Combo · INFINITE

Threshold of the Gray pays every combat — two Revelers attack forever, 1 Energy a pass

4 cards · fury + calm · verified

Pieces

Threshold of the Gray ×1 VEN-166 · battlefield
When combat starts here, the attacker and defender each [Add] 1 Energy.
Twilight Reveler ×2 VEN-020 · engine · fury
When I attack, ready another friendly unit.
Back Off ×1 UNL-042 · enabler · calm
[Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) [Stun] a unit. (It doesn't deal combat damage this turn.) If you played this from your hand, draw 1.

Payoff

Infinite Energy

Deck

Legend domains are Fury and Calm, and the pool holds exactly ONE such legend: VEN-139 Rogue Assassin (Akali), which is the legend both sources play. Facebreaker cannot replace Back Off — it is Order and the deck would need three domains (103.1.b.1).

Prerequisites

THE BATTLEFIELD IS RANDOM AND CANNOT BE DOUBLED UP: random 1 of 3 in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5); 103.4.c and Tournament Rules 402.1 both forbid a second copy of a battlefield by name.
THE OPPONENT MUST ALREADY CONTROL THRESHOLD. 466.5 has the player with units remaining 'Establish Control if they didn't already control this Battlefield', and 466.5.d turns Establishing Control into a Conquer. If it was not already theirs, the recall leaves only their units there and every pass hands them a free point.
EXACTLY ONE ENEMY DEFENDER, OF 4+ MIGHT. 4+ because the only attacker each pass is one 3 Might Reveler and 465.2.c assigns 'an amount of damage equal to their summed Might', so 3 is never lethal against 4. Exactly one because Back Off stuns exactly one unit, and any un-stunned enemy Might there kills the 3 Might Reveler. This is a condition on the OPPONENT'S board and it is the entry's real fragility, the same shape twilight-reveler-eye-facebreaker-recruits carries.
BACK OFF CANNOT BE HIDDEN FOR THIS. Its [Hidden] route is 0 Energy but 811.1.b only lets you hide 'at a battlefield you control', and 811.1.d.2 restricts a hidden spell's targets to that battlefield. The defender stands at the OPPONENT'S Threshold, so the hidden line has no legal target and the stun has to be paid from hand: 3 Energy, which also draws 1.
THE BATTLEFIELD PAYS THE OPPONENT TOO, AND NO SOURCE WEIGHS IT. 'the attacker and defender each [Add] 1 Energy' is symmetric, so the loop floats the opponent unbounded Energy during your turn, spendable in the Combat Showdown every pass opens (464.2, 347.1). 167 empties their pool at the end of your turn, but not before it. Against a hand with Reaction removal this is the line's sharpest edge over twilight-reveler-eye-facebreaker-recruits, which pays the opponent nothing.
THE ENERGY DIES WITH THE TURN. 167: 'Every player's Rune Pool empties at the start of each player's Main Phase and the end of each player's turn.' Everything the loop makes has to be spent in the same Main Phase.
TOURNAMENT RULES 505 IS WHY THIS LOOP MAY BE SHORTCUT AT AN EVENT, AND IT WAS CITED BY NOTHING (upgrade 2026-09-12, #191 batch 27; Tournament Rules, labelled). **505.2** - *"Players performing a loop must have each iteration of the loop be identical with no conditional actions"* - and **505.9** - *"If a sequence of actions is non-deterministic, it may not be shortcut and iterations must be performed manually."* Read against Core Rules 416.5, two or more cards recycled to the Main Deck simultaneously go to the bottom in RANDOM order, so a loop that recycles 2+ per pass is non-deterministic unless it draws all of them back. **The condition is checkable and this entry meets it**: the Main Deck is empty by construction, so every card recycled in a pass is drawn back inside that same pass and the random order never selects a subset. That means the *"zero spare draws"* invariant this catalogue maintains for a different reason - a fifth draw is Burn Out (431.1.a) on one side and a stranded random card on the other - is load-bearing a SECOND time, against a procedural rule it was not written for: it is exactly what makes the loop shortcuttable rather than hand-iterated at a table.
THE 505 PARAGRAPH ABOVE IS RIGHT ABOUT THE SHORTCUT AND WRONG ABOUT THIS ENTRY'S REASON, corrected 2026-09-13 (#200). It was applied UNIFORMLY to all fourteen INFINITEs by #191 batch 27, and its stated condition - *"the Main Deck is empty by construction, so every card recycled in a pass is drawn back inside that same pass"* - describes the RECYCLE-AND-DRAW loops. **This entry is a COMBAT-RECALL loop: it walks in, takes the Attacker designation, is recalled by 466.1.a.2, and repeats. It puts NO card into the Main Deck and draws none back**, which this entry says in its own words - its `netPerIteration` reads zero cards spent. **So it needs no empty deck at all, and its licence under 505.9 is shorter and stronger than the pasted one: nothing is recycled, so Core Rules 416.5 never fires and there is no random order to be non-deterministic about.** Re-measured over each entry's own `steps` rather than over the pasted needle, the class splits **8 that need an empty Main Deck and 6 that do not**; this is one of the six. **The standing form is about uniform notables rather than about this paragraph: a sentence pasted across a whole class is worth auditing precisely because that is how a CORRECT sentence lands on an entry it was never measured against** - and here the entry's own `netPerIteration` contradicted it in the same record.

Steps

First pass only: play Back Off from hand (3 Energy) on the enemy defender. It stays Stunned for the whole turn (423.1.a.2) and the play draws 1.
Standard Move a Reveler from base into Threshold (144.1.a, 144.4.a). 144.2 and 420.3.a make exhausting it the whole cost — no Energy, no card.
190.3.a.1 applies Contested; the Cleanup stages the Combat (323.9) and 323.13 opens it from the Neutral Open State.
464.2.b: Threshold's 'when combat starts here' resolves — +1 Energy to you (and +1 to the opponent).
464.2.c.3 gives the Reveler the Attacker designation and 383.4.e puts 'When I attack' on the chain: ready the other Reveler, which is the one sitting exhausted in base from its own last pass.
Damage: 3 assigned to the 4+ Might defender (465.2.c), 0 back, because 423.1.b says a Stunned Unit contributes no might in the damage step.
Combat Cleanup: 466.1.a.1 heals all units, so the 3 damage never accumulates across passes; 466.1.a.2 recalls the Attackers because Defenders are still present. 466.3.d is No Result and 466.3.d.1 does not re-stage, since only the opponent has units there.
The Reveler comes home exhausted — 458, a recall does not change state — and 456.1 means the trip home triggers nothing.
Repeat with the Reveler the attack trigger readied. Every pass is +1 Energy for 0 Energy, 0 Power and 0 cards.

Per iteration

+1 Energy per pass; 0 Energy, 0 Power and 0 cards spent

How it ends

unbounded Energy this Main Phase; it empties at the end of the turn (167), so it has to be spent the same turn

Sources

Published elsewhere

YouTube — Ritualo, "How To Combo And Master AKALI│Beginner's Guide│Riftbound Vendetta" 2026-07-22
Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
Minería por leyenda — issue #62 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

Hand walk 2026-09-06 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-issue62-combat-loop.md), issue #62 section 1.2. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; every rule number opened in data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt. THE CHEAPEST MEMBER OF THE RECALL FAMILY: three cards plus a battlefield, against four for twilight-reveler-eye-facebreaker-recruits and five for jhin-fiora-facebreaker-recall, and the only one whose payoff comes from the board rather than from a card. It is also the only one whose defender bar is 4 rather than 5, because nothing else of yours joins the attack — 465.2.c sums the attackers' Might, and here the sum is one 3 Might body. TWO THINGS THE SOURCE DOES NOT SAY AND THE WALK ADDS. (1) The recall that makes it repeat is combat cleanup, not a card: 466.1.a.2 sends the attacker home because defenders remain, which is why no source can name the effect that bounces the Reveler. (2) Threshold is symmetric and pays the opponent the same Energy, every pass, into windows the loop itself opens. That is recorded as the entry's edge, not hidden. Depends on no unruled reading.

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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