Combo · INFINITE
Forge / Ekko recycle loop — infinite Energy
Pieces
- Forge of the Future ×1
OGN-212 · engine · order
When you play this, play a 1 Might Recruit unit token at your base. Kill this: Recycle up to 4 cards from trashes.
- 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.)
- Shadow's Call ×2
UNL-165 · enabler · order
Choose a friendly unit without [Temporary]. Give it [Temporary]. Draw 2. (Kill it at the start of its controller's Beginning Phase, before scoring.)
- Sacrifice ×2
UNL-173 · enabler · order
[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) As an additional cost to play this, kill a friendly [Mighty] unit. (A unit is Mighty while it has 5+ Might.) Draw 2 and channel 1 rune exhausted.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains cover Mind and Order (Lady of Luminosity, Herald of the Arcane, Chem-Baroness, Deceiver).
Prerequisites
- Main Deck EMPTY — the deck draws itself out first; every card not in the loop must be in hand or trash.
- 12 runes in play (the deck's whole Rune Deck channeled); at least one Mind rune.
- Forge of the Future in play; one Shadow's Call and one Sacrifice already in the trash.
- 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.
- 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.
- THE GEAR THIS LOOP RUNS ON IS *NOT* AN EQUIPMENT, SO ITS ANSWER SET IS NARROWER THAN THE REST OF THE CLASS — AND NO ANSWER REACHES IT AT `[Reaction]` SPEED (added 2026-09-13, #200). A loop is a SERIAL dependency, so every link is load-bearing and one removal ends it. Of the fifteen enemy-facing printings that reach a gear, **exactly one is `[Reaction]` — `SFD-011 Angle Shot` — and it is a DETACH that names *"an Equipment"*.** `OGN-212 Forge of the Future` and `SFD-117 Ancient Henge` carry `type: gear` and an EMPTY tag list, so neither is an Equipment and neither is ever attached: **a gear that is never attached cannot be detached, so Angle Shot cannot touch them at all.** Of the remaining fourteen, four carry `[Action]` and reach a Showdown on either player’s turn (806.1.c.1) and the rest are plain spells that 155 confines to their controller’s own Main Phase. **SO EVERY ANSWER TO THIS LOOP MUST BE CAST ON THE OPPONENT’S OWN TURN, A FULL TURN AHEAD AND TELEGRAPHED** — the loop itself runs entirely inside your Main Phase. That is the second disjointness on the same halving of the gear pool this project already records from the exhaust side, where the 40 Equipment carry ZERO exhaust symbols and 40 of the other 67 do. **AND THE FORGE IS ALREADY DYING EVERY PASS, WHICH CUTS BOTH WAYS**: its own text is *"Kill this: Recycle up to 4 cards from trashes"*, so the recycle is PAID by killing it and the line rebuys it each pass — but an opponent’s kill removes it WITHOUT handing over the recycle, and that recycle is this loop’s only refill against a ledger that runs with zero spare draws. Whether the Burn Out lands in the same pass depends on where in the pass the kill falls, which only this entry’s own ledger can settle and none of these entries states.
Steps
- Activate Forge of the Future (Kill this): recycle Forge itself, a Shadow's Call and a Sacrifice from the trash. Deck: 3 cards.
- Play Ekko, Recurrent for 5 Energy + 1 Mind Power. Pay the Power by recycling an EXHAUSTED Mind rune (rule 164.2.b has no exhaust in its cost).
- Play Shadow's Call (2 Energy) targeting EKKO and let it resolve: Ekko gains [Temporary], draw 2. Target Ekko, never a Recruit - Shadow's Call must Choose a friendly unit WITHOUT [Temporary], and whatever it marks dies at the start of your next Beginning Phase before scoring (816.1.b).
- Exhaust every still-ready rune for floating Energy, before the Deathknell readies them.
- Play Sacrifice (1 Energy, Reaction - 813.1.b gives it every permission of Action, so a plain Open State is fine). Its additional cost kills Ekko, and Ekko's [Temporary] dies with him, so no Recruit is ever marked.
- Ekko's Deathknell resolves: recycle Ekko and ready all 11 runes.
- Sacrifice resolves: draw 2, channel the recycled rune back exhausted (12 runes again). Hand holds Forge, Shadow's Call, Sacrifice, Ekko.
- Play Forge (2 Energy) - its play trigger makes a 1 Might Recruit at your base. Repeat from step 1.
Per iteration
-10 Energy -1 Power spent; 11 runes readied and 1 channeled back; +1 floating Energy and +1 Recruit token per pass. Unbounded.
How it ends
infinite energy (engine); infinite Recruits at base
Sources
Published elsewhere
- YouTube — LotharHS Riftbound, "INFINITE LOOP EXPLAINED! - Guide to BROKEN Lux Combo from Chinese Regionals" — el loop caminado carta por carta tras una corrida 7-1 en un regional chino 2026-06-06
- YouTube — MoreThatMillGuy, "The Lux Infinite Is Toxic - Winning WITHOUT The Combo!?" — el loop ejecutado en partida 2026-08-19
- Analyzing Infinite Combo Lux — Riftbound's Hottest New Deck (Scott Mines, TCGplayer Infinite) 2026-06-10
- riftbound.gg Lux legend guide (Tianjin 19th/640, Hartford top 8) 2026-07
- YouTube - YamatoRiftbound, "Riftbound Session Episode 5 Ft. eMOEtional (+ Full Loop Lux Deck Guide)" - the loop's preconditions listed mid-game, matching this entry's own list 2026-08-11
- Regional Qualifier Utrecht — "Utrecht's Top Decks" (playriftbound.com) 2026-06-17
- Regional Qualifier Hartford — registered list (piltoverarchive.com) 2026-06-21
- RiftBound — $1,000 Prize Pool (riftbound.gg) 2026-06-14
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk against Core Rules 2026-07-16 (docs/phase0-findings.md Result 5) 2026-09-02 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.
Shadow's Call must Choose a friendly unit WITHOUT [Temporary], and 816.1.b kills whatever it marks at the start of your next Beginning Phase, BEFORE scoring. Point it at Ekko and resolve it before playing Sacrifice: Sacrifice's additional cost then kills Ekko and the mark goes with him, so the Recruits stay clean and accumulate across turns. The stacked ordering (Sacrifice in response) is what the TCGplayer article actually prints — 'Play a copy of Shadow's Call. Respond to your copy of Shadow's Call with a copy of Sacrifice' — so this entry is deliberately more correct than its source; that ordering would leave Shadow's Call resolving with a dead target and make the loop depend on a mistarget reading; it also has to mark a live Recruit instead, which caps the surviving body count. Sequencing found by the user 2026-09-04 while reviewing R29, which is now moot for the catalogue. SOURCE READ IN FULL 2026-09-04: the whole TCGplayer article was opened through a reader proxy and the quote above confirmed verbatim (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-04-source-verification-tcgplayer.md).
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16