Combo · ENGINE

715.4.a puts Bonus Damage INSIDE the reduction, so the Void Gate erodes a Prevent by 1 per Deal action - and never touches its combat half

4 cards · order · verified

Pieces

• Void Gate ×1 OGN-296 · battlefield

  Spells and abilities deal 1 Bonus Damage to units here. (Each instance of damage the spell deals to a unit here is increased by 1.)

• Ki Barrier ×3 VEN-126 · payoff · order

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Choose a unit. Prevent the next 7 damage that would be dealt to it this turn. (Opponents can assign it extra combat damage to kill it.)

Payoff

Deck

• Ki Barrier is mono-Order and Void Gate is colourless, so 103.1.b.1 is satisfied by any legend carrying Order - the census gives seventeen names, among them Hand of Noxus (OGN-253), Radiant Dawn (OGN-261), Herald of the Arcane (OGN-265), The Boss (OGN-269) and Matriarch of War (VEN-153).
• Neither card is Signature (checked against data/cards.json) and neither appears in data/legality.json in either format.
• 485.4.a / 485.5 / 103.4.c: the battlefield is one of three you provide and is selected randomly, and three copies of one name are forbidden - so the Gate half is a draw, not a certainty.

Prerequisites

• 715.4.a WAS UNCITED AND IT REVERSES THE OBVIOUS READING: 'If Damage is replaced or reduced by any means, the replacing or reducing action will include the Bonus Damage in the total damage when determining how much damage is to be dealt.' Riot's worked example is this board - 'A unit has prevent 3 applied to them. The unit is located at the Void Gate battlefield. An opponent targets the unit with Hextech Ray. Hextech Ray deals 4 damage to the unit, including the Bonus Damage from Void Gate, which the prevent effect will prevent 3 of. The unit takes 1 damage.' Bonus Damage is counted BEFORE the Prevent eats it, not added afterwards, so at the Gate a Prevent is worth one less per Deal action.
• WHICH IS WHY THE PARTNER HAS TO BE THE BIG ONE. Ki Barrier's Prevent 7 is the largest single Prevent Value in the pool (measured 2026-09-09 over data/corpus_flat.txt: the four Prevent cards are OGN-145 Unyielding Spirit - all spell and ability damage this turn, SFD-194 Counter Strike - the next instance, VEN-025 Esteemed Hierophant - all enemy spell and ability damage while you control 7+ runes, and VEN-126 at 7). Seven still covers every single-target Deal the pool prints except one: the ceiling is OGS-022 Final Spark at 8, which at the Gate is 9.
• AND THE EROSION IS PER DEAL ACTION, NOT PER SPELL. 715.2: 'If the Deal action has multiple targets, the amount of Damage dealt to each target is increased by Bonus Damage individually and separately.' So a spell that performs several Deal actions into the Gate spends the Prevent faster than its printed numbers suggest - and 714 keeps a second Bonus Damage source merely additive: 'If more than one instance of Bonus Damage is applied or granted to a Deal action, all instances are summed and applied once.'
• THE COMBAT HALF IS UNTOUCHED, AND THAT IS THE REASON TO RUN THEM TOGETHER. The Gate says 'Spells and abilities', and 417.6.c makes combat damage come from the units themselves, so the Gate adds nothing to a combat damage step. Ki Barrier's combat value therefore reads at full: 437.5.a - 'Damage can be assigned to a Unit up to a value that would be Lethal considering the Prevent Value of all Prevent Actions on a Unit' - with its own worked example of a 2-Might body under prevent 3 needing 5 assigned. A Might-3 body under Ki Barrier needs 10. The card's own parenthetical says as much, and the Gate never taxes that number.
• 715.4 IS THE FLOOR ON THE WHOLE FAMILY: 'If no damage was Dealt, then Bonus Damage will not apply.' Bonus Damage never CREATES a Deal action, so a Prevent that stops the damage entirely stops the Bonus with it - and 437.4 then makes the whole thing a non-event: 'Damage dealt to a Unit that has that all of that damage Prevented is not considered to have been dealt to it at all', which generates no kill event at all.
• THE GATE ARMS THE OPPONENT TOO, AND THE ASYMMETRY IS THE POINT. It is worded for the location, so both players' spells carry the +1 there. What Ki Barrier buys is the right side of that trade: a [Reaction] at 813.1.c.1 speed, bought AFTER their spell is on the Chain and its size is known, on a battlefield where their removal is one point bigger and yours is too.
• 437.5.b IS THE CLAUSE THAT MAKES THE OTHER PREVENTS DIFFERENT IN KIND: 'No amount of damage is ever considered lethal if the Prevent Value is "All."' OGN-145 and VEN-025 are unbounded and the Gate cannot erode them at all; Ki Barrier is the bounded one, which is exactly why 715.4.a is visible on it.
• 437.2 IS WHY 437.4 WORKS, AND IT SITS ONE PARAGRAPH AWAY IN THE SAME BLOCK: "When damage is Prevented, it is replaced with an event where it deals that much damage reduced by the Prevent Value tracked on the Unit specifically." Prevent does not undo damage after the fact - it REPLACES the damage event with a smaller one, and at zero there is nothing left to mark, which is the mechanism behind 437.4's "not considered to have been dealt to it at all." 369.2 puts it beyond argument by naming it: "Some Game Actions are themselves Replacement Effects. Example: Burning Out is a replacement effect. Example: Preventing Damage is a replacement effect." So a Prevent and a heal/exhaust/recall would-die shield are BOTH Replacement Effects and differ in WHICH EVENT they replace - the damage event against the death event - which is the precise reason this line generates no kill event.

Steps

1. Bring Void Gate as one of your three battlefields; 485.5 selects randomly, so this half of the line is a draw.
2. Hold Ki Barrier in hand. It is [Reaction], so 813.1.c.1 lets it be played in any Closed State on any player's turn - including the one their removal spell opens.
3. When their spell is on the Chain, read its printed damage and add 1 per Deal action it will perform into the Gate (715.2, 715.4.a). That, not the printed number, is what the Prevent has to cover.
4. Play Ki Barrier for 2 Energy + 1 Order Power. If the total is 7 or less the damage is fully prevented, and 437.4 makes it 'not considered to have been dealt to it at all' - no kill event at all.
5. In combat, the Gate is silent: 417.6.c makes combat damage come from the units, so 437.5.a stands at full value and the attacker must assign Might + 7 to kill the chosen body.

Per iteration

one Deal fully prevented, or one combat in which the chosen body absorbs seven damage above its Might

How it ends

engine - one spell fully blanked per Ki Barrier at the Gate up to 7 total damage including the Gate's own tax, or a body that costs Might + 7 to kill in combat; 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 2026-09-09, issue #191 - uncited Core Rules sub-rules 500-899 2026-09-09 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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