Combo · ENGINE

Peak Guardian into Albus Ferros — five Power that costs no runes

2 cards · order · verified

Pieces

• Peak Guardian ×1 OGN-223 · engine · order

  When you play me, buff me. Then, if I am at a battlefield, buff all other friendly units there. (To buff a unit, give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't already have one.)

• Albus Ferros ×1 OGN-230 · payoff · order

  When you play me, spend any number of buffs. For each buff spent, channel 1 rune exhausted.

Payoff

Deck

• Both cards are mono-Order, so 103.1.b.3 admits them under any legend carrying Order: 'If a card has a single Domain, then that card is permitted in the Domain Identity'. Neither is Signature, so 103.2.d.2 forces no legend.
• Peak Guardian must be played to a battlefield you control, with other friendly units already there. Four other bodies is five buffs.

Prerequisites

• The naive reading of Albus is a RAMP — N buffs into N extra runes on the board — and it is wrong. 430.1 channels 'from the top of a player's Rune Deck' and 430.3 says 'If there aren't sufficient runes in the Rune Deck, channel as many as possible.' A deck channelling 2 a turn (315.3.b) is at 10-12 runes by the turn it can afford E10, and the Rune Deck is nearly empty. The naive line channels 2.
• What makes it real is 161.2.b — 'When a Rune is Recycled it is returned to the Rune Deck, not the Main Deck' — read with 164.2.b, 'Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]', a cost with NO exhaust in it, so a rune already tapped for Energy still pays it. Recycle five exhausted runes for 5 Power, then let Albus channel five back. The rune count ends where it started and the Power was free.
• Rate: E10 + 1 Order Power and two cards for 5 Power, against the project's ~9 Energy per Power for a loop (issue #21's ledger). About 2 Energy per Power, and it leaves an M5 and an M3 on the board.
• The honest limit is 430.1: the runes come back FROM THE TOP of the Rune Deck, so the count is restored but the domains are not chosen. A line that needs five Power of one named domain cannot lean on this.
• Not a loop. Albus's trigger is 'When you play me', so it is once per copy — three castings a game (103.2.b), and each needs its own bank of buffs.

Steps

1. Tap ready runes for Energy (164.2.a) to pay for the turn. They are now exhausted.
2. Play Peak Guardian to a battlefield you control (355.2.a). He buffs himself and every other friendly unit there — five bodies present is five buffs (702.2.a), and 702.3 stops any of them doubling up.
3. Recycle five of the EXHAUSTED runes for 5 Power (164.2.b; the cost is 'Recycle this', with no exhaust in it). 161.2.b returns them to the Rune Deck.
4. Play Albus Ferros and spend the five buffs (702.2.b). Channel five runes exhausted (430.2's own worked example is this wording). The board is back to the rune count it started the turn with.
5. Spend the 5 Power in the same Main Phase. 167 empties the Rune Pool at the START of the Main Phase, so nothing here is carried across a phase boundary.

How it ends

engine only — five Power for E10 + 1 Order Power with the rune count unchanged, once per copy of Albus (three a game). 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
• Issue #153 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #153 — the 55 synergy rules no catalogued entry stands on 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue