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Last Rites pays on the Hold, so Minefield is the setup and not the engine

Issue #250 (a slice of #200), 2026-10-05. 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: minefield-last-rites-mill-reanimate, the chaos ENGINE in which SFD-212 Minefield mills two cards on a Conquer and SFD-150 Last Rites plays a unit back out of the trash on the same Conquer, with the two triggers ordered so the mill lands first. Nothing in it scores, so neither turn clock reads it. Walked as a game, the ordering the entry is named for never comes up on the turn the line is built, and the rate the entry gives is too low: Last Rites fires on every Hold, not only on a Conquer.

Why this line. scripts/sequence-pick.mjs re-run on 2026-10-05 at 2aec21b reads 771 entries, 262 with forced-ordering language and 102 in the queue, the same numbers as slice 6. The pick is by global rank, skipping entries that already have a play. Ranks 1 and 2 are played in each Svellsongur is worth the deficit and the Lab is paid before anything resolves. This entry is rank 3 (three hits on first).

1. Needs

Legendany name with Chaos in its pair — the entry lists sixteen
The payoffSFD-150 Last Rites (Chaos gear, E3, M+2)
The battlefieldSFD-212 Minefield (colourless), one of your three
A carrierVEN-095 Shadow Order Disciple (Chaos, E2, M2) — not in the entry; §2 is built on it
Board it wantsthe contested one: Minefield is the battlefield drawn for you, the opponent holds B

Domain identity from data/cards.json: Last Rites and the Disciple are Chaos, Minefield is colourless, so any Chaos legend admits all three under 103.1.b. None is a Signature card and none appears in data/legality.json. 485.5 draws one of your three battlefields at random, so Minefield is on the table one game in three.

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); the recycled rune goes to the Rune Deck (161.2.b) and two come back each Channel Phase (315.3.b). [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    trash   you
T1     2   Shadow Order Disciple                               E2        0      0
T2     4   Disciple walks to the empty Minefield, Burn 1                  1
           -> Conquer; Minefield mills 2                                  3      1
           Last Rites (E3); Equip on the Disciple:
           1 Chaos rune + recycle 2 from the trash     (R -> 3) E3+1P    1
  their T2: one body walks into B and Conquers it
T3     5   Beginning Phase: Hold Minefield -> Last Rites:
           play a unit from the trash, paying its costs                         2
T4..   ..  the same Beginning Phase every turn, while the trash holds a unit    +1 a turn

Last Rites cannot be on the board for its first Conquer. Its [Equip] asks for two cards in the trash, and on T2 the trash holds one until Minefield mills. 203.3: "If the game action associated with a Cost is impossible for any reason such that a player cannot perform it, then they cannot pay the Cost and they will not execute the linked Effect." So the T2 Conquer pays for the Equip; it cannot also feed a reanimation. Keep a unit when you choose which two to recycle (416.6: "take X cards of the instructed player's choice").

On the board it scores what the Disciple scores: one Hold a turn, eight on T9, the contested curve exactly. What the engine adds is a body a turn, not a point.

3. The rate is a Hold, not a Conquer

The entry says "one reanimation per Conquer" and declares needs: conquer-engine, with the argument that a conquer battlefield "taken and kept fires exactly once in the game". That is true of Minefield and false of Last Rites. Its [Effect] reads "When I conquer or hold" — or hold, in my own voice — and 434.1.c makes that text the carrier's: "The Top-Most card has all Effect Text of all cards Attached to it appended to its Rules Text." The Disciple standing at Minefield holds it every turn (315.2.b.2: "1. The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control."), and 383.4.d makes that a Hold Effect: "Hold Effects are Triggered Abilities whose Condition includes a Unit being present at a Battlefield during the Beginning phase when a player scores Victory Points from Holding."

So Last Rites reanimates once every Beginning Phase with no conquer engine at all. The catalogue already knows this in last-rites-sentinel-trash-holds, which doubles exactly that Hold.

Two consequences:

The ordering the entry is named for — Last Rites placed first, Minefield second, so 340.1 resolves the mill first — is correct, and it applies only to a SECOND Conquer at Minefield. That needs the opponent to take Minefield from you and you to take it back.

4. What the reanimation buys

One unit a turn, at full price, from a trash that refills slowly. Against a deck that trades bodies with you every turn the trash stays stocked and the engine is real card advantage. Against a deck that does not fight, the trash runs dry after the first one or two plays and the engine stops until something dies. Price it as a refund on trades, not as a card a turn.

5. Breaks to

SFD-011 Angle Shot — Fury, E2, [Reaction]: "Choose a unit and an Equipment with the same controller. Attach that Equipment to that unit or detach that Equipment from that unit. Draw 1." Cast on the opponent's own turn, choosing your Disciple and your Last Rites. Detached, Last Rites' [Effect] stops applying (724: "Effect Text is Inactive unless the card with the Effect Text is Attached."), and at the next Cleanup the unattached gear at Minefield goes home (457.1: "When an un-attached non-Unit Gear is created or played at a battlefield, or is at a battlefield for any other reason, it is Recalled to its controller's base during the next Cleanup.").

The re-Equip is the real price: one Chaos rune and two cards from the trash. On T3 the trash holds one, so by 203.3 the Equip cannot be paid at all, and no reanimation happens until two more cards have arrived. Two Energy, a card for them, and your engine off for a turn or more.

The obvious answers are worse for them. SFD-005 Detonate (Fury, E1 + 1 Power, "Kill a gear. Its controller draws 2.") costs the same two runes and hands you two cards. OGN-169 Gust cannot reach the carrier: the Disciple is Might 4 with Last Rites on, and Gust stops at 3.

The defence is to keep two cards in the trash. Then a detach costs you one Chaos rune and the two cards you recycle, and the Equip goes back on in your own Main Phase (381). Do not recycle the trash down to one to fund a reanimation if an Angle Shot is possible.

6. Verdict

The engine is better than the entry says and the ordering it is named for is a footnote. Last Rites fires on every Hold, so the line reanimates one unit each Beginning Phase from T3 with no conquer engine. Minefield's job is to put two cards in the trash on T2 so the Equip can be paid, and it does that once.

Priced as a game it is the contested curve, T9, plus one cheap body a turn while the trash holds a unit. It breaks to a two-Energy detach on the opponent's turn, which also makes the re-Equip unpayable whenever the trash holds fewer than two cards.

7. Not verified

I assumed Minefield is the battlefield drawn for you (one in three in a Duel, 485.5), perfect draws, a unit among the milled cards, and runes in the domains the costs want (108.5.d). I did not walk the opponent contesting Minefield with a body of Might 5 or more against the Might 4 Disciple, nor a second Conquer at Minefield, which is where the entry's ordering finally matters.

Leads