Combo · ENGINE

355.5.b - an ETB choice is made when the TRIGGER fires, not when the body is played, so the Apothecary can return Morgana (or himself) and every Morgana replay doubles the damage already marked

5 cards · fury · verified

Pieces

• Hextech Ray ×1 OGN-009 · enabler · fury

  [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Deal 3 to a unit at a battlefield.

• Morgana, Vindictive ×1 VEN-017 · payoff · fury

  [Ambush] (You may play me as a [Reaction] to a battlefield where you have units.) When you play me, deal damage to a unit equal to the damage marked on it.

• Grim Apothecary ×3 UNL-021 · engine · fury

  [Ambush] (You may play me as a [Reaction] to a battlefield where you have units.) When you play me, you may return a friendly unit at a battlefield to its owner's hand.

Payoff

Deck

• Legend's Domain Identity includes Fury (103.1.b.3); mono-Fury runs all three.
• A battlefield where you already control units, because [Ambush] is what puts both bodies down at [Reaction] speed - 822.1.b is functionally short for 'I may be played to a battlefield where you control Units'.
• An enemy body worth this much Energy. The ladder is removal, not a clock: it scores nothing.

Prerequisites

• 355.5.b IS THE PARAGRAPH, AND IT WAS CITED BY NOTHING. 355.5 says 'If a card requires you to specifically choose one or more Game Objects, that choice is made now.' - now being the Make Relevant Choices step of playing the card. 355.5.b carves the exception this line runs on: 'This does not include making choices for Triggered Abilities of permanents, or Delayed or Reflexive Triggers generated by the item being finalized, even if those abilities trigger when the chain item is played.' Its worked example ends 'The target will be chosen when the ability triggers.' So the Apothecary's 'return a friendly unit at a battlefield' is NOT chosen as he is played; it is chosen when his trigger is finalized, with the Apothecary already standing on the board.
• TWO CONSEQUENCES, AND BOTH ARE LOAD-BEARING HERE. First, the Apothecary is himself a friendly unit at a battlefield when the choice is made, so HE IS A LEGAL CHOICE FOR HIS OWN TRIGGER - he can bounce himself back to hand and be replayed, which is what makes him an answer to targeted removal as well as a bouncer. Second, an opponent who reacts to the Apothecary BEING PLAYED is acting before the choice exists; their real window is after the trigger is finalized (312.2.c), by which time the target is locked at 337.1. This generalises past this entry: every 'when you play me, kill/return/deal' body in the pool picks its object after it has landed.
• THE ARITHMETIC IS EXPONENTIAL IN RUNGS AND LINEAR IN CARDS. Marked damage after k Morgana plays is d x 2^k. With Hextech Ray's 3: 3, 6, 12, 24. The largest printed Might in the pool is 12, and it is two names, not one - UNL-059 Master Yi, Unstoppable and UNL-147 Baron Nashor (UNL-238 is its second printing), measured over data/cards.json on 2026-09-12 - so TWO Morgana plays reach every printed unit and the third rung is dead weight. Total for the Baron: Hextech Ray E1 + 1 Fury, Morgana E5 + 1 Fury, Grim Apothecary E3, Morgana again E5 + 1 Fury = E14 + 3 Fury Power. Against a Might 5 or 6 body the Ray plus one Morgana is enough and the Apothecary is not needed at all.
• THE LADDER IS ONE TURN LONG AND CANNOT READ COMBAT DAMAGE. 143.3.b gives exactly two healing times - 143.3.b.1 'At the end of each player's turn.' and 143.3.b.2 'During a Combat Cleanup.' - so marked damage from a spell survives to the end of your turn and nothing longer. And combat damage is out of reach in both directions: 465.3 reads '2. Skip the FEPR process and cancel any outstanding tasks. Proceed to the Resolution Step.', so no player gets priority after 465.2.d deals combat damage, and the very next task is 466.1's Combat Cleanup, whose 466.1.a.1 heals every unit. There is no window in which combat-marked damage can be doubled.
• 359.3.f.2 IS WHY THE ORDER OF THE CHAIN MATTERS: 'Information referenced in an instruction in this way will be checked on execution of the instruction.' Morgana's amount is read when her trigger RESOLVES, not when it is finalized - so a ping played in response to her trigger, after her target is locked, is counted by her. That is the one way to add a rung without a second Morgana.
• SHE TARGETS, SO SHE PAYS [Deflect]. 809.1.c: 'Spells and abilities an opponent controls that target [me/this] cost an amount of Power equal to [Deflect Value] more to play as an additional cost for each time they choose [me/this].' Morgana chooses a unit every time she is played, so a Deflect body taxes every rung of the ladder separately. A 'can't be chosen' body (SFD-105 Ruin Runner) is immune outright under 054.1.
• MORGANA REACHES A BASE, AND THE PROJECT'S OWN INVENTORY CANNOT SEE HER. CLAUDE.md's sixteen-card list of removal that reaches a base was swept with a 'kill | deal N to (an) (enemy) unit' predicate; Morgana's amount is not a numeral, so she is invisible to it. Re-swept 2026-09-12 for a Deal instruction naming 'a unit' with no 'at a battlefield' and no 'here', the corpus returns 13 rows, of which ten are genuine enemy-facing Deals - OGN-029, OGN-248, OGN-252, OGS-022, SFD-077, UNL-020, UNL-023, UNL-067, UNL-073 and VEN-017 - while SFD-191 Rabadon's Deathcrown (Bonus Damage, not a Deal) and UNL-019 Blighted Battleaxe ('deal 4 to me') are false positives and SFD-116 Yone names the base outright. The predicate has a false negative of its own: UNL-026 Xerath, Freed is excluded because its 'at a battlefield' is a restriction on USING the ability, not on the target. State the predicate with the number.
• 417.6.a MAKES HER DAMAGE ABILITY DAMAGE: 'If a game effect does not specify a source, the game effect describing the Deal action is the source.' So a Bonus Damage card that reads 'your spells and abilities deal N' raises every rung - the increase is applied per Deal action under 715.2, which raises the base d and therefore the whole ladder.
• DISTINCT FROM lotus-trap-morgana-excess-damage, which shares only Morgana. That entry uses UNL-013 Lotus Trap to HALVE what a defender costs to kill inside a combat and manufacture excess damage for a Conquer payoff; this one never enters a combat, doubles a number outside one, and is pure removal. The two cannot be run as one line: Lotus Trap's doubling is a replacement on damage dealt to the chosen unit, and the excess-damage payoff needs the combat that 465.3 puts out of this entry's reach.
• DISTINCT FROM apothecary-pridestalker-buff, which shares only the Apothecary. That entry bounces a body to REPLAY its ETB under a legend that pays per unit played; this one bounces Morgana to re-fire one specific doubling and states why the choice is legal at all.
• 822.3 IS THE PRICE OF [Ambush]: 'If there are no units at the location chosen before Finalization completes for any reason, then it is no longer a valid location by Ambush's reasoning and cannot be played there.' If the opponent clears your garrison in response, both bodies lose their play location and the ladder stops.
• 355.5.b DEFERS the choice; **359.2 is what puts the card on the board before its own text runs** - *"A Permanent leaves the Chain and becomes a Game Object"*, 359.2.a *"Any passive abilities become active"*, 359.2.b *"Execute all rules text on the card, from top to bottom."* That is the mechanism behind the whole family: a body is ON THE BOARD when its own ETB chooses, which is why it can be a legal choice for its own trigger and why a *"another"* in the wording is the only thing that excludes it. Cite 359.2.b for the board state and 355.5.b for the deferral; neither alone is the argument. All three paragraphs were cited by nothing before.

