Combo · ALT WIN

Up from the Deep and its Flow put four Tentacles on The Grand Plaza on turn three — seven units for a turn-four Hold

2 cards · chaos · candidate

Pieces

• The Grand Plaza ×1 OGN-293 · battlefield

  When you hold here, if you have 7+ units here, you win the game.

• Up from the Deep ×1 VEN-100 · engine · chaos

  Play two 1 Might Tentacle unit tokens from Bilgewater. [Flow] 3 Energy (You may play this from your trash for its Flow cost. Then banish it.)

Payoff

Deck

• Legend's Domain Identity includes Chaos (103.1.b.3); The Grand Plaza is Colorless. Synthesized for Chaos/Fury, the legend pair with the fewest finishers (#491), and walked with SFD-185 Glorious Executioner and four Energy-2 bodies.
• Seven units at the Plaza when your T4 Beginning Phase starts: the three bodies and the four Tentacles.

Run play

• Up from the Deep puts seven on the Plaza by turn three, and the two bodies they already had kill five of them

Prerequisites

• THE CHEAPEST ANSWER IS FREE: any ready enemy body in their base on their T3. Four of the seven are 1-Might Tentacles (187.10), so an attack with N Might kills N of them (465.2.c, 465.2.c.3, 142.4.b), and one kill leaves six. Walked in docs/plays/2026-10-27-up-from-the-deep-puts-seven-on-the-plaza-by-turn-three-and-the-two-bodies-they-already-had-kill-five-of-them.md against the Calm/Order Radiant Dawn deck: the two bodies they had played on their T2 attacked with 6 Might and killed four Tentacles and a 2-Might body, the T4 rebuild to seven met the same answer from the bodies of their T3, and it was 3 to 3 after their T4. Both attacks lost them their attackers and neither mattered.
• THE ONE BOARD IT WINS ON: nothing of theirs ready in their base on their T3. Bodies they played to their own battlefield cannot reach the Plaza that turn (144.4.a, 144.4.b), and bodies they play on their T3 enter exhausted (143.4). The answer has to land before the Hold, because 383.2.a.1 counts the seven when the Hold happens and nothing can be added then.
• The cheapest spells, pool-wide: OGN-133 Flurry of Blades (Body, E1) kills all four Tentacles at once; OGN-169 Gust (Chaos, E1) returns one, and a returned token ceases to exist (186.1); OGN-043 Charm (Calm, E1 + 1 Calm Power) moves one off the Plaza. A Tentacle has no [Deflect], so each pays its printed cost.
• TURN CLOCK: npm run adversarial -- --turns prints T3 against the Chaos/Fury Hold baseline of T6, and T3 is too early: the clock does not charge anyBodies, so it prices Up from the Deep alone (E3, payable on T2, plus the turn the Hold waits). With the three bodies the lower bound is T4. Twelve Energy and no Power: one Energy-2 body on T1, two on T2 after the first takes the empty Plaza (316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1), and Up from the Deep plus its [Flow] on T3, straight onto the Plaza (355.2.a, 185.2.a; the card names no location, 184.2). CORRECTED 2026-10-27 (#494 / PR #497): the clock now prints T4; it charges anyBodies (three Energy-2 bodies in Chaos, E3 for Up from the Deep, nine Energy against the six that T1 and T2 afford, so the set completes on T3 and the Hold waits for T4). That is the lower bound this bullet reached by hand.
• HOW OFTEN: castable by T3 going first in 13.97% of games with twelve Energy-2 bodies and three Up from the Deep in the 39-card draw pile (Tournament Rules 402.1), computed exactly over ordered draws, mulligan ignored; and 485.5 puts the Plaza in play one game in three, so 4.66%. No rune split fails it, because nothing in it costs Power.
• Three copies give twelve Tentacles a game and no more: 829.1.b banishes each copy after its [Flow] casting.
• THE PRE-EMPTIVE ANSWER IS A SPELL TAX: VEN-045 Helm of Suppression ('Opponents' spells cost :rb_energy_1: more.', E4 + 1 Calm Power, all five runes of their T2 going second) makes Up from the Deep and its [Flow] E4 each (356.3; [Flow] is the cost paid, 829.1.c.1), so six runes on T3 no longer buy both. On the clock's terms the line slips to seven by the end of T4 and the T5 Hold, still one turn ahead of the T6 baseline; in the walk the bodies they play on their T3 instead attack on their T4 and leave five, so it does not win on T5 either.
• NO 2-MIGHT TENTACLES ON THIS LINE - ADDED 2026-10-27 (#495, from this entry's play's Leads). OGN-294 Trifarian War Camp, 'Units here have +1 :rb_might:. (This includes attackers.)', is the one colourless card that lifts a 1-Might Tentacle to 2 at no domain cost (trifarian-war-camp-illaoi-tentacles), and it is a battlefield: 485.4.a, 'Each player provides three (3) Battlefields, included in their deck during deck building. Only 1 will be used, chosen during setup.' This line needs The Grand Plaza to be that one, so the War Camp is never in play beside it. Swept 2026-10-27 over the Chaos, Fury and Colorless lines of data/corpus_flat.txt for a standing '+N :rb_might:' on your units (Assault, attack-only and single-unit grants excluded): besides the War Camp, three more battlefields that do not lift a Tentacle (VEN-159 Kinkou Temple, [Tank] units only; UNL-208 Black Flame Altar, [Temporary] units only; the UNL-T03 Brush token, Bird, Cat, Dog, Poro and Ivern units only), UNL-147 Baron Nashor (Chaos, E10 + 3 Power, 'Other friendly units have +2 :rb_might:.', more Energy than T3 has) and VEN-018 Rage Amplifier (Fury gear, E4 + 1 Fury Power, 'Your units have +1 :rb_might:.'). The Amplifier is the only one a Chaos/Fury deck can buy early, and it does not fit the T4 line: going first the runes are 2, 4 and 6 on T1 to T3 and the line spends E2, E4 and E6 of them, so a turn that also buys the Amplifier (E4, and its Power recycles a rune) loses a body or the [Flow] casting, and the line slips a turn at least. At 2 Might a Tentacle still dies to any ready enemy body of Might 2.

Bodies no card supplies

Get three of your units onto The Grand Plaza by the end of T2

Steps

1. Bring The Grand Plaza as one of your three battlefields; 485.5 picks the one in play at random.
2. T1: play an Energy-2 body to base. T2: it walks onto the empty Plaza and Conquers (144.4.a, 316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1), and two more Energy-2 bodies are played straight onto it (355.2.a). Get three of your units onto The Grand Plaza by the end of T2.
3. T3: cast Up from the Deep (E3) for two Tentacles at the Plaza, then cast it again from the trash for its [Flow] cost, E3, for two more (351.2, 829.1.b). Seven units.
4. Their T3: all seven must survive it. A ready enemy body in their base kills a Tentacle per point of Might it attacks with (465.2.c, 465.2.c.3).
5. T4 Beginning Phase: the Hold (315.2.b.2, 469.2) fires the Plaza, 383.2.a.1 counts the seven at that instant, and 195 gives you the game.

How it ends

you win the game at the T4 Hold, if all seven units are still at The Grand Plaza when your Beginning Phase starts

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16

Walked here, in this project

• Play 2026-10-27 (docs/plays/2026-10-27-up-from-the-deep-puts-seven-on-the-plaza-by-turn-three-and-the-two-bodies-they-already-had-kill-five-of-them.md), issue #491 2026-10-27 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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