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the ambush is the save, if it goes in first

Issue #235 (a slice of #200), 2026-09-25. Constructed, Duel (485). Rules version 2026-07-16. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; rules pasted from data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt. Read the unopposed clock for the baseline this is measured against.

Subject: vilemaw-counter-strike-ambush-undo-is-free, the body/calm ENGINE that holds UNL-060 Vilemaw for an [Ambush] into the opponent's attack and keeps SFD-194 Counter Strike beside him to keep the Ambush legal. Nothing in it scores, so neither turn clock reads it; the only number this line has is the turn on which it is first affordable, and walked turn by turn that is the opponent's T4. The entry prices the Ambush as a free gamble with a failure window between choosing Vilemaw's location and checking its legality. Walked, I found no event that fires in that window on the board the line is for. The window that matters is earlier, and Vilemaw closes it himself if he is played in response to the removal rather than after it.

Why this line. scripts/sequence-pick.mjs measures a queue: entries whose steps carry forced-ordering language and whose terminatesIn is a bare quantity with no ordering word. At 771 entries it reads 262 with the language and 102 in the queue. Restricted to the six legend pairs with no play yet (body/calm, body/mind, body/order, body/chaos, calm/fury, mind/chaos), the queue holds 14 entries, all ENGINEs: body/calm 3, body/mind 0, body/order 2, body/chaos 4, calm/fury 2, mind/chaos 3. The script ranks by forced-ordering hits, then by step count; this entry is the highest-ranked of the fourteen (two kinds of ordering word, first and before, over ten steps), fifth in the whole queue. The body/order one after it is played in Renata is only a body.

1. Needs

LegendSFD-193 Grandmaster at Arms (Calm/Body). Counter Strike is a Signature card tagged Jax, and 103.2.d.2 makes this the only legend name that can run it
The wallUNL-060 Vilemaw (Calm, E8 + 2 Power, M8, [Ambush])
The saveSFD-194 Counter Strike (Calm/Body, E2 + 1 Power, [Reaction])
The free curve2x UNL-111 Determined Sentry (Body, E1, M1) — not in the entry; §2 is built on it
Board it wantsthe contested one: you hold battlefield A, the opponent garrisons B and attacks A

Domain identity from data/cards.json: Vilemaw is Calm, Counter Strike Calm/Body, the Sentry Body, union {body, calm} under 103.1.b. Counter Strike is the only Signature card; none of the three appears in data/legality.json, and the Sentry prints no [Unique], so 103.2.b's three copies apply.

The card text the play turns on:

2. The turns, going first — 485.7 gives the extra rune to the player going second

R = runes on the board at the start of your Main Phase. A rune pays 1 Energy by exhausting (164.2.a) and 1 Power by recycling (164.2.b, whose cost is the recycle, so an exhausted rune still pays); the recycled rune goes to the Rune Deck (161.2.b) and two come back each Channel Phase (315.3.b). A rune you do not exhaust on your turn is still ready on the opponent's: 167 empties the Rune Pool, not the board. This line spends its runes on the opponent's turn, so the column that matters is the right-hand one. [2026-10-24, #456: not the recycled rune. The Channel Phase's two come from the top of the Rune Deck (315.3.b, 430.1) and a recycled rune goes to the bottom (416.1, 416.1.b), so it is channelled again only when the deck reaches it: T7 at the earliest going first and T6 at the earliest going second with only the Channel Phase's two a turn (161.2.a, 485.7); each two more recycled push it a turn later, a card that channels more (430.2) brings it back sooner, and the next Channel Phase gives it back only once the Rune Deck is empty. The R column below already counts two a turn less every rune recycled, so no number in this play changes. The wording above is kept as history.]

       R   your Main Phase                         spent   ready on their turn            score
T1     2   2x Determined Sentry (E2)                E2     0                                0
T2     4   both Sentries walk to A -> Conquer       E0     4: Counter Strike (2 runes)     +1 = 1
T3     6   —                                        E0     6: Counter Strike               +1 = 2  (Hold A)
T4     8   —                                        E0     8: Vilemaw (E8 + 2 Calm)        +1 = 3  (Hold A)
T5     8   —                                        E0     8: Vilemaw                      +1 = 4  (Hold A)
T6    10   —                                        E0    10: Vilemaw AND Counter Strike   +1 = 5  (Hold A)

T5 opens on eight rather than ten because the T4 Ambush recycled two runes for its Calm Power. If the opponent did not attack on their T4, nothing was spent and T5 opens on ten.

The clock is the contested one and this line does not move it. Holding A alone pays one point a turn from T2, which is eight on T9; the unopposed baseline for body/calm is T5, because the Sentry is Energy 1 and two copies of it are two bodies on turn 1. Vilemaw does not score; what he buys is that T9 is still T9 after the opponent attacks A, and a draw every Hold he survives.

The mana is written down, not hidden: from T2 this deck casts nothing on its own turn. Every rune is held for the opponent's. That is the price of a Reaction-speed wall, and the idle Energy on your own Main Phases is exactly that price.

