the payoff finishes a turn before the loop can start

Issue #231 (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 and the setup nobody prices for the empty-deck arithmetic this play reuses.

Subject: jhin-virtuoso-ekko-malzahar-vi, the fury/mind INFINITE that loops Ekko, Malzahar, Upstage Comedy and Vi under the legend Virtuoso and spends the surplus on SFD-088 Renata Glasc, Mastermind's points. The turn clock reads it at T6 against a T6 baseline. Walked turn by turn, the loop cannot start before T7, and by then the same deck has already won on T6 with two of the loop's own cards and no loop at all.

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 legend pairs with no play yet, the queue holds exactly two finishers; this is the fury/mind one, and its terminatesIn is the barest in the catalogue: "8 points". The calm/chaos one is played in the fight it does not need to avoid.

1. Needs

Domain identity from data/cards.json: Upstage Comedy, Vi and Pouty Poro are Fury, the rest Mind, union {fury, mind} under 103.1.b. None of these is a Signature card and none appears in data/legality.json. 103.3.a.1 asks only that runes be "of the Domain Identity of your Champion Legend", so a twelve-Mind Rune Deck is legal, and §2 wants one.

The two cards the finish turns on:

• Renata Glasc, Mastermind: ":rb_energy_1::rb_rune_mind:: Draw 1. :rb_energy_4::rb_rune_mind::rb_rune_mind::rb_rune_mind::rb_rune_mind:, :rb_exhaust:: Score 1 point. Use my abilities only while I'm at a battlefield." The second ability is four Energy, four Mind Power and her exhaust.
• Upstage Comedy: "[Repeat] :rb_energy_2: (You may pay the additional cost to repeat this spell's effect.) Ready a unit."

2. The finish nobody wrote down, going first

R = runes on the board at the start of the Main Phase. A rune pays 1 Energy by exhausting (164.2.a) and 1 Power by recycling, and 164.2.b's cost is the recycle, not an exhaust — so one rune pays one Energy AND one Power in the same turn, and then leaves for the Rune Deck (161.2.b). That is why Renata's point, E4 plus four Mind Power, costs exactly four runes.

       R   spend                                              idle   score
T1     2   Pouty Poro (E2)                                     E0      0
T2     4   Poro moves to battlefield A -> Conquer              E4     +1 = 1
T3     6   —                                                   E6     +1 = 2   (Hold A)
T4     8   Renata (E5), played straight to A                   E3     +1 = 3
T5    10   Renata scores (4 runes: E4 + 4 Mind)                E0     +1 = 4   (Hold A)
           Upstage Comedy readies her (E2)                            +1 = 5
           Renata scores again (4 runes)          (R -> 2)            +1 = 6
T6     4   Renata scores (4 runes: E4 + 4 Mind)                E0     +1 = 7   (Hold A)
                                                                      +1 = 8   WIN

355.2.a is what lets Renata skip the walk: "By default, Valid locations include the controller’s Base or a Battlefield the controller controls." She enters exhausted (143.4) and 315.1.b readies her at your next Awaken. Her points are card-text Gains under R2 = A, so 470's once-per-battlefield cap is spent on the Hold and never on her.

T6, the unopposed baseline for fury/mind, reached on the board where you hold ONE battlefield, whose contested baseline is T9. Neither Fury nor Mind prints a unit at Energy 1, so the baseline is T6 and not T5; this finish ties it with half the free curve.

T5 is exact: three actions spend ten runes, which is every rune T5 has. Hence the twelve-Mind Rune Deck — eight Mind recycles on T5 and four on T6, and 108.5.d makes the Rune Deck's order secret, so a split deck would be relying on luck.

3. The loop, priced the same way

The loop's own ledger states its two preconditions: "twelve runes on the board is a hard precondition", and the Main Deck must be empty so that a recycled card is the next draw.

Twelve runes arrive on T5, one turn earlier than the family's floor, and the legend is the reason. Virtuoso reads "When you play a spell, if you spent :rb_energy_4: or more, you may banish it. Then, if there are four spells banished with me, put each in its trash, channel 4 runes, and draw 1." Four 4-Energy spells by T5 do it: Consult the Past on T3, Consult the Past and Downstage Dramatics (paid with its [Repeat], so four spent) on T4, and Progress Day on T5. T5 opens on ten runes, one is recycled for Progress Day's Mind cost, and the fourth banish channels the last three that are left in the Rune Deck. 430.3: "If there aren’t sufficient runes in the Rune Deck, channel as many as possible." A legend that channels nothing waits for T6.

The empty deck arrives on T7 and not before. With VEN-165 Shadow Temple as the battlefield you hold (colourless, "When you hold here, [Burn 3]"), the deck of 39 less the opening four runs:

T6 must end at exactly four. 315.4.b.1 makes an empty deck at the Draw Phase a Burn Out, and the Temple's burn has no "may", so a deck at three when T7's Hold fires burns out: 431.2.b recycles the trash back in, randomised, and the loop's known bottom is gone. The loop's first playable Main Phase is T7.

So the INFINITE is T7 at the earliest, and the deck that runs it won on T6 — with Renata and Upstage Comedy, two of the loop's eight cards, and the battlefield the loop needs Renata to stand on.

