Combo · ENGINE
Starhound and Undying Loyalty — the four-tag board rebuilt for one Power a card
Pieces
- Undying Loyalty ×3
UNL-168 · engine · order
This costs 2 Energy less if you choose a Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro. Play a unit with cost no more than 2 Energy and no more than 1 Power of any domain from your trash, ignoring its cost.
- Starhound ×3
UNL-167 · engine · order
When you play me, return a Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro from your trash to your hand.
- Soaring Scout ×3
OGN-216 · resource · order
[Deathknell] — Channel 1 rune exhausted. (When I die, get the effect.)
- Daring Poro ×3
OGN-210 · resource · order
[Assault] (+1 Might while I'm an attacker.)
Payoff
Deck
- Everything here is mono-Order, so 103.1.b.3 admits the package under any legend carrying Order — including UNL-195 Green Father, which is the legend the Daisy half of this package forces.
- Bodies have to reach the trash first. Combat, a sweeper, or the bodies' own deaths supply that; nothing in the line kills on purpose.
Run play
Prerequisites
- The two halves are not interchangeable and the difference is the point. Undying Loyalty puts the body straight onto the BOARD ignoring its cost, but only if it is printed at E2 or less and 1 Power or less. Starhound returns it to HAND with no cost ceiling at all, so he reaches the expensive tag bodies (UNL-047 Mosstomper, VEN-032 Frostcoat Mother, VEN-122 Solari Sunhawk) that Undying Loyalty cannot. CORRECTED 2026-10-14 (#365, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-undying-loyalty-rebuilds-the-tags-for-one-rune-and-cannot-rebuild-ivern.md): this notable said Starhound "is the only way back for the expensive tag bodies". In Calm/Order he is not. OGN-226 Spectral Matron (Order, E4 + 2 Power): 'When you play me, you may play a unit costing no more than :rb_energy_3: and no more than :rb_rune_rainbow: from your trash, ignoring its cost.' All three bodies are printed E3 with 1 Power or less (Mosstomper E3 P1, Frostcoat Mother E3, Solari Sunhawk E3), and the Matron puts them on the BOARD, not in hand. SFD-165 Glasc Mixologist (Order, E5 P1) has the same ceiling on its [Deathknell], and SFD-035 Guardian of the Passage (Calm, E6) 'When I hold, you may return a unit or gear from your trash to your hand.' Measured scope: the Calm, Order, Calm/Order and Colorless rows of data/corpus_flat.txt whose text reads 'from your trash' are ten; the unit-recursion ones are exactly these five (Spectral Matron, Glasc Mixologist, Guardian of the Passage, Starhound, Undying Loyalty), the rest being four [Flow] spells and OGN-281 Hallowed Tomb, which returns only a Chosen Champion. None of the three is banned or in data/legality.src.json.
- 206 is why the ceiling cannot be gamed: both 'costs no more than' clauses read the PRINTED cost, and its second worked example (Defy against Rocket Barrage) says a paid [Repeat] cost is ignored too. A discount on the tag body does not widen Undying Loyalty's window and a tax does not close it.
- Where the reanimated body lands: 355.2.a's default — 'the controller's Base or a Battlefield the controller controls'. Unlike the token lines of #48 there is no walk-to-the-battlefield bottleneck, because a unit played from the trash may be played straight to a battlefield you control.
- Six castings a game, not a loop: 103.2.b caps each spell at three copies and nothing here returns Undying Loyalty or Starhound themselves. That is the honest ceiling and the entry does not dress it up.
- 185: the bodies must be CARDS. A token with a Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro tag — the [Deflect] Bird from UNL-217 Trapping Grounds, for instance — never reaches the trash at all (186.1), so it can never be the target of either half.
- THE PAYOFF IS OUTSIDE THE RECURSION - ADDED 2026-10-14 (#365, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-undying-loyalty-rebuilds-the-tags-for-one-rune-and-cannot-rebuild-ivern.md). UNL-177 Ivern, Friend to All is printed E6, above Undying Loyalty's E2 ceiling, so it cannot replay him. Starhound cannot return him either: Ivern's tag is chosen 'As you play me', and in the trash he is a new object (124: 'A Game Object that changes zones to or from a Non-Board Zone becomes a new object for the purposes of tracking that object.') carrying only his printed tags, Ivern and Ionia, none of Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro. In the walk he died to one Energy (OGN-004 Cleave, 'Give a unit [Assault 3] this turn.') and two attackers, and nothing here brings him back.
