Combo · ENGINE

Eight instances of a draw that says 'you may' — the one Svellsongur stack that cannot Burn Out, and eight buffs on eight different bodies

4 cards · calm · verified

Pieces

• Svellsongur ×3 SFD-059 · engine · calm

  [Equip] 1 Energy + 1 Calm Power (1 Energy + 1 Calm Power: Attach this to a unit you control.) As this is attached to a unit, copy that unit's text to this Equipment's effect text for as long as this is attached to it.

• Ivern, Nurturer ×1 UNL-051 · payoff · calm

  When you play me or when I hold, look at the top 3 cards of your Main Deck. You may reveal a unit from among them and draw it. Recycle the rest. Then if you revealed a Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro, do this: [Buff] a friendly unit. (Give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't have one.)

Payoff

Deck

• Both cards are mono-Calm, so ANY legend whose two domains include Calm runs the line (103.1.b.1). Nothing here is Signature (103.2.d.2).
• One battlefield Ivern holds — his trigger is 'when I hold', which 315.2.b.2 pays at every battlefield you control.

Run play

• eight instances, and one body left to buff

Prerequisites

• THE STACK IS 2^v, NOT 1+v, AND THE CATALOGUE ALREADY PROVED IT. 477.2.c puts 'Abilities of Effect Text of Attached cards are appended' in Layer 2; 476.1 applies each effect 'only a single time across all sequences', so there is no recursion; 479.1 finds no dependency because each copy alters the other; 480.3 orders them by Timestamp, i.e. attach order. Three Svellsongur on one body are EIGHT instances of its trigger. This entry's whole question is which trigger survives being multiplied eight times, and the answer is the one whose every clause is optional.
• WHY EIGHT IVERNS DO NOT BURN YOU OUT, AND EIGHT OF THE OTHER DRAW BODIES DO. 431.1.a burns a player out on drawing past the deck, but 431.1.c says looking or revealing past it 'does not Burn Out', and 431.1.c.1 extends the protection to the zone change that follows. Ivern's own wording is 'look at the top 3 … YOU MAY reveal a unit from among them and draw it' — the draw is an option you decline, eight times if you like. Contrast the entries already in the catalogue: svellsongur-corrupt-enforcer-trash-fill runs 'When I win a combat, draw 1' with no may, and eight instances are a forced eight-card draw. UNL-060 Vilemaw ('When I hold, draw 1') and VEN-042 Shen, Scourge of Shadows ('when I hold … draw 1') are the same forced shape and are refused here for it.
• AND THE DECK IS REFILLED WHILE YOU LOOK. 'Recycle the rest' sends every card you did not draw to the BOTTOM of the Main Deck (416.1.a), so eight instances see up to 24 cards and put back at least 16 of them. That is the opposite of a mill: the engine cannot run itself out, which is what makes the eightfold count safe rather than reckless.
• THE BUFF HALF IS THE ONE PLACE WHERE 702.3 DOES NOT BITE. 702.3 allows one Buff per unit and 702.3.a says a second 'is not placed instead' — but Ivern's clause is '[Buff] A FRIENDLY UNIT', chosen anew each time. Eight instances therefore place up to EIGHT buffs, one each on eight different unbuffed bodies, for +1 Might apiece (703). Every 'multiplier is a no-op on a fixed target' trap in the project's ledger — Enthusiastic Promoter on blue-sentinel-hold, Sett Brawler on red-brambleback-conquer — turns on the buffer naming a FIXED body; this one does not.
• THE BUFF IS CONDITIONAL AND THE CONDITION IS CHEAP. 'Then if you revealed a Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro' — one of the four tags the pool prints in quantity, and revealing is free of Burn Out either way. A deck built around this line wants those tags in it anyway, which is the same package the four-tag rules already read.
• COST, WITH THE QUANTITIES DECLARED. Ivern E5 + 1 Calm Power. Three Svellsongur at E3 + 1 Calm Power each, plus their [Equip] of 1 Energy + 1 Calm rune each: 9 Energy, 3 Calm Power, 3 Energy of Equip and 3 more Calm runes. That is a real investment — 17 Energy and 6 Calm Power spread over several turns — and it is why the entry names the payoff in full: from then on, EVERY Hold looks at 24 cards, draws as many units as you want, and buffs up to eight bodies.
• WHAT REFUTES IT. (a) Svellsongur must sit on the payoff body, so [Weaponmaster]'s 'equip one of your Equipment to ME for one rainbow less' can never discount these attaches — the same limit svellsongur-copy-hold and ivern-svellsongur-four-tags-hold already carry. (b) Ivern is M4 and the Might Bonus of Svellsongur is +0, so the stack makes him no harder to kill; a removal spell on him erases the whole investment at once. (c) ivern-nurturer-hold-tutor already runs three Ivern for three instances; this is the same card reaching eight from one body, which is the difference between three deck slots and one.
• 424.1.a.2 is the MECHANISM under the 431.1.c protection this entry already cites, and the entry carries the consequence without it: "Cards remain in the zone they are being Revealed from." Riot's own example is that a card Revealed from the top of the Main Deck "is still the top card of that player's Main Deck." So revealing can never Burn Out because NOTHING LEAVES THE DECK, which 424.1.a states as the general fact: "Revealed is a temporary state and is not a zone." Same shape this file records for 355.7 against 355.10.d and 811.6 against the tail of 811.1.b.

Steps

1. Play Ivern, Nurturer (E5 + 1 Calm Power) and walk him to a battlefield you control (144.4.a; his exhaust is the cost, 144.2 / 420.3.a).
2. Play the three Svellsongur (E3 + 1 Calm Power each) and [Equip] each to Ivern for 1 Energy + 1 Calm rune (818.1.b).
3. Each attach copies his CURRENT text (R6 = A), so the first Svellsongur carries 1 instance, the second copies the resulting 2, the third copies 4: eight instances of the trigger in total (477.2.c, 476.1, 479.1, 480.3).
4. At your Beginning Phase, 315.2.b.2 Holds every battlefield you control and all eight instances trigger.
5. Resolve them one at a time: look at the top 3 (431.1.c — no Burn Out), reveal and draw a unit only if you want it, recycle the rest to the bottom (416.1.a).
6. For each instance in which a Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro was revealed, buff a friendly unit — a DIFFERENT one each time, since 702.3.a skips any body that already carries a counter.

Per iteration

24 cards looked at every Hold, as many units drawn as you choose, and up to eight +1 Might buffs spread across eight bodies

How it ends

engine only — 103.2.b caps Svellsongur at three copies, so eight instances is the ceiling, and 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
• Rules readings R6 = A, ruled 2026-09-04 (GitHub issue #11) 2026-09-04

Walked here, in this project

• Synergy rule svellsongur-copy (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

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue