Combo · ENGINE
Vex, Apathetic and Mageseeker Warden — no unit the opponent plays reaches a battlefield on the turn it is played
Pieces
- Vex, Apathetic ×1
UNL-150 · engine · chaos
[Deflect] (Opponents must pay 1 Power of any domain to choose me with a spell or ability.) When an opponent plays a unit while I'm at a battlefield, [Stun] it. They can't move it this turn. (It doesn't deal combat damage this turn.)
- Mageseeker Warden ×1
OGN-070 · engine · calm
While I'm at a battlefield, opponents can only play units to their base. While I'm at a battlefield, spells and abilities can't ready enemy units and gear.
Payoff
Deck
- Calm + Chaos, and the pool prints three such legends: UNL-193 Gloomist (Vex's own), OGN-259 Unforgiven and SFD-195 Blade Dancer.
- Both at a battlefield - each clause reads 'While I'm at a battlefield' and neither asks that you control it or that they share one.
Prerequisites
- THE STUN IS NOT WHAT MAKES THIS WORK, AND ISSUE #100 SAID IT WAS. Its claim was that the opponent 'cannot raise the defender's bar by adding bodies, because the ones they add are worth 0 in the damage step'. Two rules refute it, from the paragraph the issue quotes half of. 423.1.a.2: 'Stunned Units lose the Stunned status during step 3d of the end of turn cleanup' - they play units on their turn, so the stun is gone before your attack. 423.1.c: 'A Stunned Unit must still have damage applied to it equal to, or greater than, its full might value to be killed' - so even within its own turn a stunned body soaks exactly as much as an unstunned one. 423.1.b removes only the damage it deals BACK. And they cannot reinforce mid-combat in any case: 312.2.a gives them no priority in a Neutral Open State on your turn, 144.1.c bars moves during a Showdown or Combat, and 155 keeps a spell without [Action] or [Reaction] out of a Showdown.
- THE REAL FUNCTION IS THE OTHER CLAUSE - 'They can't move it this turn' - AND IT IS THE EXACT COMPLEMENT OF THE WARDEN'S ONE LEAK. Under the Warden every enemy unit must be played to base (054.2) and 144.4 gives it no route to a battlefield but a Standard Move, whose cost is an exhaust (144.2, 420.3.a) it cannot pay on the turn it entered (143.4) - UNLESS it is one of the 26 [Accelerate] units, which 805.1.a lets enter READY, or unless something moves it by effect (UNL-045 Forgotten Signpost, SFD-177 Azir Sovereign for tokens, SFD-079 Bard Mercurial - an effect move pays no exhaust and moves exhausted units). Vex closes both, because her trigger is on the unit PLAYED, wherever it was played, and forbids any move of it that turn.
- THE COMPLETE CLAIM, ROUTE BY ROUTE, and it is checkable rather than rhetorical. Play directly to a battlefield they control: Warden, 054.2. Play directly to an open or occupied enemy battlefield (the 7 cards that grant 355.2.b): Warden, 054.1. Play from [Hidden] at their battlefield (15 units): Warden, via 811.1.d.1 plus 054.2. Play a TOKEN unit to a battlefield: Warden, because 350.2 makes a token played and 185.2.a subjects it to 'any restrictions or modifications'. Play to base with [Accelerate] and Standard Move the same turn: Vex. Play to base and move it by effect: Vex. Play to base, ready it with a spell or ability, then move: the Warden's second clause.
- SCOPE, STATED: it is about the turn a unit is PLAYED. A body already sitting at their base from an earlier turn moves normally - Vex touches nothing that is already on the board, and the Warden's clause is about playing, not moving.
- NO LOOP, AND IT IS RULED OUT BY TEXT: 423.1.a.1, 'A Stunned Unit can not be Stunned again'. Each trigger answers a separate enemy play and nothing here repeats under your own control, so this is an ENGINE and cannot be anything more.
- 10 Energy and 1 Power for the pair. Vex prints [Deflect] and the Warden does not, so their spell removal costs 1 Power for her (809.1.c, 809.1.c.1: the Power may be of any domain) and nothing for him - he is the one they kill first, which warden-tianna-base-lock answers with UNL-057 Alpha Wildclaw at 7 Might.
Steps
- Play the Mageseeker Warden to a battlefield (6 Energy + 1 Power). From here every enemy unit can only be played to their base.
- Play Vex, Apathetic to a battlefield (4 Energy).
- Each time the opponent plays a unit - card or token, at their base or anywhere else - Vex stuns it and it cannot be moved that turn.
- An [Accelerate] body that pays 1 Energy and 1 Power to enter ready (805.1.a) still cannot walk out of the base, because the restriction is on moving, not on being exhausted.
- The same clause stops UNL-045 Forgotten Signpost, SFD-177 Azir Sovereign and SFD-079 Bard Mercurial from carrying it out by effect.
How it ends
engine only - every enemy unit spends the turn it is played sitting at their base; it buys a turn per body and scores nothing
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Denial lens hunt, issue #100 (rc-huntQ) 2026-09-06
- 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 2026-09-06 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-denial-lens-candidates.md), issue #100 candidate 6, REWRITTEN AND RENAMED from vex-apathetic-reinforcement-stun, because the entry no longer claims what that id says. The issue sold Vex as an answer to reinforcement on the strength of 423.1.b; 423.1.a.2 (the stun clears at the END OF TURN cleanup, i.e. before your attack) and 423.1.c (a stunned body still soaks its full Might) refute that, and this project had already been corrected in the same direction once, by #89. The clause that does work is 'They can't move it this turn', and it closes exactly the leak warden-tianna-base-lock has to declare: the 26 [Accelerate] units of 805.1.a and the three effect-movers of #58. The pair's claim is written as a route table so it can be checked rather than believed. The issue's own candidate was 'Vex + an attacker', which names no second card; the second card here is the Warden, and the Calm/Chaos legend list was grepped over all 49 legends. No quantity of any existing entry was touched. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Ban check: neither code is among the 12 [BANNED] corpus lines nor in data/legality.json.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16