Combo · ENGINE

Udyr's four modes are priced in buffs, and 702.3 is why each one needs a separate placement

4 cards · body · verified

Pieces

• Udyr, Wildman ×1 OGN-157 · payoff · body

  Spend my buff: Choose one you've not chosen this turn — • Deal 2 to a unit at a battlefield. • Stun a unit at a battlefield. • Ready me. • Give me [Ganking] this turn.

• Pit Rookie ×3 OGN-136 · engine · body

  When you play me, buff another friendly unit. (If it doesn't have a buff, it gets a +1 Might buff.)

Payoff

Deck

• All cards are mono-Body, so 103.1.b.3 admits any legend with Body in its pair: SFD-203/SFD-250 Battle Mistress, OGN-257/OGN-304 Blind Monk, OGN-267/OGN-309 Bounty Hunter, VEN-141/VEN-190 Butcher of the Sands, VEN-149/VEN-194 Defender of Tomorrow, SFD-205/SFD-251 Grand Duelist, SFD-193/SFD-245 Grandmaster at Arms, UNL-203/UNL-237 Keeper of the Hammer, VEN-153/VEN-196 Matriarch of War, OGS-023 Might of Demacia - Starter, UNL-183/UNL-227 Pridestalker, SFD-183/SFD-241 Purifier, OGN-249/OGN-300 Relentless Storm, OGN-269/OGN-310 The Boss, UNL-201/UNL-236 Voidreaver, OGS-019 Wuju Bladesman - Starter, UNL-191/UNL-231 Wuju Master.
• Neither card is banned or restricted in either format, and neither is a Signature card.
• 6 Energy + 1 Power for Udyr, then 2 Energy per placement. Every mode is your own Main Phase only - see the notables.

Prerequisites

• THE COST IS A BUFF, AND A BUFF IS SCARCE BY RULE. 702.2.b: 'Spending a Buff removes a single Buff counter from a Unit', with 702.2.b.1 ('A buff cannot be spent from a Unit that does not have a buff') and 702.2.b.2 (only from units you control). 702.3: 'There can only be one Buff on a Unit at a time', and 702.3.a: a second buff on a buffed unit 'is not placed instead'. So Udyr can never be stocked up - each mode needs its own placement, made after the previous buff was spent, and the number of modes you get in a turn is exactly the number of times you can place a buff ON HIM.
• WHICH MAKES A MASS BUFFER THE WRONG PARTNER. SFD-101 Fae Dragon buffs up to four friendly units and OGN-141 Kinkou Monk up to two - and each gives Udyr exactly ONE, because 702.3.a discards the rest onto a body that already has one. What he wants is a cheap SINGLE placement repeated: OGN-136 Pit Rookie at 2 Energy, three copies by 103.2.b, is three modes in one turn for 6 Energy and leaves three 2 Might bodies behind. OGN-124 Arena Bar adds a fourth, but only onto an EXHAUSTED friendly unit, so it fits after Udyr has moved.
• THE CEILING IS FOUR, AND IT IS PRINTED. 'Choose one you've not chosen this turn' - the four modes are one each per turn, so a fifth placement buys nothing. Three Pit Rookies plus an Arena Bar is exactly the ceiling.
• 381 IS WHY NONE OF THIS IS A DEFENSIVE TRICK. 'All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State', and 'Spend my buff:' is a colon, i.e. an Activated Ability under 377.1. Udyr carries neither [Action] (806.1.b) nor [Reaction] (813.1.c.1), so the Deal 2 and the Stun can never answer the opponent's attack - they are proactive removal on your own turn only.
• THE TWO MODES THAT ARE WORTH MORE TOGETHER THAN APART. 'Ready me' is worth exactly one extra Standard Move (144.2: 'Exhausting the Unit is the Cost for this action') and nothing on defence, which is normally why a ready trigger is refused. Here it is paired with 'Give me [Ganking] this turn': 144.4.c.1 - 'Units with Ganking may use their Standard Move to Move from Battlefield to Battlefield' - so the second move is to a DIFFERENT battlefield, which the first one could not reach. 810.1.c.3 is the limit ('It does not give additional abilities or activations of Movement, only new options for the Standard Move'), so Ganking alone is worth nothing without the ready.
• AND THE STUN IS BOUNDED BY ITS OWN RULE. 423.1.a.1: 'A Stunned Unit can not be Stunned again', so the mode is one body per turn; 423.1.a.2 clears the status at the end-of-turn cleanup; 423.1.b removes only the contribution to the combat damage step while 423.1.c keeps the full Might as the price to kill it. It buys a combat, never a removal.
• 703 MAKES THE BUFF WORTH SOMETHING WHILE IT WAITS. 'Each Buff individually contributes +1 Might to a Unit', so a buff sitting on Udyr is a 7 Might body until you spend it - the placement is never dead, only converted.
• WHAT IT IS NOT. Nothing here scores. 469 defines Scoring as Conquer or Hold and no mode touches either.

Steps

1. Play Udyr, Wildman (6 Energy + 1 Power).
2. Play a Pit Rookie (2 Energy) and buff Udyr with its play trigger (702.2.a: buffing is choosing a unit and placing a buff).
3. Activate 'Spend my buff' and pick a mode not yet chosen this turn (702.2.b removes the counter).
4. Play the second and third Pit Rookies, each placing a fresh buff on Udyr - 702.3.a means the previous one has to have been spent first - and take a second and third mode.
5. The pairing to want is 'Ready me' followed by 'Give me [Ganking] this turn': the ready refunds 144.2's exhaust and Ganking makes the second Standard Move a battlefield-to-battlefield one (144.4.c.1).
6. Stop at four: the printed clause allows one of each mode per turn.

Per iteration

one mode per buff placed on Udyr, capped at four a turn by his own text

How it ends

engine only - up to four modes a turn, in practice three from three Pit Rookies (103.2.b) plus an Arena Bar, and every one of them is your own Main Phase only (381); 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
• Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt (built from Riot's gallery content API) 2026-09-07

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncatalogued-body.md, batch 1) 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue