Combo · ENGINE
"Trashes" is plural and "their owners' hands" is the catch — picking from theirs is a gift, so the value has to be stocked by you
Pieces
- Shadows of the Past ×1
VEN-103 · payoff · chaos
Return up to 2 units from trashes to their owners' hands.
1
- Evershade Stalker ×1
UNL-123 · engine · chaos
When you play me, discard 1, then draw 1.
Payoff
Deck
- Mono-Chaos, so any of the sixteen legend names carrying Chaos holds it (103.1.b.1): Loose Cannon (OGN-251), Unforgiven (OGN-259), Swift Scout (OGN-263), Bounty Hunter (OGN-267), Dark Child - Starter (OGS-017), Glorious Executioner (SFD-185), Blade Dancer (SFD-195), Prodigal Explorer (SFD-199), Battle Mistress (SFD-203), Bloodharbor Ripper (UNL-185), Gloomist (UNL-193), Scorn of the Moon (UNL-197), Voidreaver (UNL-201), Master of Shadows (VEN-143), Soul's Reflection (VEN-151), Heart of the Tempest (VEN-155).
- Two units of YOUR OWN in the trash when the spell resolves — see the first notable.
Prerequisites
- THE PLURAL IS A TRAP, NOT A REACH. 'Return up to 2 units from trashes to their owners' hands' lets you pick out of the opponent's trash, and 056 with 056.2 then sends the card to its OWNER's hand — so choosing one of theirs is a gift, not theft. The plural buys nothing; the value has to be stocked by you, which is exactly what the Stalker is for.
- AND IT RETURNS TO HAND, SO NOTHING IS CHEATED. The bodies still have to be paid for in full. This is card advantage at 3 Energy + 1 Power for two cards, not a cost reduction — the cost-cheating reanimators in this domain are `OGN-196 Soulgorger` and `OGN-198 The Harrowing`, and the catalogue already pairs those two.
- THE LOOT IS MANDATORY AND THE ORDER MATTERS. 'Discard 1, THEN draw 1' — you lose the card before you see the replacement, so it is a genuine cost when the hand is good and a genuine gain when it is not. 055 is the floor: with an empty hand you discard nothing and still draw ('do as much as you can, ignoring impossible instructions'). And 422.1.b — '"When I am discarded" abilities or other Triggered Abilities that trigger on discarding are executed after discarding has occurred' — means a discarded card with its own trigger fires from the trash, which 385.1 and 385.2 permit.
- SO THE ENGINE IS: DISCARD SOMETHING EXPENSIVE, GET IT BACK. The Stalker is the cheapest way in mono-Chaos to put a specific big unit in the trash on purpose, and Shadows of the Past is the card that turns two such deliberate discards into two cards in hand — with a body left on the board either way.
- 431.2.b IS THE CLOCK AND IT RUNS THE WRONG WAY. A Burn Out 'Recycles their trash into their Main Deck', so an over-drawn deck randomises everything you carefully stocked back into the library. A list built on this pair has to respect 431.1.a: drawing past the deck costs a point (194.1.d) AND erases the currency.
- THE PRINTED '[Effect] 1' IS A DATA ANOMALY, AND THE PROJECT REGISTERS RATHER THAN NORMALISES IT. Riot's gallery ships this spell with the Equipment-only `effect` field containing the single character '1', which the corpus renders as a dangling '[Effect] 1'. It is recorded in docs/data-anomalies.md and must never enter data/errata.json, since that overlay's find-string failure is the only mechanism keeping the card text honest. The entry claims nothing from it.
Steps
- Play Evershade Stalker (3 Energy). Its ETB is mandatory: discard 1, then draw 1 — discard the expensive unit you intend to recover.
- Play a second Stalker, or take a combat loss, so that two of your own units are in the trash.
- Play Shadows of the Past (3 Energy + 1 Chaos Power): return up to 2 units from trashes to their owners' hands. Choose only your own — 056.2 sends anything of theirs to THEIR hand.
- Replay the bodies at full cost; nothing here reduces it.
- Watch the deck: 431.1.b and 431.1.a both end in a Burn Out, and 431.2.b then shuffles the trash back into the library.
Per iteration
two units out of your own trash and into your hand for 3 Energy + 1 Power, with the discard that stocked them costing a card and returning one
How it ends
engine — two cards recovered per Shadows of the Past, three a game (103.2.b), on top of a 3-Might body and a filtered card per Stalker; 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
- Hand walk 2026-09-07, issue #173 — the uncatalogued Fury / Chaos cards 2026-09-07 record
- Registered data anomalies 2026-09-04 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.
VEN-103 Shadows of the Past and UNL-123 Evershade Stalker were both in ZERO entries. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 055, 055.1, 056, 056.2, 103.1.b.1, 103.2.b, 194.1.d, 385.1, 385.2, 422.1.b, 431.1.a, 431.1.b, 431.2.b opened in the Core Rules file. VEN-103's dangling '[Effect] 1' is checked against docs/data-anomalies.md and named as a registered anomaly in both the use note and a notable; the entry does not rely on it and it must not be moved into data/errata.json. No unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16