Combo · ENGINE
Katarina, Reckless — hide to ready her, flip to burn, at the opponent's speed
Pieces
- Katarina, Reckless ×1
UNL-023 · engine · fury
When you hide a card, ready me. When you play a card from face down, deal 2 to an enemy unit.
- Black Market Broker ×3
SFD-121 · engine · chaos
When you play a card from face down, play a Gold gear token exhausted.
- Bandle Tree ×1
OGN-278 · battlefield
You may hide an additional card here.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains cover Fury and Chaos (103.1.b.4). Five do: OGN-251 Loose Cannon, OGS-017 Dark Child - Starter, SFD-185 Glorious Executioner, UNL-185 Bloodharbor Ripper, VEN-143 Master of Shadows.
- Cards with [Hidden] to cycle, and a battlefield you control to hide at.
Prerequisites
- THE 'READY ME' IS THE STRONG HALF, NOT THE WEAK ONE, AND IT IS AN ORDERING TRICK. 144.2 makes exhausting the unit the COST of a Standard Move, and 811.1.b lets you hide 'on your turn during an Open State', which the Main Phase is. So: Standard Move Katarina to a battlefield (she exhausts), THEN hide a card, and the trigger readies her. She lands at a battlefield ready, the same turn, with no [Accelerate] and nothing extra paid. Issue #40 filed this as the weak half; the order is what makes it the strong one.
- THE BURN IGNORES 811.1.d. 'Deal 2 to an enemy unit' is KATARINA'S triggered ability, not the flipped card's. 811.1.d.2 restricts 'a hidden spell or a play effect of a hidden permanent', and Katarina is neither, so the 2 damage can go to any enemy unit anywhere.
- IT ARRIVES IN THE OPPONENT'S WINDOW. 811.6 gives a facedown card [Reaction], and 811.1.b opens the window 'beginning on the next turn' — which is the opponent's. Two flips there are 4 free damage at Reaction speed, on top of whatever the flipped cards do.
- 419.4.a.1 is the fine print: if the flipped card is countered, neither Katarina's second trigger nor the Brokers fire, because a play trigger waits for the card to resolve.
- The hide cost is 1 rainbow Power per card (811.1.b), so two hides a turn is 2 Power out. Fury/Chaos has no way to make hiding free — OGN-263 Swift Scout and OGN-264 Guerilla Warfare are both Mind/Chaos.
- Battlefield entries: a player provides three battlefields and only one is used (485.4.a) — randomly in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5) — and 103.4.c plus Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid bringing two of the same name, so there is no way to raise the odds.
- A battlefield you provide starts UNCONTROLLED (190.1) and 190.6.d switches its text off while it has no Controller: "If the battlefield has no Controller, 'you' refers to no one, and all such instructions are ignored." Walking a body there and establishing Control (466.5) is part of this entry's cost, and 811.1.b only lets you hide at a battlefield you control.
- 323.7 IS THE REAL PRICE OF HIDING. A Cleanup step 5 reads "Remove all Hidden cards from all Battlefields that are not controlled by the same player and place them in their owner's Trash", and 466.5.c repeats it the instant somebody establishes Control. Losing the battlefield does not put the hidden card on hold — it TRASHES it.
Steps
- Control the Bandle Tree: 2 hiding slots there (811.1.b plus the Tree's own text, by rule 002).
- Standard Move Katarina to a battlefield — she exhausts, because that is the cost (144.2).
- Hide a card with [Hidden] at a slot: 1 rainbow Power, and 'When you hide a card, ready me' readies her. She is a ready 5 Might body at a battlefield the turn she arrived.
- Hide the second card: −1 more Power.
- On the opponent's turn, flip both for 0 at Reaction speed (811.1.b, 811.6).
- Each flip: Katarina deals 2 to any enemy unit (4 total, free), and three Black Market Brokers each make a Gold — six Gold, exhausted until your Awaken (315.1.b).
Per iteration
4 damage spread freely across enemy units and 6 Gold tokens per turn on two slots, for 2 rainbow Power and 2 cards with [Hidden]; plus a ready Katarina after every exhaust
How it ends
engine only — 811.1.b caps flips at one per slot per turn and each flip burns a card; Fury/Chaos has no recursion of hidden cards, so the engine runs while the deck's [Hidden] cards last
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Hunt lens [Hidden]/[Ambush] — issue #40 (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
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 2026-09-05 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-05-hidden-ambush-candidates.md), issue #40 candidate 7. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. REWRITTEN from the #40 candidate on its central claim: #40 calls the 'ready me' half weak because readying a ready unit does nothing, and that is true only if you hide before you move. Move first (144.2 makes the exhaust the cost) and hide second, both inside the same Main Phase Open State (811.1.b), and the trigger buys a ready body at a battlefield on arrival. The burn's free targeting was checked against 811.1.d.2 word for word: it restricts a hidden spell or a hidden permanent's play effect, and Katarina's trigger is neither. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16