Combo · ENGINE

Retreat on the Sprite Mother — the token stays, the trigger comes back, and a rune is channelled

4 cards · mind · verified

Pieces

• Retreat ×3 OGN-104 · engine · mind

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Return a friendly unit to its owner's hand. Its owner channels 1 rune exhausted.

• Sprite Mother ×1 OGN-106 · payoff · mind

  When you play me, play a ready 3 Might Sprite unit token with [Temporary] here. (Kill it at the start of its controller's Beginning Phase, before scoring.)

Payoff

Deck

• Both mono-Mind (103.1.b.3), so any legend carrying Mind runs the pair.
• Sprite Mother must be AT a battlefield when she is played, since her token is played 'here'.

Prerequisites

• 'Here' is read on execution (359.3.f.2), so the Sprite is born AT THE BATTLEFIELD, not at the base — that is the whole reason this is worth a card, because #48 measured the walk from the base as the bottleneck on every token line, and it also enters READY.
• The token is not the Mother. Bouncing her returns one permanent to hand and leaves the other on the board; replaying her makes a second Sprite there. Ledger per cycle: E1 for Retreat plus E4 + 1 Power for the replay, against one ready 3 Might body at a battlefield and one rune channelled exhausted.
• The channelled rune is a real refund, and 430.2's own worked example is this wording. It enters exhausted, so it is not Energy this turn — but 164.2.b ('Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]') carries no exhaust in its cost, so it recycles for 1 Power immediately, and 161.2.b returns it to the Rune Deck.
• Retreat is a [Reaction] (813.1.c.1), which makes this a save as well as a rebuy: the Mother can be pulled out of a combat or off a removal spell in a Closed State. The Sprite she left behind stays where it was.
• 816.1.b still kills every Sprite at the start of your Beginning Phase before scoring, so this stacks bodies WITHIN a turn and never across turns. Three Retreats (103.2.b) is at most three extra Sprites, all of them gone by your next Scoring Step.
• 185 and 186.1: the Sprites are tokens, never reach the trash, and nothing here recycles or reanimates one.
• THE PARAGRAPH THAT AUTHORISES THE NAMED DESTINATION, ADDED BESIDE 355.2.a RATHER THAN INSTEAD OF IT (#204, from #187 batch 18). 355.2.a is the DEFAULT for playing a card - 'By default, Valid locations include the controller's Base or a Battlefield the controller controls' - and it is what this entry already cites. It is not a permission for a token-creating effect to NARROW that, and the paragraph that is has been cited by nothing in 766 entries: 184.2, 'The effect may restrict the location to which the token may be played.' That is what makes a printed 'here' a legal instruction rather than a contradiction of the default. The system is three paragraphs - 184.2 narrows, 355.2.a defaults, 355.2.b widens - and this catalogue was citing two of the three. Both are true here and the pair is the finding.

Steps

1. Play Sprite Mother to a battlefield you control (355.2.a). Her trigger plays a ready 3 Might [Temporary] Sprite HERE (359.3.f.2).
2. Cast Retreat for E1 returning Sprite Mother to your hand. The Sprite stays on the battlefield — it is its own permanent.
3. Channel 1 rune exhausted from Retreat's second sentence (430.2). Recycle it for 1 Power at once if you need it (164.2.b), or keep it as next turn's Energy.
4. Replay Sprite Mother for E4 + 1 Power to the same battlefield: a second ready 3 Might Sprite lands there.
5. Repeat with the second and third Retreat inside the same turn. At the start of your next Beginning Phase 816.1.b kills all of them before scoring.

How it ends

engine only — up to three extra ready 3 Might bodies at a battlefield in one turn, each for E5 + 1 Power minus a channelled rune, and all of them dead by your next Scoring Step (816.1.b). 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

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