Combo · ALT WIN

Machine Evangel dies three times over — nine ready Recruits into The Grand Plaza

6 cards · order · verified

Pieces

• The Grand Plaza ×1 OGN-293 · battlefield

  When you hold here, if you have 7+ units here, you win the game.

• Machine Evangel ×1 OGN-239 · payoff · order

  [Deathknell] — Play three 1 Might Recruit unit tokens into your base. (When I die, get the effect.)

• Karthus, Eternal ×2 OGN-236 · engine · order

  Your [Deathknell] effects trigger an additional time.

• Renata Glasc, Industrialist ×1 SFD-171 · engine · order

  Your tokens enter ready.

• Blade of the Ruined King ×1 SFD-178 · engine · order

  [Equip] — 1 Order Power, Kill a friendly unit (Pay the cost: Attach this to a unit you control.)

Payoff

Deck

• Mono-Order: any legend whose Domain Identity covers Order (103.1.b). The Grand Plaza is domainless.

Prerequisites

• The battlefield must be the one in play, and a deck may not carry two of it (Core Rules 103.4.c, Tournament Rules 402.1): random 1 of 3 in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5). The Grand Plaza is one of YOUR three, and in a Duel there are only two battlefields on the table at all (485.4).
• You must already CONTROL the Plaza before the Recruits walk in. 190.1 says control is established through the course of play, and 190.3.a.1 says moving to a battlefield you already control applies no Contested — so with the Plaza yours the nine bodies arrive without opening a Showdown.
• Nine Recruits for 1 Order Power once Machine Evangel is on the board (E5 + 1 Power). The bar is 7, so two may die. One Karthus gives 6, zero gives 3 and there is no line.
• The Recruits arrive exhausted because 144.2 charges the Standard Move an exhaust, but that is harmless: 315.1.b readies them in your Awaken before the Hold, and the Plaza's condition measures presence, not state.
• The condition is checked AT THE HOLD, not on resolution: 383.2.a's Loose Cannon example makes an 'if' immediately after the trigger condition part of the Condition, and 383.2.c evaluates a Condition when the inciting event is processed. Here that changes nothing, because the nine bodies arrive a whole turn earlier — it is stated so nobody re-derives it.
• Same fragility every Plaza line declares: you must survive one opponent turn with 7+ one-Might bodies, and the Plaza is symmetric, so an opponent parking seven units on it wins the same way.
• Rider outside uses: OGN-246 Viktor, Leader adds a tenth Recruit, since Machine Evangel is not a Recruit.
• THE EQUIPMENT THIS LINE STANDS ON (Blade of the Ruined King x1) IS A LEGAL TARGET THE WHOLE TIME IT SITS THERE. 718.5.b: "Attached cards still can be chosen or targeted by game effects while Attached." Its printed Rules Text is Inactive while attached (718.2) and its [Equip] is unusable (721.2), but neither of those protects the CARD. The single copy here does not need the mass answer: SFD-005 Detonate (Fury, E1 + 1 Fury Power, "Kill a gear. Its controller draws 2.") is the cheapest KILL in the pool for it - but NOT the cheapest ANSWER, corrected 2026-09-14: SFD-135 Factory Recall is chaos, E1 and NO POWER, [Action], 'Return a gear to its owner's hand.', which is strictly cheaper and answers the Equipment for the window that matters, since 719.5 detaches it on the zone change and 434.1.c stops appending its Effect Text to the carrier. A KILL predicate cannot see a BOUNCE, which is the same narrowness that once made 36 shipped notables claim less than their own question, and the two cards it hands back do not replace what was attached. The unconditional enemy-facing gear kills are OGN-022 Thermo Beam (fury), OGN-224 Salvage (order), SFD-005 Detonate (fury), SFD-032 Disarming Rake (calm), SFD-077 Rocket Barrage (mind), VEN-003 Brittle Steel (fury) - four domains, so there is no identity this line can hide in. (The full swept set is 16 base codes across all six domains; the predicate is /\bkills?\b[^.]{0,80}\bgear\b/i over text+effect of every deckable base in data/cards.json, and the rest either reach only a friendly gear or are gated below this line's costs. Run npm run adversarial to re-derive it.)