Bodies no card supplies

Play VEN-017 Morgana, Vindictive with [Ambush] (822.1.b) to a battlefield where you control units. Her trigger goes on the chain; nothing is chosen yet

Steps

1. On your turn or in a showdown, play OGN-009 Hextech Ray for 1 Energy + 1 Fury Power and deal 3 to the target. That damage is now marked and 143.3.b keeps it there until the end of the turn.
2. Play VEN-017 Morgana, Vindictive with [Ambush] (822.1.b) to a battlefield where you control units. Her trigger goes on the chain; nothing is chosen yet.
3. When the trigger is finalized, choose the damaged body. 359.3.f.2 reads the amount on EXECUTION, so anything else you mark in the meantime is counted too. The trigger resolves: 3 more damage, marked total 6.
4. If 6 is already lethal - 143.2.a: 'If a Unit ever has nonzero damage marked on it equalling or exceeding its Might, it is Killed.' - stop - the body dies in the next Cleanup.
5. Otherwise play UNL-021 Grim Apothecary, also with [Ambush]. Under 355.5.b nothing is chosen as he is played.
6. His trigger finalizes with him already on the board: choose Morgana and return her to her owner's hand.
7. Replay Morgana for 5 Energy + 1 Fury Power. Her trigger reads 6 and deals 6: marked total 12, which is lethal against every unit printed in the pool.
8. Each further Grim Apothecary buys one more doubling on the same turn, and 103.2.b stops at three.

Per iteration

one doubling of the damage already marked on a chosen enemy unit, for 5 Energy + 1 Fury Power (Morgana) plus 3 Energy (Grim Apothecary)

How it ends

removal only - it scores nothing, 143.3.b.1 heals every marked point at the end of the turn, and 103.2.b caps the Apothecary at three so the ladder is at most four Morgana plays (d, 2d, 4d, 8d, 16d) in one turn

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 2026-09-12, uncited Core Rules sub-rules 300-499, batch 5 2026-09-12 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue