Combo · ENGINE
Buffs into excess damage — Tryndamere's point and the Trapping Grounds Bird
Pieces
- Tryndamere, Barbarian ×1
OGN-034 · payoff · fury
When I conquer after an attack, if you assigned 5 or more excess damage to enemy units, you score 1 point.
- Call to Glory ×3
OGN-207 · resource · order
[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) As you play this, you may spend a buff as an additional cost. If you do, ignore this spell's cost. Give a unit +3 Might this turn.
- Peak Guardian ×1
OGN-223 · engine · order
When you play me, buff me. Then, if I am at a battlefield, buff all other friendly units there. (To buff a unit, give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't already have one.)
- Trapping Grounds ×1
UNL-217 · payoff
When you conquer here, if you assigned 3 or more excess damage, play a 1 Might Bird unit token with [Deflect].
Payoff
Deck
- Fury + Order: OGN-253 Hand of Noxus (Darius) is the legend (103.1.b.2). Trapping Grounds is Colorless and costs no domain.
- Tryndamere must attack — 'when I conquer after an attack' — so the enemy battlefield needs a garrison. An empty enemy battlefield is not an attack: the Attacker designation exists only inside a Combat with a garrison (807.1.d, 383.4.e, 461).
Prerequisites
- Trapping Grounds is one of YOUR three battlefields and only one of the three is used: randomly in a Duel (485.4.a, 485.5) and in Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5). 103.4.c and Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid carrying two copies. So the Bird half is a 1-in-3 draw; Tryndamere's point is not.
- The arithmetic against the declared board, which is the check the 2026-09-04 BURST audit found four entries failing. Tryndamere at M8 into a garrison of two 3 Might defenders assigns 3 + 3 (465.2.c, 465.2.c.3) and carries 2 excess — SHORT of his own threshold of 5. Peak Guardian with two other bodies at his battlefield banks 3 buffs; three free Calls to Glory put him at M17, so the assignment is still 3 + 3 and the excess is 11: over Tryndamere's 5 and over the Trapping Grounds' 3.
- Buffs may be spent from any unit you control (702.2.b.2), so Peak Guardian's garrison and Tryndamere's battlefield do not have to be the same one.
- Call to Glory is a [Reaction], so 813.1.c.1 lets it be played inside the Combat's Closed States, after the defenders are known — you never have to guess the bar before you see it.
- The Bird is a BIRD, which is one of the four tags ivern-sentinel-hold and ivern-arena-sentinel-hold are built on. It does NOT combine here: Ivern is Order and Tryndamere is Fury, and while both fit Hand of Noxus, the Ivern line needs Cat, Dog and Poro bodies as well. Recorded as a lead, not as a uses[].
- This is one Gain per conquer (194.1.c, R2 = A), not a Score, so 470's one-Score-per-battlefield-per-turn cap is not what bounds it — Tryndamere conquering once a turn is.
- 745.2 IS WHY AN UNQUALIFIED "SPEND A BUFF" CAN ONLY TAKE ONE OFF YOUR OWN BOARD, AND THE 741-749 BLOCK WAS CITED BY NOTHING (upgrade 2026-09-12, #191 batch 26 - diagnosed five days earlier by #187 batch 2 and never applied). The cards that print this cost say *"spend a buff"* with NO owner stated, and none of them has ever had to, because the rules say it: **745.2** - *"In order to spend a Counter, the spending player must control the Game Object the Counter is placed on."* It is the general form of the 702.2.b.2 this project cites fourteen times, and its neighbours finish the picture: **749** (*"Counters do not have a controller"*) and **748** (*"Game Objects that change zones to a non-board zone lose all of their Counters"*), which is the real rule behind buff recovery rather than the 702.x usually cited. Measured consequence from the same walk: a change of CONTROL is not a zone change, so **a buff survives a theft and becomes the thief`s to spend** - the exact complement of 718.5.f, under which an Equipment`s Control does NOT follow its carrier while a buff`s spendability DOES.
- THE THIRD BUFF IS A DECLARED FIGURE, NOT A CONDITION, AND THE LINE PAYS AT TWO (ruled 2026-09-13, #200). A body-requirement sweep proposed an `anyBodies` row here because `OGN-223 Peak Guardian` buffs ITSELF and then all OTHERS, so three buffs need the Guardian plus two more bodies while `uses` supplies one. **REFUSED as a requirement**: the ability point and the `[Deflect]` Bird both land at TWO buffs, so only the declared Might figure needs the third — and a body that improves a number is not a body the line cannot run without. `anyBodies` is for the second case only. The honest reading is that the Might figure here is stated on an assumed garrison, and the Bird arrives AFTER the Conquer so it can never be one of the bodies standing when the buffs are placed.
Steps
- Play Peak Guardian to a battlefield you control with two other friendly units there: three buffs (702.2.a, 702.3).
- Attack the Trapping Grounds with Tryndamere. He gets the Attacker designation at 464.2.c.3, which is what 'after an attack' needs.
- Inside the Combat's Closed State, play the three Calls to Glory, each spending a buff instead of its Energy (813.1.c.1 for the window; the card's own 'ignore this spell's cost' for the price). Tryndamere is M17 this turn.
- 465.2.c has each side assign damage equal to its summed Might and 465.2.c.3 forces lethal onto one unit first; 465.2.c.4 forbids overkill, so 3 + 3 is assigned and 11 Might is excess.
- The Conquer resolves (466.5.d). Tryndamere's trigger sees 11 >= 5 and you gain 1 point (194.1.c). The Trapping Grounds' trigger sees 11 >= 3 and plays a 1 Might Bird token with [Deflect] there.
How it ends
engine only — one ability point and one [Deflect] Bird per conquer, bounded by Tryndamere conquering once a turn and by three copies of Call to Glory. Eight is not in reach from here.
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 §5), issue #153, from three orphan rules at once: call-to-glory-buff-bank, trapping-grounds-excess-damage and wizened-elder-buffed-payoff (the last only as the observation that a banked buff is worth holding, not spending, when OGN-065 Wizened Elder is the body carrying it — the two uses are exclusive and this entry spends). Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Citations opened: 103.1.b.2, 103.4.c, 194.1.c, 383.4.e, 461, 464.2.c.3, 465.2.c, 465.2.c.3, 465.2.c.4, 466.5.d, 470, 485.4.a, 485.5, 486.5, 487.5, 702.2.a, 702.2.b.2, 702.3, 807.1.d, 813.1.c.1. Stands on R2 = A and R28 = A, both ruled 2026-09-04. Trap check: the attack is against a real garrison, so the empty-battlefield trap is respected; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; the Bird is a token and is never recycled (185); no recall; nothing added in Awaken, so 167 does not bite; the battlefield is declared as a 1-in-3 draw per 485.5. Formula checked against its own declared quantities before authoring: M8 + 3x3 = M17, assignment 3 + 3, excess 11 >= 5 and >= 3.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16