• NO GEAR KILL IN THE POOL CARRIES [Reaction] - BUT A KILL IS NOT THE ONLY ANSWER, AND THE PREDICATE THAT MEASURED THAT SET COULD NOT SEE THE OTHER FAMILY. Swept over all 16 kills: Thermo Beam and Salvage are [Action], which 806.1.c.1 makes short for "This can be played during showdowns on any player's turn", and Detonate and Brittle Steel are plain spells, which 155 confines to "an Open State outside of Showdowns on its controller's turn". WHICH OF THOSE PROTECTS THIS LINE DEPENDS ON WHERE IT PAYS, so check before relying on it. If it pays on a HOLD, the Score happens at 315.2.b.2 inside your own Beginning Phase, where 312.2.a gives the opponent no priority in a Neutral Open State and 813.1.c.1 admits only a [Reaction] in the Closed State the trigger opens - no kill in the pool reaches that window at all, so each must be cast on THEIR own turn, a full turn early and fully telegraphed, and that spell on the Chain is itself a Closed State where 312.2.c hands out priority and 813.1.c.1 admits a [Reaction] in response. If it instead pays in your MAIN PHASE, that protection does not exist: 806.1.c.1 puts Thermo Beam and Salvage inside any showdown on any player's turn, so they reach the scoring window itself. THE SECOND FAMILY IS DETACHMENT, AND IT DOES CARRY [Reaction]. 719.1 appends an attached card's Effect Text to its carrier "for as long as they remain Attached" and 137.3.a stops the Might Bonus "as soon as the card with the Might Bonus is no longer Attached", so taking the Equipment OFF switches the payoff off without killing anything. Swept with /\bdetach/i over text+effect of every deckable base: 5 base codes (4 names - Grandmaster at Arms is printed twice), of which only 1 is ENEMY-FACING, because Strike Down says "an equipped friendly unit", Veiled Temple "a friendly gear" and Grandmaster at Arms "you control". That one is SFD-011 Angle Shot - Fury, 2 Energy, NO Power, and it cantrips: "[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Choose a unit and an Equipment with the same controller. Attach that Equipment to that unit or detach that Equipment from that unit. Draw 1." The words that make it an answer are "the same controller", which need not be you. WHAT IT PROVABLY DOES is strip the text and the Might Bonus BEFORE the trigger condition is ever met. WHAT IS NOT WALKED, and a reader should not reach for it here until somebody does, is whether a detach inside the scoring window itself accomplishes anything. The reason to DOUBT it - not a paragraph that settles it - is that a Trigger Condition is measured when the trigger is PLACED (383.2.a.1 makes a clause immediately after the trigger "part of the Trigger Condition and not the Effect"), so stripping the Equipment once its trigger is already on the Chain may well change nothing. Nobody has walked what becomes of a chain item whose source text has gone. Until somebody does, treat Angle Shot as a cheap answer cast EARLY, and do not claim it answers the trigger.
• THE GARRISON THIS LINE NEEDS CANNOT BE SIZED FROM THE ENTRY'S OWN BOARD, SO NO ANSWER IS NAMED HERE (corrected 2026-09-14, #222). A sentence naming a one-Energy answer stood here and was WRONG: it was emitted while the garrison floor was read from PROSE rather than from the board, and it claimed the bodies are tokens when no card this entry uses plays one (439.2.c). The repaired instrument declines this entry rather than guessing, because its bodies come from a `needs` engine rather than from its own `uses`, and a floor that is too LOW produces a confident answer that does not work - which is worse than no answer. Size the garrison by hand before trusting any sweep against it.
• OPPONENT BOARD AND KILL PRICE - ADDED 2026-10-27 (#503). THE BOARD IT WINS ON: nothing of theirs ready in their base on the one turn between the walk-in and the Hold (units at their own battlefield cannot reach the Plaza, 144.4.a, 144.4.b; units they play that turn enter exhausted, 143.4), and no removal spell for the Recruits; 383.2.a.1 counts the nine when the Hold happens. N is nine 1-Might Recruit tokens (187.1), none with [Tank] or [Backline], so nothing orders the assignment (465.2.c.6). Killing N - 6 = 3 of them costs 3 damage (465.2.c.3, 142.4.b): any ready enemy body of Might 3 or more that attacks the Plaza, or bodies whose summed Might is 3, leaves six and the Hold does not win.

Steps

1. Control The Grand Plaza. Board: two Karthus, Renata Glasc Industrialist, Blade of the Ruined King, and Machine Evangel (5 Energy + 1 Power).
2. Activate the Blade's [Equip] for 1 Order Power, attaching to another body and paying the kill half with Machine Evangel.
3. His Deathknell runs three times (Karthus ×2): nine 1 Might Recruit tokens into your base, entering ready (Renata).
4. Standard-Move all nine to the Plaza in the same Main Phase (144.1.a, 144.3 allows one declaration for all of them).
5. Survive the opponent's turn. At your Beginning Phase you Hold the Plaza with 9 units there: you win (195).

How it ends

win the game at the next Hold

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Hunt lens — issue #36 (GitHub) 2026-09-05
• 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 2026-09-05 2026-09-05 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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