers a turn, at three cards a turn, which no hand sustains — one copy is the honest build.
• Jinx's ready buys one extra Standard Move on your own turn (144.2 prices the move at the unit's exhaust), which is the one window in which a ready is worth anything to her; the +1 Might stacks per event and is a plain modifier, not a 702 buff, so 702.3's one-per-unit cap never applies.
• A DELAYED WOULD-DIE SHIELD IS ENDED BY A BOUNCE, NOT ONLY BY REMOVAL, AND NO SHIELD ENTRY SAID SO (upgrade 2026-09-12, #187 batch 9). 390.5 defines a Delayed LINKED Ability as one that references the generating ability or the Game Objects it affects *"instead of a window of time"* - which is what a *"Choose a friendly unit. The next time it would die this turn"* shield is, against a *"the next spell you play this turn"* delay, which IS a window of time and falls under 391 instead. **390.5.a then has teeth: *"If that Ability affects a Game Object, the Delayed Linked Ability`s window will be as long as that Game Object is in an appropriate zone."*** So returning the shielded body to hand CLOSES the window - and 359.3.e.4 makes the body that comes back a different object, so replaying it does not restore the shield. The cheapest answer in the pool is `OGN-169 Gust` at one Energy; see `windsinger-gust-bounce-as-a-counterspell`, which reaches the same paragraph from the opposite side. Note which half applies before citing 390.5 at all: this project nearly published it against Ravenborn Tome and Raging Firebrand, whose delays are windows of time and therefore 391.

Steps

1. Play Unlicensed Armory (2 Energy). It sits at your base as a gear.
2. On your own turn, in the Main Phase (381), pay its cost: discard 1 and exhaust it.
3. The discard is one event, so Jinx readies and takes +1 Might this turn.
4. The Armory's effect chooses a friendly unit; the next time that unit would die this turn you may pay 1 Fury Power to heal, exhaust and recall it instead (455 — to its base).
5. Move Jinx with the ready she just gained (144.2), and repeat next turn once 415.3.a has readied the gear in your Awakening.

Per iteration

-1 card, +1 Might on Jinx, one Standard Move, one conditional recall (1 Fury Power)

How it ends

engine — one Jinx ready, +1 Might and a same-turn save, every turn, for one card out of hand each time; 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

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-07, issue #169 — matrix families rows 6-18, second pass 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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