- THE FOURTH TAG IS NOT IN THIS PACKAGE - ADDED 2026-10-14 (#365, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-undying-loyalty-rebuilds-the-tags-for-one-rune-and-cannot-rebuild-ivern.md). The uses name a Bird (OGN-216 Soaring Scout), a Poro (OGN-210 Daring Poro) and a Dog (Starhound) and no Cat, so step 5's 'The four tags are back up' needs a card the entry does not list. Order has one inside Undying Loyalty's ceiling, VEN-132 Fallen Feline (Order, E2 P1, Cat), and Ivern supplies one himself when he chooses Cat as he is played. The Cat is a condition of the payoff the entry names, not of the engine, so it is not added to uses: the engine still rebuilds the three tags it lists.
Steps
- Play the cheap tagged bodies and let them die: Soaring Scout's [Deathknell] channels a rune exhausted on the way out, so the first trip pays for itself.
- Cast Undying Loyalty choosing a Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro. The E2 discount takes the Energy half to zero, so the cost is 1 Order Power.
- Play a unit from the trash with printed cost no more than E2 and no more than 1 rainbow, ignoring its cost. 355.2.a lets it land at your base or at a battlefield you control.
- When the expensive tag bodies die, cast Starhound instead (E5 + 1 Power): he returns one from the trash to your hand with no cost ceiling, and he is himself a Dog.
- The tags are back up. With a Cat in the deck (VEN-132 Fallen Feline, or Ivern choosing Cat as he is played) that is the four-tag condition UNL-196 Daisy! and UNL-177 Ivern, Friend to All both read. CORRECTED 2026-10-14 (#365): this step read 'The four tags are back up', and the uses name no Cat - see the notable 'THE FOURTH TAG IS NOT IN THIS PACKAGE'.
How it ends
engine only - up to six rebuilds a game (three Undying Loyalty at 1 Power each, three Starhound). Nothing here scores. CORRECTED 2026-10-14 (#365, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-undying-loyalty-rebuilds-the-tags-for-one-rune-and-cannot-rebuild-ivern.md): this said the rebuilds are 'what keeps the four-tag condition alive through a sweeper'. Undying Loyalty has no [Action] or [Reaction], so under 310.1.a ('By default, cards can be played and abilities activated only when a player has priority on their turn in a Neutral Open state.') it is cast in your Main Phase, which comes after your Hold (315.2.b.2 '1. The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control.'; 316.1 'When all steps of the Start of Turn have been completed, the Main Phase begins.'). A tag lost on their turn costs Ivern's next Hold point whatever the trash holds. Battlefield sweepers do not reach base, where the tag bodies can wait, but base is a location (355.2.a: 'Valid locations include the controller's Base or a Battlefield the controller controls') and some one-rune spells do reach it. Two examples, not a census: VEN-107 Decree of Discord (Chaos, E1 P1: 'Return any number of enemy Order (:rb_rune_order:) units with total Might 5 or less to their owners' hands.') sends them to hand, where neither half reaches; SFD-080 Bellows Breath (Mind, E1 P1: '[Repeat] :rb_energy_1::rb_rune_mind: ... Deal 1 to up to three units at the same location.') kills the M1 Soaring Scout in base for one rune, and with its [Repeat] (a second rune) a 2-Might Poro too. That body goes to the trash, inside the recursion, and still costs the next Hold point, because Undying Loyalty comes after the Hold. (CORRECTED in review, #365: the first draft of this note called Decree of Discord 'the one-rune spell that does' reach base, with no scope.)
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
- Issue #153 (GitHub) 2026-09-06
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #153 — the 55 synergy rules no catalogued entry stands on 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-orphan-synergy-rules.md §12), issue #153, from the two orphan rules starhound-four-tags and undying-loyalty-four-tags. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Citations opened: 103.1.b.3, 103.2.b, 185, 186.1, 206, 355.2.a. Trap check: no attack, no Attacker designation; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; the token half of the tag families is explicitly excluded by 185 / 186.1 rather than assumed; no recall, so 455 does not apply; a unit played from the trash enters exhausted (143.4) and this entry claims no same-turn move for it; 167 is not touched. Depends on no unruled reading. Companion to daisy-green-father-four-tag-attacker, which needs the same four tags standing. CORRECTED 2026-10-14 (#365), from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-14-undying-loyalty-rebuilds-the-tags-for-one-rune-and-cannot-rebuild-ivern.md: four leads applied - the 'only way back' notable (Spectral Matron, Glasc Mixologist, Guardian of the Passage), terminatesIn's 'through a sweeper' (the rebuilds come after the Hold), a new notable that Ivern is outside both halves (E6; 124), and a new notable plus step 5 that the package names no Cat. Citations added: 124, 310.1.a, 315.2.b.2, 316.1, 355.2.a. STATUS STAYS verified: every correction is to a claim about the payoff or about what else exists in the pool; the engine itself - Undying Loyalty playing a tagged E2 body from the trash for 1 Power, Starhound returning any tagged body to hand - is what the play walked, and it holds.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16