Combo · ENGINE
Vilemaw's Lair works while nobody controls it, and Bounty Hunter is the only legend that unsticks a unit from it every turn for free
Pieces
- Vilemaw's Lair ×1
OGN-295 · battlefield
Units can't move from here to base.
- Bounty Hunter ×1
OGN-267 · legend · body/chaos
Exhaust: Give a unit [Ganking] this turn. (It can move from battlefield to battlefield.)
Payoff
Deck
- Bounty Hunter IS the legend, OGN-267 or OGN-309 (Body/Chaos), so the shell is fixed by the entry rather than chosen. Vilemaw's Lair is Colorless, so nothing in uses[] constrains it further.
Prerequisites
- WHAT THE LOCK ACTUALLY CATCHES, AND WHAT IT DOES NOT. 456.3 is explicit: 'A Recall cannot be prevented by actions and Game Effects that restrict or block Movement', and 455 defines a Recall as relocating a Permanent 'from anywhere to its Base without it being a Move'. So 466.1.a.2's combat cleanup — 'Recall Attackers present at the Battlefield if Defenders are still present' — still sends failed attackers home through the Lair, and so does every heal/exhaust/recall shield. The units the Lair strands are the ones that MEANT to stay: whoever wins the battlefield and garrisons it.
- IN A DUEL THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. 485.4 puts two battlefields on the table, so an opponent whose garrison is stuck at Vilemaw's Lair can never redeploy it to the other one — 144.4.b is closed to them and 144.4.c.1 needs [Ganking] they do not have. Their board is permanently split for the price of one battlefield slot.
- IT COSTS YOU THE SAME THING, WHICH IS WHY THE LEGEND IS IN uses[] AND NOT IN A NOTE. Your own bodies at the Lair are equally stuck; Bounty Hunter buys exactly one of them out per turn, and 'this turn' means the unit has to spend its Standard Move (144.2, an exhaust) in the same turn the grant is made.
- THE POOL'S OTHER GANKING SOURCES ARE NOT FREE AND NOT REPEATABLE THE SAME WAY: SFD-133 Boots of Swiftness is an Equipment ([Equip] one Chaos rune) that grants [Ganking] to its carrier only, and SFD-192 Shurelya's Requiem grants it to 'your units here', which is a wider grant but is [Unique], costs E4 + 2 Power, and is a Signature card tagged Ornn — 103.2.d.2 would force SFD-189 Fire Below the Mountain as the legend and lock Bounty Hunter out.
- 810.2 MAKES A SECOND GRANT REDUNDANT ('Multiple instances of Ganking are redundant'), so there is nothing to double here and no multiplier in the pool improves it.
- VILEMAW'S LAIR IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE ON THE TABLE: 485.4.a puts one of your three into a Duel, 485.5 picks it at random, 486.5 lets you choose in 1v1 Match play, and 103.4.c forbids a second copy of the name.
Steps
- Bring Vilemaw's Lair as one of your three battlefields (485.4.a). It needs no Control and no set-up: the sentence has no 'you' for 190.6.d to blank.
- Play normally. Any unit that walks to the Lair — yours or theirs — loses 144.4.b, its only other Standard Move destination.
- When the opponent commits a garrison there and keeps it, those bodies are stranded: they cannot reach their base and they cannot reach the other battlefield of the Duel without [Ganking].
- On each of your turns, exhaust Bounty Hunter to give one of your own units [Ganking] this turn and move it from the Lair to the other battlefield with its Standard Move (144.4.c.1, paying 144.2's exhaust).
- 315.1.b readies the legend every Awaken, so the grant is available again next turn. 810.2 makes a second grant on the same unit worth nothing.
How it ends
engine only — a permanent one-way movement lock on everything the opponent leaves at this battlefield, with one of your own bodies bought out of it per turn; nothing here scores and nothing about it is unbounded
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 either card, and the first of the ten uncatalogued legend names to be walked. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. The obvious first reading of Vilemaw's Lair is that it strands a failed attack; 456.3 refutes that in one sentence and it was checked before the entry was written, which is why the notable leads with it. Trap check: no attack is claimed, so 807.1.d / 383.4.e / 461 never come up; 190.6.d is cited for what it does NOT do here, which is the #161 Ripper's Bay reading applied a second time; 810.1.c.3 is cited so [Ganking] is not mistaken for an extra move; exactly one battlefield is named, so 485.4.a is respected; produces is deliberately empty, as it is on the twenty-six other lock and shield entries the vocabulary does not yet cover (issue #157).
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16