Combo · ENGINE
Valley of Idols buffs the whole garrison as each body lands, which is how the pool's two 'While I'm buffed' statics come online the same turn
Pieces
- Valley of Idols ×1
UNL-218 · battlefield
When a player plays a unit here, they may pay 1 Energy to [Buff] it. (Give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't have one.)
- Wizened Elder ×3
OGN-065 · payoff · calm
While I'm buffed, I have an additional +1 Might.
- Bilgewater Bully ×3
OGN-125 · payoff · body
While I'm buffed, I have [Ganking]. (I can move from battlefield to battlefield.)
Payoff
Deck
- Wizened Elder is mono-Calm and Bilgewater Bully is mono-Body, so 103.1.b.2 fixes the identity at exactly Calm/Body: OGN-257/OGN-304 Blind Monk, SFD-193/SFD-245 Grandmaster at Arms, UNL-191/UNL-231 Wuju Master, OGS-019 Wuju Bladesman - Starter (restricted in 2v2, legal in constructed). Running only one of the two payoffs frees the other half of the identity.
Run play
Prerequisites
- THESE ARE THE POOL'S ONLY TWO 'WHILE I'M BUFFED' STATICS, swept: a case-insensitive grep of data/corpus_flat.txt for 'buffed' returns seven rows, and the other five are cards that BUFF or that react to a buffed body dying (OGN-228 Vanguard Helm, OGN-269 The Boss) rather than cards that read their own buffed state. Naming the members here so the next grep can refute the count in one command.
- CARRYING A BUFF AND SPENDING A BUFF ARE OPPOSITE USES OF ONE COUNTER, and this line picks the carrying side. 702.2.b — 'Spending a Buff removes a single Buff counter from a Unit' — so Call to Glory, Albus Ferros, Fae Dragon and OGN-282 Monastery of Hirana all switch these two statics OFF by paying with the very counter they read. A deck runs one side or the other.
- 702.3 CAPS EACH BODY AT ONE BUFF, so the Valley's offer is worth exactly 1 Energy per NEW unit played there and nothing on a body that already carries one (702.3.a: 'it is not placed instead'). That also means the Valley never jams: it simply declines on an already-buffed body.
- THE VALLEY BUFFS AT THE MOMENT OF PLAY, AND IT IS NOT THE ONLY CARD THAT DOES (corrected by the #181 cross-audit, 2026-09-07; the first draft of this entry claimed it was, in its own name and here). A grep of the corpus finds sixteen on-play buffers, and the clearest counterexample is OGN-223 Peak Guardian - "When you play me, buff me. Then, if I am at a battlefield, buff all other friendly units there" - which is the engine of peak-guardian-bilgewater-bully-ganking-buff, an entry written the same day on the identical payoff card. What the Valley actually buys is that it is a BATTLEFIELD: it buffs every body as it lands, for the rest of the game, with no card spent per body, so a unit that enters exhausted (143.4) is already buffed rather than waiting for a buffer to find it next turn. The Elder is Might 6 and the Bully has [Ganking] before the opponent takes a turn.
- IT IS SYMMETRIC AND IT SAYS 'A PLAYER': the opponent buys the same buff for their units played at this battlefield. But 355.2.a means they can only play units there while THEY control it, so in practice only the holder benefits.
- VALLEY OF IDOLS IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE ON THE TABLE, and unlike the six 'no you' battlefields of this walk it also has to be held: 485.4.a, 485.5, 486.5, 103.4.c, plus 190.1 and 466.5.
Steps
- Take Valley of Idols and keep a body on it — 355.2.a will only let you play units there while you control it, and 323.6 takes Control back at the next Cleanup if it is empty.
- Play Wizened Elder (E4) or Bilgewater Bully (E6) directly to the Valley rather than to your base.
- The Valley triggers on the play; pay the 1 Energy and 702.2.a places a +1 Might buff on the unit.
- 703 makes the buff itself +1 Might, and the unit's own static now reads true: the Elder takes a further +1 to Might 6, or the Bully gains [Ganking].
- For the Bully, 144.4.c.1 now lets him take his Standard Move from battlefield to battlefield — though 143.4 still has him enter exhausted, so the first such move is after your next Awakening (315.1.b).
- Repeat for each further unit played to the Valley. 702.3 means a second buff on the same body does nothing, so the Energy is only ever spent on new arrivals.
Per iteration
1 Energy per unit played at the Valley turns on that unit's 'While I'm buffed' text immediately — +2 Might on Wizened Elder, [Ganking] on Bilgewater Bully
How it ends
engine only — one buff per body played there, capped at one per unit by 702.3 and at three copies each by 103.2.b; 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
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncatalogued-cards.md), issue #171 2026-09-07 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 2026-09-07, issue #171 — the first entry to use UNL-218. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. The 'only two While I'm buffed statics' claim is the project's own, swept again here, and its members are NAMED in the notable so the next grep refutes it cheaply — the discipline the #175 cross-audit asked for. Trap check: 702.3 / 702.3.a are cited so the buff is not counted twice on one body; 702.2.b is cited so the buff-spending half of the pool is flagged as anti-synergic rather than left to be discovered; 355.2.a is cited twice, once as the Valley's own gate and once as the reason the symmetry is nominal; 143.4 is cited so the Bully's first Ganking move is dated honestly; 703 is cited for the buff's own +1; exactly one battlefield is named, so 485.4.a is respected.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16