Combo · ENGINE

Pit Crew under the Eye of the Herald — a Recruit at the battlefield per 1-Energy gear

5 cards · mind + order · verified

Pieces

• Pit Crew ×1 OGN-091 · engine · mind

  When you play a gear, ready me.

• Eye of the Herald ×1 SFD-153 · payoff · order

  [Equip] 1 Order Power (1 Order Power: Attach this to a unit you control.)

  When I move, play a 1 Might Recruit unit token here.

• Cloth Armor ×3 SFD-064 · resource · mind

  [Quick-Draw] (This has [Reaction]. When you play it, attach it to a unit you control.) [Equip] 1 Mind Power (1 Mind Power: Attach this to a unit you control.)

  [Shield 2] (+2 Might while I'm a defender.)

Payoff

Deck

• Mind + Order: Herald of the Arcane (OGN-265) or any other Mind/Order legend satisfies 103.1.b.2. The Eye costs 1 Order Power to attach, the gear E1 each.
• No battlefield of yours is required.

Prerequisites

• 144.2 prices a Standard Move at the unit's own exhaust, so a unit moves once a turn on its own. Every gear played readies Pit Crew (415.1) and buys another move; four gears in a turn is five moves.
• 144.4.a / 144.4.b are the only destinations Pit Crew has — base to battlefield and back — because it has no [Ganking] (810.1.c.3). So the shuttle alternates, and roughly half the Recruits land at the battlefield and half at the base. That is still the only cheap way to put a token AT a battlefield: #48 measured that bottleneck and only SFD-177 Azir, Sovereign moves tokens in bulk.
• 190.3.a.1 — 'Units moving to or being played to a battlefield apply Contested status if that battlefield is not already Contested and that Unit's controller does not already control that battlefield.' The FIRST arrival at an uncontrolled battlefield contests it, and 344.2 / 348.2.a / 348.2.a.1 turn that into a Showdown and a Conquer. Every later arrival at a battlefield you now control is free of Contested and opens no Combat.
• 190.4.a — 'If a player controls Units at a Battlefield ... they maintain Control of that Battlefield for as long as they have Units at that Battlefield.' Pit Crew must not be the last body there when it leaves, or Control lapses and the next arrival contests again. The first Recruit it drops is that body, so the shuttle is self-priming from the second move on.
• Sibling: revna-eye-herald-recruits buys the same shuttle with UNL-009 Upstage Comedy at 4 Energy spent per move and gets battlefield-to-battlefield moves out of it. This one costs 1 Energy per move and is stuck on base-to-battlefield.
• A BLOODLESS CONQUER IS NOT A FAIT ACCOMPLI, AND 46 OF THE 47 ENTRIES CITING 344.2 DID NOT SAY SO (added 2026-09-12, #187 batch 25). **316.8.b.1.a**: during a Non-Combat Showdown *"units controlled by a different player may become present at the Battlefield where the Showdown is"*, which converts it to a COMBAT Showdown in the following cleanup - so the opponent can turn your uncontested walk-in into a fight. 316.8.c is the permission (a Showdown is a Window of Opportunity for [Action] and [Reaction] cards). **The answer set is THREE CARDS, swept on the ACTOR rather than on the destination**: `OGN-173 Ride the Wind` (Chaos, E2+1), `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` (Calm/Order, E3+2) and `SFD-184 Relentless Pursuit` (Fury/Body, E2+1) - twelve printings move a friendly unit, and nine of them send it to base or need a body already there. They span three identities, so **no identity is safe**; and `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` is the worst to walk into, because it STUNS your body on the way in, and 423.1.b removes a stunned unit`s contribution to the damage step while 423.1.c keeps its full Might as the price to kill it - one 3-Energy card takes the unit and the battlefield. **[Ambush] is not a fourth answer**: 822.1.b needs a battlefield where the player already has units, and the defining feature of that board is that they have none there. **THE REMEDY IS A COUNTERSPELL, AND A FIRST VERSION OF THIS NOTABLE SAID SOMETHING FALSE THAT IS WITHDRAWN HERE (corrected within the hour, 2026-09-12).** It said that because all three answers are [Action] and 358.4 admits an Action card only as the card that CLOSES the state, the attacker - who holds Focus by 345 and priority by 335.1 - could shut them out by playing any cheap Action card first. Every step is true and the conclusion is false, because **a Showdown is a LOOP, not a single window**: 346 - *"When the last item on the chain resolves and the turn returns to an Open State during a Showdown, Focus passes, and the next Player gains both Focus and Priority"* - with 347.1.b and 347.2.a. Closing the state buys a lock-out lasting exactly that CHAIN; when it resolves the Showdown reopens, Focus passes TO THE DEFENDER, and they play their answer into an open Showdown after all. **The real sequence**: walk in, take Focus, **PASS** (acting first gains nothing); they play the answer, which closes the state as it is played; **you COUNTER it**, since 358.4`s other half now admits only [Reaction] and all eleven of the pool`s counters are Reaction, and 425.1.c refunds them nothing; all players then pass in sequence, 347.2.a ends the Showdown, and 348.2.a with 348.2.a.1 give you Control and the Conquer. The cheap counter is `OGN-045 Defy` (Calm, E1 + 1 Power, *"counter a spell that costs no more than 4 Energy and no more than one rainbow"*), which covers all three answers; `OGN-064 Wind Wall` is the unconditional one. **So the protection narrows to pairs containing CALM** - it is not the one-Energy insurance any deck can buy.

Steps

1. Attach the Eye of the Herald to Pit Crew for 1 Order Power ([Equip]). 434.1.c gives Pit Crew the Eye's effect text.
2. Standard-move Pit Crew from your base to a battlefield: 144.4.a allows it, 144.2 exhausts him. The Eye fires and plays a 1 Might Recruit token HERE — at the battlefield (359.3.f.2).
3. If the battlefield was uncontrolled, the Cleanup applies Contested (190.3.a.1) and 344.2 stages a Showdown; 348.2.a.1 makes establishing Control a Conquer. From now on you control it.
4. Play a Cloth Armor for E1. Pit Crew readies (his own trigger, 415.1). Standard-move him back to the base (144.4.b): the Eye fires again, and this Recruit lands at the base.
5. Play the next E1 gear, ready, move back to the battlefield: another Recruit there. The Recruit already standing keeps Control (190.4.a) so the return never contests.
6. Four gears in a turn is five moves and five Recruits, three of them at the battlefield.

How it ends

engine only — about five 1 Might Recruits a turn, alternating between the battlefield and the base, bounded by how many 1-Energy gears the turn can pay for and by three copies of each (103.2.b).

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

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