Combo · ENGINE

Blast Cone drags an enemy onto your battlefield and stuns it — they attack on your turn, and Vex arrives as the wall

2 cards · calm + chaos · verified

Pieces

Vex, Mocking ×1 UNL-055 · payoff · calm
[Shield] (+1 Might while I'm a defender.) [Tank] (I must be assigned combat damage first.) When you [Stun] an enemy unit at a battlefield, you may move me to that battlefield.
Blast Cone ×1 UNL-133 · engine · chaos
When you play this, you may move an enemy unit. When you move an enemy unit, you may exhaust this to [Stun] it. (It doesn't deal combat damage this turn.)

Payoff

Repeatable Energy or Power

Deck

Calm + Chaos, so three legend names (103.1.b.2): Unforgiven (OGN-259), Blade Dancer (SFD-195), Gloomist (UNL-193).
An enemy unit somewhere it can be moved from, and a battlefield of yours to drag it onto.
Vex already on the board; her trigger relocates her rather than deploying her.

Prerequisites

DRAGGING AN ENEMY ONTO YOUR OWN BATTLEFIELD MAKES THEM THE ATTACKER ON YOUR TURN. 190.3.a and 190.3.a.1 key Contested on the moved unit's CONTROLLER — 'a Unit controlled by a Player who does not currently Control that Battlefield Moves or otherwise becomes present there' — and 464.2.c.1 makes the Attacker 'the player whose unit(s) applied the Contested status'. It says nothing about who caused the move. So one enemy body walks into your garrison and is designated the Attacker in your own Main Phase.
AND IT ARRIVES STUNNED. The Cone's second sentence exhausts it to stun the unit it just moved, so 423.1.b keeps that Might out of 465.2.c's attacking assignment while your whole garrison assigns into it. Vex then free-moves in on the stun trigger — and at YOUR battlefield she is a defender, so 814.1.c's [Shield] is live: she stands at 6, with 815.1.c.2 making every other body of yours an invalid assignment until she has lethal.
THE HONEST BOUND, WHICH THE CARD FACE HIDES. The Cone's two sentences are not one engine. 'When you play this, you may move an enemy unit' fires once, on the turn it lands. 'When you move an enemy unit, you may exhaust this to [Stun] it' is a Triggered Ability, so 383.3.c lets it fire on either player's turn and 415.3.a readies the gear each of your Awakenings — but it needs SOME OTHER card to move an enemy unit before it has anything to stun. On its own, the Cone is one drag plus one stun for 4 Energy and 1 Chaos Power, and thereafter a stun waiting for a mover.
447.2's invalid-destination list does not bite in a Duel: 447.2.a opens 'In Modes of Play with more than two players' and 447.2.b 'In Modes of Play with teammates', while 485.1 puts two players on the table. So a battlefield with a Staged Combat is a legal destination here.
The stun is rented, not bought: 423.1.a.2 clears it 'during step 3d of the end of turn cleanup', and 423.1.c keeps the body's full Might as the bar for killing it. What you are buying is one combat in which their unit is outnumbered and mute.
The gear's exhaust is inside a Triggered Ability, which is why 381 ('All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State') does not confine it — the contrast card is OGN-023 Unlicensed Armory, whose identical-looking exhaust sits in an Activated ability and is your-turn-only.

Steps

Have Vex, Mocking on the board and 4 Energy plus 1 Chaos Power available.
Play Blast Cone. Its play trigger moves an enemy unit onto a battlefield you control.
190.3.a.1 applies Contested for that unit's controller, so 464.2.c.1 designates THEM the Attacker on your turn.
The Cone's second trigger fires on that move: exhaust it to stun the unit it just moved.
Vex's trigger fires on the stun: move her to that battlefield for free (420.3.a). As a defender she is 6 Might (814.1.c) with [Tank].
Combat: 423.1.b silences the stunned attacker, 815.1.c.2 forces their assignment onto Vex, and your garrison assigns freely into a body that answers with nothing.

How it ends

engine — one enemy body dragged into your garrison, stunned and outnumbered, with a 6-Might [Tank] in front of it; the drag is once per Cone, the stun repeats only behind another enemy-mover. 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, issue #169 — matrix families rows 6-18, second pass 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.

AUTHORED 2026-09-07, issue #169, second pass over matrix row 8. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.1.b.2, 190.3.a, 190.3.a.1, 381, 383.3.c, 415.3.a, 420.3.a, 423.1.a.2, 423.1.b, 423.1.c, 447.2.a, 447.2.b, 464.2.c.1, 465.2.c, 485.1, 814.1.c, 815.1.c.2 opened in the Core Rules file. Both cards legal in both formats. Card set UNL-055 + UNL-133 is not an existing uses[] set. No unruled reading. The third notable is the entry's own shortfall stated up front: the Cone reads like a repeatable stun engine and is a one-shot drag plus a stun that needs a partner this entry does not name.

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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