Combo · ENGINE
Two cards whose drawbacks cancel: Mundo recycles three out of the trash at the start of the phase and the Temple burns three back in at the Hold
Pieces
- Shadow Temple ×1
VEN-165 · battlefield
When you hold here, [Burn 3]. (Put the top 3 cards of your Main Deck into your trash.)
- Dr. Mundo, Expert ×1
OGN-109 · payoff · mind
My Might is increased by the number of cards in your trash. At the start of your Beginning Phase, recycle 3 from your trash.
Payoff
Deck
- Dr. Mundo is mono-Mind and the Shadow Temple is Colorless (103.4), so ANY legend whose two domains include Mind runs the line (103.1.b.1). Nothing here is Signature (103.2.d.2).
- The Shadow Temple has to be the battlefield in play: 485.5 selects one of the three each player provides at random, and 103.4.c forbids more than one of a name.
Prerequisites
- EACH CARD IS A DRAWBACK AND THE PAIR IS NOT, WHICH IS THE ENTRY. Alone, Dr. Mundo is a body that eats its own stat line: 'My Might is increased by the number of cards in your trash' and 'At the start of your Beginning Phase, recycle 3 from your trash' — mandatory, no 'may' — so he shrinks by 3 every turn he stands. Alone, the Shadow Temple is a fuse: [Burn 3] every Hold, and 431.1.b makes putting cards from your Main Deck into the trash in excess of what remains a Burn Out, which 431.2.b then punishes by recycling YOUR WHOLE TRASH back into the Main Deck. Together the two are exactly balanced: 3 cards out of the trash and into the deck, then 3 out of the deck and into the trash, every turn, forever.
- THE ORDER IS FIXED BY THE PHASE STRUCTURE AND IT IS THE RIGHT WAY ROUND. 315.2.a is the Beginning Step and 315.2.a.1 is 'At the start of Beginning Phase game effects take place'; 315.2.b is the Scoring Step and 315.2.b.2 is 'The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control'. Mundo's recycle is a start-of-Beginning-Phase effect, so it resolves FIRST and the Temple's Burn refills behind it. That matters: the deck is never allowed to run down while a card sits waiting to go back into it.
- SO MUNDO IS THE THING THAT DEFUSES THE TEMPLE. The catalogued Temple entry, shadow-temple-sentinel-burn, prices the battlefield as 'nine cards into your trash a turn, on a four-turn fuse'. The fuse exists because nothing puts cards BACK. Mundo puts three back every turn at no cost, so the Temple can be held indefinitely — and the trash it maintains is the currency of every trash line in the pool ([Flow] replays, Last Rites, Rhasa's discount, Heedless Resurrection).
- AND THE TEMPLE IS THE THING THAT MAKES MUNDO STAND STILL. His Might is read continuously off the trash, so a trash held at N leaves him at 6 + N permanently rather than sliding to 6. He is E8 + 2 Mind Power for a body whose size is a number you control.
- A BURN OUT WOULD ERASE BOTH HALVES AT ONCE, WHICH IS WHY THE BALANCE IS THE POINT AND NOT A NICETY. 431.2.b: on burning out you 'Recycle their trash into their Main Deck.' That is Mundo back to M6 and every trash payoff in the deck reset to zero, in one event, for the price of a point to the opponent (194.1.d). The pairing is not a value engine bolted onto a fuse; it is the fuse removed.
- WHAT THE TRASH IS WORTH, STATED RATHER THAN IMPLIED. Nothing here scores and nothing here draws. The product is (a) a Mind body of 6 + N Might for a fixed price and (b) a trash of stable size for the rest of the deck to spend. An entry that claimed more would be pricing cards it does not name.
- WHAT REFUTES IT. (a) 485.5 makes the Temple a 1-in-3 draw at best. (b) The Temple's trigger is a Hold, so a turn in which you control no battlefield burns nothing and Mundo loses 3 that turn with no refill. (c) Mundo's recycle is mandatory and the Temple's Burn is not optional either ('[Burn 3]', no may), so neither half can be switched off on a turn you would rather it did not fire. (d) 416.1.a recycles to the BOTTOM of the deck, so the three cards that go back are not the three that come out — the deck is stable in size, not in order.
Steps
- Provide the Shadow Temple as one of your three battlefields (103.4.c); 485.5 decides whether it is in play.
- Play Dr. Mundo, Expert (E8 + 2 Mind Power). 143.4 makes him enter exhausted.
- Take and keep control of the Temple — a unit standing there and a Conquer (348.2.a / 348.2.a.1, or 466.5 / 466.5.d out of a combat).
- Every turn, Beginning Step (315.2.a.1): Mundo's trigger recycles 3 cards from your trash to the bottom of your Main Deck (416.1.a). His Might drops by 3.
- Same turn, Scoring Step (315.2.b.2): the Temple Holds and its trigger burns the top 3 of your Main Deck into your trash. His Might returns to where it was.
- Net across the turn: trash size unchanged, Main Deck size unchanged, no Burn Out possible from this pair, and Mundo standing at 6 plus the trash you have built.
Per iteration
a trash held at a constant size with no fuse, and a Mind body whose Might is 6 plus that number, for no recurring cost at all
How it ends
engine only — the two halves cancel exactly, so it neither grows nor decays; 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
Walked here, in this project
- Synergy rule shadow-temple-trash-fuel (data/synergies.json) 2026-09-06
- Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-rules-second-pass.md), issue #170 2026-09-07 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 2026-09-07 (issue #170), from the proven rule shadow-temple-trash-fuel (49 partners, 49 uncovered, one entry). The pairing is chosen for a property no other row of the list has: OGN-109 Dr. Mundo, Expert is the only partner that puts cards BACK into the Main Deck, and it does so at exactly the Temple's rate, so the two cards' drawbacks cancel. The phase order was checked rather than assumed: 315.2.a.1 'At the start of Beginning Phase game effects take place' precedes 315.2.b.2's Hold, so Mundo's recycle runs first and the Burn refills behind it. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Citations opened and read: 103.1.b.1, 103.2.d.2, 103.4, 103.4.c, 143.4, 194.1.d, 315.2.a, 315.2.a.1, 315.2.b, 315.2.b.2, 348.2.a, 348.2.a.1, 416.1.a, 431.1.b, 431.2.b, 466.5, 466.5.d, 485.5. Ban check: VEN-165 and OGN-109 carry no [BANNED marker. Arithmetic against its own declared quantities: 3 recycled out, 3 burned in, per turn, net zero on both zones. Trap check: both triggers are mandatory, so neither can be declined on an awkward turn; the battlefield is chosen at random (485.5) and is named in prerequisites.easy; a Burn Out would recycle the whole trash (431.2.b) and erase both halves, which is exactly what the pairing prevents; no token, no [Temporary], no [Repeat], no buff. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16