Combo · ENGINE
Rumble replays the Ferrous Forerunner at a discount on every conquer — but never off a token
Pieces
- Rumble, Hotheaded ×1
SFD-026 · engine · fury
Your Mechs each have [Assault]. (+1 Might while we're attackers.) When I conquer, you may recycle another friendly unit to play a Mech from your trash. Reduce its Energy cost by the Might of the unit you recycled.
- Ferrous Forerunner ×1
SFD-021 · payoff · fury
[Deathknell] — Play two 3 Might Mech unit tokens to your base. (When I die, get the effect.)
Payoff
Deck
- Both cards are Fury; the legend is SFD-181 Mechanized Menace (Rumble), Fury/Mind, whose 'Your Mechs have [Shield]' puts the Forerunner at 7 Might on defence and the tokens at 4.
Prerequisites
- THE MECH TOKENS ARE NOT RECYCLE FUEL, AND BOTH THE SOURCE AND THE ISSUE GET THIS WRONG. Rule 185 is one sentence: 'Tokens are not cards.' Rule 416.1 defines Recycling as taking 'one or more cards from a specific zone', and 416.3 says a Recycle listed as a Cost 'must be able to be completed for the cost to be paid'. So 'recycle another friendly unit' can never take a 3 Might Mech token, and the source's line - 'you can just recycle a token and then you reduce its cost by three' - does not work. The fuel has to be a real unit CARD, and the discount is that card's Might.
- SO THE PRICE PER CYCLE IS A BODY, NOT A FREE TOKEN. Recycling a 3 Might unit card brings the Forerunner back at 3 Energy + 1 Power; recycling a 6 Might one brings it back at 1 (356.4 style minimums do not apply - the reduction is by Might, and the Power cost is untouched, since the card says 'Energy cost').
- AND THE FORERUNNER HAS TO DIE AGAIN EACH CYCLE. Rumble pulls 'a Mech from your trash', so the loop needs a death every pass, and the Deathknell only pays out on that death. That plus one conquer per battlefield is why the source's 'basically infinitely' is false and why this is an ENGINE measured in turns.
- The conquer is a real cost too: Rumble has to take a battlefield he does not already control (469.1), so in a Duel with two battlefields the ceiling is two cycles a turn and realistically one.
Steps
- The Forerunner has already died once, so it is in the trash and its Deathknell has already put two 3 Might Mech tokens in your base.
- Rumble conquers a battlefield: Establishing Control is a Conquer (466.5.d), or a Showdown gives it (348.2.a.1).
- His trigger: recycle another friendly UNIT CARD - never a token (185, 416.1, 416.3) - and play the Forerunner from the trash with its Energy cost reduced by that card's Might. A 3 Might card makes it 3 Energy + 1 Power.
- The Forerunner enters exhausted (143.4) as a 6 Might body, 7 on defence under the legend's [Shield].
- When it dies again, the Deathknell pays two more 3 Might Mech tokens into your base, each with [Assault] from Rumble.
- Repeat on the next conquer, for as long as you have a spare unit card on board to feed it.
Per iteration
one discounted Ferrous Forerunner per conquer, at the price of one friendly unit card recycled; +2 Mech tokens each time it dies
How it ends
engine only - roughly one cycle a turn, bounded by conquers and by spare unit cards on the board
Sources
Published elsewhere
- YouTube — Katchouze - Riftbound, "THIS MECH CURVE IS UNSTOPPABLE ?! - Early Rumble Competitive Guide" — la fuente, con la mitad que las reglas refutan 2025-12-27
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
- Minería por leyenda — issue #62 (GitHub) 2026-09-06
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06 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-issue62-legends-without-entries.md), issue #62 section 2.3. SFD-181 Mechanized Menace had no entry. REWRITTEN AT THE ENGINE, and the correction is the reason this walk was worth doing: #62 describes the two Deathknell tokens as 'el combustible del reciclado' and the source says outright that you recycle a token for the discount. Rule 185 - 'Tokens are not cards' - plus 416.1, which defines Recycling over cards only, plus 416.3, which requires a cost Recycle to be completable, kill that half. This is the SECOND independent source in issue #62 to hit that wall: section 5 item 7 is two players guessing that tokens cannot be recycled and not knowing why. The rules say why, in one sentence. What survives is real and is what the entry claims: a conquer buys back the Forerunner cheap, and every death of it pays two bodies. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Trap check: no [Repeat]; the tokens are not [Temporary]; no recall; no rune recycled for Power; 143.4 is respected - the replayed Forerunner enters exhausted. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16