Combo · ENGINE

Viktor, Leader refunds the Constellation's fuel as Recruits — three real bodies buy two points instead of one

2 cards · mind + order · verified

Pieces

• Bottled Constellation ×1 VEN-067 · payoff · mind

  At the start of your Main Phase, you may kill 3 other friendly units and/or gear to score 1 point.

• Viktor, Leader ×1 OGN-246 · engine · order

  When another non-Recruit unit you control dies, play a 1 Might Recruit unit token into your base.

Payoff

Deck

• Mind + Order: Bottled Constellation is mono-Mind and Viktor, Leader mono-Order, so the legend must hold both and the pool prints exactly four names — OGN-265 Herald of the Arcane, OGS-021 Lady of Luminosity, SFD-201 Chem-Baroness and UNL-199 Deceiver (103.1.b.2).
• Neither card is banned or restricted in either format, and neither is a Signature card, so no legend is forced by 103.2.d.2.
• No battlefield is needed at all: the Constellation's point is a card-text point, so it lands with your whole board at the base.

Prerequisites

• THE ARITHMETIC, WITH THE QUANTITIES DECLARED. Turn N: kill three of your own non-Recruit UNITS to the Constellation. You gain 1 point, and Viktor's trigger fires three separate times, so three 1-Might Recruit tokens appear in your base. Turn N+1: those three Recruits are exactly the Constellation's next meal — and Viktor pays nothing for them, because his clause reads 'another NON-RECRUIT unit'. So one batch of three real bodies is worth TWO points, not one. The refund is a single doubling, not a loop; there is no third turn.
• GEAR IS NOT A UNIT AND PAYS NOTHING. The Constellation accepts 'units and/or gear', Viktor watches only units. Feeding it a spent gear (a Gold token, an emptied Seal) is legal and often right, but every gear in the batch costs you a Recruit and so costs you half a point on the next turn.
• VIKTOR HAS TO SURVIVE AND MUST NOT BE ON THE MENU. His own text says 'another' — he never refunds himself — and the Constellation says 'other friendly units and/or gear', which only exempts the Constellation. Feeding Viktor to it ends the engine.
• TOKENS ARE LEGAL FUEL, AND THAT IS THE ONE PLACE THE TOKEN RULES HELP RATHER THAN HURT. 185.2.b ('Token units have a Might') and 185.2.d ('Tokens have a type. They follow all rules for their type') make a Recruit a unit for the Constellation's count. The other half of the token rules still bites: 186.1 makes a killed Recruit cease to exist on reaching the trash, so nothing reanimates it and no 'recycle from your trash' line can reuse it (416.1 is defined over cards, 185).
• THE POINT IS A GAIN, NOT A SCORE, WHICH IS WHY IT IS UNCONDITIONAL. R2 = A on issue #11: card-text 'score 1 point' is a point Gain by ability under 194.1.c ('Spells, Triggered Abilities and Activated Abilities that instruct them to gain one or more points'), not a 469 Score, so 470's once-per-battlefield cap never touches it and 471.1.a.1 ('points Gained from sources that are not Conquer are not beholden to these restrictions') keeps the Final Point clause off it. The eighth point can come from here.
• THE ACTIVATION IS FREE AND LANDS AFTER THE POOL EMPTIES. 316.2 orders the Main Phase tasks, 316.3 is '1. Each player's Rune Pool empties' and 316.4 is '2. At the start of Main Phase game effects take place'. The Constellation's ability costs no Energy and no Power — the three bodies ARE the cost — so the empty pool is not a problem for it, unlike a Hold-window ability that needs mana.
• PRICE THE WHOLE THING. The Constellation is E10 + 2 Mind Power and Viktor E4 + 1 Order Power, so the pair is 14 Energy and 3 Power of setup before a single point. What Viktor changes is the per-point body bill: 3 bodies a point becomes 1.5, and the Recruits are the cheapest bodies in the pool because they cost nothing at all.
• THE RECRUITS ARE BORN AT THE BASE AND STAY THERE. 'Play a 1 Might Recruit unit token into your base' is a printed destination, so 355.2.a never comes up, and 143.4 makes them enter exhausted. They are fuel, not a board: a 1-Might Recruit that has to walk to a battlefield is a Flurry-of-Blades casualty (see ready-recruits-grand-plaza).

Steps

1. Play Viktor, Leader (4 Energy + 1 Order Power) and Bottled Constellation (10 Energy + 2 Mind Power) on earlier turns; both must be on the board.
2. Fill the board with three non-Recruit units you are willing to spend — anything already spent works, since the Constellation asks only that they be friendly.
3. At the start of your Main Phase, take the Constellation's option: kill those three units, gain 1 point (194.1.c).
4. Viktor's trigger fires once per death (three times), each putting a 1 Might Recruit token into your base.
5. Next turn, at the start of your Main Phase, kill the three Recruits to the Constellation for a second point. Viktor's clause excludes Recruits, so nothing comes back this time.
6. Refill with non-Recruit bodies to run the cycle again; each batch of three is worth two points.

Per iteration

two points per three non-Recruit bodies, spread over two turns, instead of one

How it ends

engine only — the Constellation caps at one point per turn and the refund is one extra point per batch of three, so the rate is bounded by how many non-Recruit bodies you can present; nothing here is unbounded and no loop exists, because a Recruit refunds nothing

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Rules readings R1-R33 — issue #11 (GitHub), R2 = A 2026-09-03

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-07 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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