The two cards divide the game between them. Vilemaw is unaffordable before eight runes, which is the opponent's T4. On their T2 and T3 the only thing guarding the free curve is Counter Strike, at two runes (two exhausted for the Energy, one of them recycled for the Power), and 437.4 is what makes it a save: "Damage dealt to a Unit that has that all of that damage Prevented is not considered to have been dealt to it at all." (the doubled wording is Riot's). From T4 the roles reverse, as §3 shows.

3. The order the entry forces, and the order that actually matters

The entry's failure window is the gap between step 1 of playing Vilemaw, where his location is chosen, and step 5, where 813.4.b checks it: "If the chain item does not fulfill the conditions by the time step 5: check legality has been reached, the actions taken while playing it are undone and it is returned to the zone it was played from if it is a card." 822.1.b grants the [Reaction] only while you control units at that battlefield, so if your last body there dies inside the gap, the play unwinds and refunds itself. The entry's step 7 answers that with Counter Strike "inside that Task".

Walked on the board the line is for, nothing reaches that gap. The combat damage that would kill your garrison belongs to 465.2: "When the Showdown closes, Attackers and Defenders resolve Combat Damage at the Battlefield that was attacked, using their current Might." A Showdown ends only when every player passes in sequence (347.2.a), which cannot happen with Vilemaw still on the chain. So by the time any combat damage is dealt, Vilemaw has already resolved and his static is on. The Task that 354.4 does interpose is the Cleanup that closing the state makes outstanding (354.1, 319.1), and nobody can act inside it — 320.1: "New Pending Items can be added, but Finalized Items cannot be executed and Priority and Focus are not passed or awarded." Counter Strike cannot be played there either. A body that dies in that Cleanup is one already carrying lethal damage, and that death would have been processed by the Cleanup that followed the damage, before you had priority to play Vilemaw at all.

The window that matters is earlier: the opponent's removal, cast at your garrison before they attack. On their T4, against two Might-1 Sentries at A, OGN-133 Flurry of Blades (Body, E1, [Reaction]) reads "Deal 1 to all units at battlefields." Two orderings, eight runes:

The ambush is the save. Played in response to the removal it is aimed at, Vilemaw is his own answer to the one thing that makes him unplayable, and Counter Strike is not needed at all. Played one action late, he is a card in hand with nowhere to go. The reorder costs the whole line, not a bonus, and the entry's own steps play Vilemaw only once the attack has begun, with no step for removal cast before it.

Counter Strike's role in this list is therefore the turns before Vilemaw is affordable, and one job after: keeping Vilemaw himself alive against DAMAGE aimed at him once he stands at A.

4. Breaks to

OGN-213 Hidden Blade — Order, E2 + 1 Power, [Action]: "Kill a unit at a battlefield. Its controller draws 2." Cast inside the combat Showdown after Vilemaw has landed, it kills him before 465.2's damage step, his static is gone, and the attack goes through against a garrison of Might-1 bodies. Counter Strike is no answer: it prevents damage, and this is a kill instruction. You draw the two cards, which is the whole consolation.

Swept for spells printing "Kill a unit", "kill an enemy unit" or dealing 8 or more to a unit, the pool has ten; the eight that reach a Might-8 unit at a battlefield are Hidden Blade (E2 + 1), VEN-154 Public Execution (E2 + 1, but it needs a friendly unit bigger than Vilemaw), UNL-186 Death from Below (E4 + 1), OGN-229 Vengeance (E4 + 2), SFD-164 Drag Under (E5 + 1), OGS-012 Blast of Power (E6 + 1), OGN-123 Unchecked Power (E7 + 2) and OGS-022 Final Spark (E8). SFD-162 Blood Money and UNL-159 Soul Harvest are capped at Might 2 and 3. Hidden Blade is the cheapest that beats the line with no condition.

Before their T4 the free curve is the target, and one Flurry against the two Sentries is met by one Counter Strike: one Sentry lives, A stays yours. Two removal spells on T2 or T3 break it; one does not.

5. Verdict

The entry is right that the Ambush is free when it fails, and wrong about when it fails. 813.4.b refunds a failed Ambush in full, but on the board this line is built for I could not construct the failure it names: the combat damage comes after Vilemaw resolves, and nobody has priority in the Cleanup that sits between. The failure that does happen costs nothing because the card is never played at all.

What the line needs is an order, and the entry states the wrong one. Vilemaw goes in response to the removal, never after it; played in response, he survives the removal his garrison does not, and he is the reason Counter Strike is only needed on the two turns before he is affordable.

Priced as a game, it does not move the clock. Body/calm reaches eight on T5 unopposed and T9 holding one battlefield; this deck is the second, and everything it spends from T2 on is spent on the opponent's turn to keep T9 from slipping. It is a defence of the free curve, not a finisher, and its cost is every one of your own Main Phases.

6. Not verified

I did not sweep the pool for a card that kills a body inside a Cleanup without prior damage, which is the one event that could still reach the entry's window. §3's claim is about the combat board and the removal I checked. I also assumed the runes arrive in the domains the costs want: Vilemaw needs two Calm recycles, and 108.5.d makes the order of runes in the Rune Deck secret.

Leads