Combo · ENGINE
Ripper's Bay pays even while nobody controls it — two runes off one Retreat
Pieces
- Ripper's Bay ×1
UNL-214 · engine
When a unit here is returned to a player's hand, that player may pay 1 Energy to channel 1 rune exhausted.
- 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.
Payoff
Deck
- Retreat is mono-Mind and the Bay is Colorless, so 103.1.b.1 admits the pair under any Mind legend.
- A friendly unit standing AT Ripper's Bay to be returned — the Bay's trigger is 'a unit HERE'.
Prerequisites
- THE FINDING IS THAT THIS BATTLEFIELD WORKS WHILE UNCONTROLLED, WHICH ALMOST NONE DO. 190.6.d is the paragraph the catalogue leans on everywhere else: '"You" in a battlefield's abilities refers to the battlefield's Controller ... If the battlefield has no Controller, "you" refers to no one, and all such instructions are ignored.' Ripper's Bay never says 'you' — it says 'that player may pay 1 Energy'. 190.6.b covers the rest: an uncontrolled battlefield's abilities still go on the Chain, with the Turn Player taking responsibility where no player is indicated. So the Bay pays from turn one, before anybody has walked a unit in, and it pays the OPPONENT too on their own bounces. That is unusual enough to be the entry.
- Two runes for two Energy off one card. Retreat's own second sentence channels 1 rune exhausted (430.2's worked example is this exact wording); the Bay offers a second channel for 1 Energy. Total E2 for two runes, plus the unit back in hand.
- The runes enter EXHAUSTED, so they are not this turn's Energy — 315.1.b readies them at your next Awaken. What they are worth immediately is 1 Power each: 164.2.b is 'Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]' with no exhaust in its cost, so an exhausted rune still recycles for Power (161.2.b then sends it to the Rune Deck).
- 430.3 is the ceiling and it is real: 'If there aren't sufficient runes in the Rune Deck, channel as many as possible.' A deck that has been channelling 2 a turn (315.3.b) runs the Rune Deck down, so this is early-game ramp, not a late-game engine.
- The bounce is to HAND and is therefore NOT a Recall (455 defines a Recall as relocation to the Base), so the returned unit can be replayed for its own 'when you play me' trigger — the same reason retreat-sprite-mother-rebuy works.
- It is symmetric and it is a 1-in-3 draw: 485.4.a puts one of your three battlefields into play, randomly in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5); 103.4.c and Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid a second copy by name. And because the Bay names 'that player' rather than 'you', an opponent bouncing their own unit there gets the same channel.
Bodies no card supplies
Cast Retreat for E1 returning that unit to your hand
Steps
- Bring Ripper's Bay as one of your three battlefields and get a friendly unit to it — or do not, since the Bay's text is live even while uncontrolled (190.6.b, 190.6.d).
- Cast Retreat for E1 returning that unit to your hand. It is a [Reaction], so 813.1.c.1 allows it on either player's turn.
- Retreat's own clause channels 1 rune exhausted (430.2).
- The Bay's trigger sees a unit here returned to a player's hand and offers that player a second channel: pay E1, channel 1 more rune exhausted.
- Both runes ready at your next Awaken (315.1.b), or recycle either now for 1 Power (164.2.b). Replay the returned unit for its play trigger.
How it ends
engine only — two runes channelled for 2 Energy per Retreat, three casts a game (103.2.b), bounded by the Rune Deck (430.3). 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 #161 (GitHub) 2026-09-06
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #161 — the CAUSE/TRIGGER pair matrix (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-finisher-feeders.md §16) 2026-09-06 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 2026-09-06 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-finisher-feeders.md §16), issue #161, from the CAUSE/TRIGGER matrix: the bounce-to-hand event, the rarest event with an uncatalogued trigger card. Card set checked first (UNL-214 + OGN-104: no exact match; UNL-214 Ripper's Bay appears in NO catalogued entry). Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Citations opened: 103.1.b.1, 103.2.b, 103.4.c, 161.2.b, 164.2.b, 190.6.b, 190.6.d, 315.1.b, 315.3.b, 430.2, 430.3, 455, 485.4.a, 485.5, 486.5, 487.5, 813.1.c.1. The finding is the 'that player' wording: the catalogue has cited 190.6.d repeatedly to show that a battlefield you bring starts switched off, and this is the first entry to note that the blanking is scoped to the word 'you' and does not reach a battlefield that names its beneficiary. Trap check: no attack; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; no token; the bounce is to hand, so 455 does not apply and no Deathknell is erased (808.1.d.1 is about a would-die shield, which this is not); the channelled runes are stated as exhausted rather than assumed to be Energy, so 167 is not misread.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16