Combo · ENGINE
Rek'Sai, Breacher x Cursed Sarcophagus — the unit that comes back from the trash comes back ready
Pieces
- Rek'Sai, Breacher ×1
SFD-029 · engine · fury
[Accelerate] (You may pay 1 Energy + 1 Fury Power as an additional cost to have me enter ready.) [Assault] (+1 Might while I'm an attacker.) Friendly units played from anywhere other than a player's hand have [Accelerate].
- Cursed Sarcophagus ×1
UNL-148 · engine · chaos
When you play this, banish all units from your trash. Exhaust: Play a unit banished with this. (You must pay its costs.)
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains cover Fury and Chaos (103.1.b). Five legends do: OGN-251 Loose Cannon, OGS-017 Dark Child - Starter, SFD-185 Glorious Executioner, UNL-185 Bloodharbor Ripper, VEN-143 Master of Shadows.
Prerequisites
- ONE UNIT PER TURN, not a loop. The Sarcophagus's ability costs its own exhaust, and 315.1.b readies it in your Awaken, so it fires once per turn. 151.2 puts the activation in your Main Phase during an Open State.
- Units have to already be in the trash when the Sarcophagus is played — its banish clause is a play effect, so it snapshots the trash once and later arrivals are not added.
- WHY THIS RECURSION CARD AND NOT A CHEAPER ONE. UNL-142 Heedless Resurrection, OGN-198 The Harrowing and SFD-165 Glasc Mixologist all play the unit 'ignoring its cost', which runs into 356.5.a ('set the total cost to [0], including any non-standard costs') and would force an unruled question about whether an ignored cost can still carry an optional additional cost. Cursed Sarcophagus says 'You must pay its costs', so the question never arises. 805.2.a is satisfied either way — the Accelerate cost is paid 'as part of the steps of playing a card', and the Sarcophagus plays the card.
- Cost per recursion: 1 Energy plus 1 Power of the recurred unit's own domain (805.1.a, 805.1.a.1). With two Ezreal, Prodigy on the board it is FREE — see ezreal-double-free-accelerate. Ezreal is deliberately not in this entry's uses, because he is a discount and not part of the mechanism: without him the line still works.
- What it buys: 143.4 makes units enter exhausted, so a recurred body normally does nothing until the next Awaken. Entering ready lets it Standard-Move the same turn (144.1.a, paying its own exhaust per 144.2) or pay an exhaust cost immediately.
- The reading this line deliberately avoids: whether Rek'Sai's grant reaches TOKENS, which are played from outside the game rather than from a hand. It is never needed — SFD-171 Renata Glasc, Industrialist makes tokens enter ready with no cost and no condition, so she strictly dominates Rek'Sai in that role. This entry stands only on the trash, where 'anywhere other than a player's hand' is literal.
- 805.6.a: Accelerate 'will not interact with, or trigger, abilities that are affected by units becoming ready'. Nothing built on a becomes-ready trigger attaches to this.
Steps
- Rek'Sai, Breacher on the board (he can pay his own [Accelerate] to be useful the turn he lands).
- Play Cursed Sarcophagus for E4 + 1 Power with units already in your trash — its play effect banishes all of them.
- Exhaust the Sarcophagus in your Main Phase (151.2) to play one of those units. It comes from banishment, so Rek'Sai's grant attaches: it has [Accelerate].
- Declare the Accelerate additional cost while playing it (805.2, 805.2.a) and pay 1 Energy + 1 Power of its domain, or 0 with two Ezreal on board.
- 805.2.b's delayed Replacement Effect makes it enter ready instead of exhausted (143.4, 805.6), so it can move or pay an exhaust cost that same turn.
- The Sarcophagus readies in your next Awaken (315.1.b) for the next one.
Per iteration
one unit back from the trash per turn, entering ready, for 1 Energy + 1 Power (0 with two Ezreal)
How it ends
engine only — capped at one recursion per turn by the Sarcophagus's own exhaust cost, and bounded overall by how many units were in the trash when it was played
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Hunt lens [Repeat]/[Accelerate]/[Add] — issue #32 (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-repeat-accelerate-add-candidates.md), issue #32. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 805.1.a, 805.1.a.1, 805.2, 805.2.a, 805.2.b, 805.6, 805.6.a, 356.5.a, 365.1, 151.2, 315.1.b, 143.4, 144.1.a and 144.2 all opened and read. REWRITTEN from the #32 candidate: the issue declared SFD-149 Ezreal, Prodigy x2 inside the combo, but Ezreal is a discount and not part of the mechanism — the line works without him at 1 Energy + 1 Power per unit, which the issue itself concedes — and declaring two copies would make src/plan.ts charge a deck for cards the engine does not need. The Ezreal upgrade is named in prerequisites instead. The issue's own card choice was right and its reasoning was checked and kept: picking Cursed Sarcophagus over the three 'ignoring its cost' recursion cards is exactly the try-another-ordering-before-filing-a-reading discipline, and it works. Trap check: no [Repeat]; no attack trigger; no [Temporary]; no recall; no rune recycled for Power; no battlefield used, so 485.4.a is moot; the Energy is spent in the Main Phase so 167 does not bite.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16