4. The order the entry forces, and why the finish wants the opposite

The entry's one forced ordering is its fourth step: recycle four exhausted runes for Power "just before the fourth banish resolves — a rune's Recycle this: Add Power has no exhaust in its cost — then let Virtuoso channel them straight back ready."

Walked with twelve runes on the board and an empty Rune Deck, the reorder is not a lost bonus, it is a broken pass. Recycle the four AFTER the channel and 430.3 finds nothing to channel; the four sit in the Rune Deck until the next fourth banish, and the four passes between run on eight runes. The entry's own ledger prices a Draw-2 pass at "(runes − 11) Energy and +1 Power per pass": eight runes is three Energy LOST per pass, four passes is twelve, against a supercycle whose whole margin by the same ledger is "+4 Energy, +4 Power per four passes". One recycle in the wrong window turns the loop net negative until the next channel refills it.

The same temptation arises every time Renata scores. Her point wants four Mind Power, and the nearest Mind Power in the game is a rune. Inside the loop, that recycle is only safe in the window the entry names; anywhere else it drops the board below eleven and the passes start losing Energy.

The fair finish in §2 does exactly that, deliberately, twelve times. It recycles every rune it exhausts, because it does not need the board to exist next turn: the game is over. The two lines share a payoff and want opposite rune discipline — the finish burns the board down to pay, the loop must never touch it outside one window.

5. What the loop is for, and the board where it cannot be built

The finish in §2 needs Renata to survive the opponent's T4 and T5 at a battlefield, and needs you to hold that battlefield from T2. The loop needs a battlefield only on the turn it runs, and its surplus Energy can buy the walk. So the loop is the recovery line for a board where the free curve was broken, which is the same shape the Trinity Force play found for its attack half.

And on that board its deck-emptier is switched off. The Temple reads "When you hold here", and 190.6.d is explicit: "“You” in a battlefield’s abilities refers to the battlefield’s Controller". A Temple the opponent took burns THEIR deck. Without it, the table in §3 loses fifteen cards of burn across T3 to T7, and the empty deck lands later than T7 by however many draws the list can buy; the setup play puts the Temple-less figure for a similar shell at turn ten or eleven.

The loop is the answer to a broken free curve, and a broken free curve is what delays the loop.

6. Breaks to

OGN-213 Hidden Blade — Order, E2 + 1 Power, [Action]: "Kill a unit at a battlefield. Its controller draws 2." Cast in the opponent's own Main Phase on T4 or T5, it kills Renata where she stands, and the finish loses every point it had not yet scored. Of the sixteen spells in the pool that kill a unit or deal four or more to one, it is one of the two cheapest that reach a Might-4 body at a battlefield (the predicate is "kill a unit", "kill an enemy unit" or "deal" four to nine to a unit, on spells; the other is VEN-154 Public Execution at the same price, which needs a friendly unit bigger than Renata). Its [Hidden] route does not help the opponent here: 811.1.b hides a card only at a battlefield they control, and Renata stands on yours.

Against the loop turn itself I found nothing cheap that ends it. Its units resolve with no window, Malzahar's Add ability "can't be reacted to" in his own reminder text, and Ekko's [Deathknell] chooses nothing, so the pool's two ability counters cannot reach it: SFD-045 Not So Fast needs an ability that chooses one of the opponent's own units or gear, and UNL-106 Repulse one of their own units at a battlefield, and every ability in the loop chooses the loop player's own objects or nothing. The windows are the spells: OGN-045 Defy (Calm, E1 + 1 Power) counters Upstage Comedy or Consult the Past, and the countered card goes to the trash, where Vi recycles it for nothing. A counter costs the loop a pass, not the loop.

7. Verdict

The entry is correct, and it is not how this deck wins. Priced as a game, the loop's two preconditions — twelve runes and an empty Main Deck, emptied inside the Main Phase that uses it — land on T7, and on T6 the same deck has already scored eight: one Conquer, four Holds and three Renata points bought with Upstage Comedy and ten runes.

Virtuoso is a better ramp than the loop needed: the fourth banish reaches twelve runes on T5, a turn inside the floor every other Renata loop lives with. It is the empty deck, not the runes, that sets the date.

The ordering in the entry is real and it is also the one habit the fair finish must use. Paying Renata's Mind Power by recycling runes wins the game on T6 and breaks the loop on T7. A player who learned the deck from the finish will make exactly the move the loop cannot survive.

8. Not verified

I did not price the empty deck without the Temple for this list, only cited the setup play's figure for a similar shell. I did not walk a full loop turn with the fifteen burned cards chosen adversely: all three copies of Vi burned would leave nothing to recycle from the trash, and the loop would not start at all. And §6's claim about the loop turn is a claim about the windows I checked, not a sweep of every card in the pool.

Leads

• The entry has no field for §2. A notable stating that Renata and Upstage Comedy alone win on T6 from the contested curve, a turn before the loop's preconditions can both hold, would tell a reader which half of the list is the finisher.
• The entry's step 4 names the correct window without naming the cost of missing it. A notable stating that the same recycle one window late puts the next four passes on eight runes would carry §4.