RIFTCOMBO

Combo · ENGINE

Shepherd's Heirloom is the only Equipment in the pool whose attach costs neither Energy nor Power — and it hands you the XP it spends

6 cards · order · verified

Pieces

Payoff

Repeatable Energy or Power

Deck

Run play

Prerequisites

Steps

  1. Play Shepherd's Heirloom (E2). Its play trigger gives you 1 XP.
  2. Activate its [Equip] and pay the cost by spending that same XP (730.2). The Attach happens with no Energy and no Power leaving your pool.
  3. 434.1.c appends its Effect Text to the carrier and 434.1.d gives the carrier +2 Might.
  4. Play Enthralling Protector (E2) and garrison a battlefield with it. 823.1.b makes its [Hunt] a conquer effect and a hold effect both, so it banks 1 XP every Beginning Phase you hold there and again on every Conquer.
  5. Spend that surplus on the second and third Heirloom, or on the Protector's own 'Spend 2 XP: [Buff] me' — but count 824.1.d first if the deck runs any [Level] clause. CORRECTED 2026-10-18 (#392, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-16-the-heirloom-took-b-from-a-three-and-kept-jinx-off-it-then-went-home-when-its-carrier-died.md): the second and third Heirloom need no surplus, since each one's play trigger pays its own first attach. The surplus pays for a re-attach after a carrier leaves the board (see netPerIteration), and in the play the faucet's XP went to Poppy, Defender of the Meek and Keeper of the Hammer's draw first.

Per iteration

one attached +2 Might for E2 and nothing else, repeatable three times (103.2.b), with the XP the card spends supplied by the card itself CORRECTED 2026-10-18 (#392, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-16-the-heirloom-took-b-from-a-three-and-kept-jinx-off-it-then-went-home-when-its-carrier-died.md): "supplied by the card itself" is true once per copy. When the carrier leaves the board the Heirloom detaches (719.5: "When a Top-Most Card changes zones from a board zone to a non-board zone, all Attached cards Detach from it, remaining in their current zones.") and comes home (457.1, whose example is this case: "If the unit dies, the Equipment will be recalled during the next cleanup."). Re-attaching it costs 1 XP with no play trigger to refund it (818.1: attaching is never playing). That is the only place the [Hunt] faucet ever pays for the Heirloom.

How it ends

engine only — three Heirlooms at E2 each and an XP faucet that outruns them; nothing here scores, and 824.1.d is the only thing spending the XP can cost you CORRECTED 2026-10-18 (#392, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-16-the-heirloom-took-b-from-a-three-and-kept-jinx-off-it-then-went-home-when-its-carrier-died.md): 824.1.d is not the only cost. Nine other cards that can share the deck spend XP outside any [Level] clause, the entry's own Protector among them (see the second notable).

Sources

Published elsewhere

Walked here, in this project

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 #180 — the first entry to use UNL-158 or UNL-162. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. The uniqueness claim was made by extracting every [Equip] cost string in the corpus and reading each one, and the four shapes are named in the uses[] note so the claim is refutable in one command. It deliberately corrects the SCOPE of this project's own three-day-old measurement rather than contradicting it. Trap check: 730.2 and 824.1.d are cited so spending XP is priced as a real cost rather than waved through, which is the correction the project already applied to wuju-master-blood-rose-level; 818.1 and 434.1.g are cited so attaching is not confused with playing and the attach is not claimed to repeat; 823.1.b is cited for [Hunt] being both a conquer and a hold effect; the three printed forms of [Hunt] are named so a future sweep does not miss two thirds of the family. CORRECTED 2026-10-18 (#392, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-16-the-heirloom-took-b-from-a-three-and-kept-jinx-off-it-then-went-home-when-its-carrier-died.md), and kept verified: the entry's claims about the card hold. It is still the only Equipment whose [Equip] costs no Energy and no Power, and the first attach of each copy is XP-neutral. What was wrong is prose around it: the XP has other uses in nine cards that can share the deck, the Protector included; "supplied by the card itself" holds for the first attach only (719.5, 457.1), so step 5's surplus pays for re-attaches, not for the second and third copy; the [Equip] is your turn, outside showdowns only (381, 308.1.a), and an attached Heirloom cannot move itself (718.2, 721.2); and the answers were missing. Citations added and read: 103.1.b.3, 308.1, 308.1.a, 381, 457.1, 718.2, 719.5, 721.2. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt.

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue