the Golds are a bank with no teller, because Portal Rescue is paid in Energy

Issue #258 (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: portal-rescue-trove-golem-industrialist, the Mind/Order ENGINE in which OGN-102 Portal Rescue replays SFD-174 Trove Golem for four more Gold tokens, and SFD-171 Renata Glasc, Industrialist makes every Gold enter ready. The entry's ledger — net +3 Power per casting — is right. Walked as a game, the scarce resource is not Power at all: every casting costs three Energy, the Golds only ever add Power, and so the line turns one turn's Energy into a pile of Golds that the same deck has nothing to spend on.

Why this line. scripts/sequence-pick.mjs --unplayed, re-run on 2026-10-05 at d0cb346, reads 771 entries, 262 with forced-ordering language, 102 in the queue and 83 of them with no play. The pick is by global rank, skipping entries that already have a play: this entry is rank 17 (hits on first and before), second in the list. The other entry of this slice is rank 15, played in the bait is a removal spell before the attack.

1. Needs

Legend	a Mind/Order legend (103.1.b) — Herald of the Arcane, Lady of Luminosity, Chem-Baroness or Deceiver
First	`SFD-171 Renata Glasc, Industrialist` (Order, E4 + 1 Power, M4) on the board
Then	`SFD-174 Trove Golem` (Order, E8 + 2 Power, M9) played after her
The repeat	`OGN-102 Portal Rescue` (Mind, E3 + 1 Power), up to three copies

The card text the play turns on:

Trove Golem: "When you play me, play four Gold gear tokens exhausted."
Renata Glasc, Industrialist: "Your tokens enter ready."
Portal Rescue: "[Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Banish a friendly unit, then its owner plays it to their base, ignoring its cost."
A Gold, 187.5: "A Gold gear token is a domainless gear token with “[Reaction][>] Kill this, [E]: [Add] [A].”"

2. What a Gold pays for

A Gold adds one rainbow Power and nothing else, and rainbow pays any domain's Power cost — 135.2.e.5.b: "When Added to a player’s Rune Pool, [A] can be spent to pay a Power cost of any Domain." So a Gold pays Portal Rescue's Mind Power, the Golem's Order Power, anything's Power. It never pays Energy. Portal Rescue's three Energy has to come out of runes every time.

The Golds do not leave with the turn. 167 empties the pool — "Every player's Rune Pool empties at the start of each player's Main Phase and the end of each player's turn." — and a Gold is a gear token on the board until you kill it to add. Unspent Golds are a bank.

3. The turns, going first

Mind/Order. The opponent is contesting battlefields; this deck spends its middle turns on its base.

turn   runes   your turn                                               Golds after
T1     2       a 2-drop                                                0
T2     4       a 2-drop / hold mana                                    0
T3     6       Renata: exhaust 4, recycle one for the Order Power      0
               (164.2.b). 5 runes remain.
T4     7       free — the Golem needs 8 runes on the board             0
T5     9       Trove Golem: exhaust 8, recycle 2 for the Order Power.  4
               7 runes remain, 1 of them ready = E1. Portal Rescue
               (E3) is not castable this turn.
T6     9       Portal Rescue x3: each is 3 runes + 1 Gold.             4 - 3 + 12 = 13
               0 runes ready afterwards.

Renata has to be first, and has to still be there. If she is gone when the Golem's trigger resolves, the Golds enter exhausted as printed and are next turn's Power.
T5 is the Golem and nothing else. Eight runes exhausted for E8, two of them recycled for the two Order Power (164.2.b, "Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]."; 161.2.b sends them to the Rune Deck), and one rune left over. The four Golds would pay Portal Rescue's Power, but not its Energy.
T6 spends the whole game's supply. Nine runes are exactly three castings of E3, each topped up with one Gold for the Mind Power. Each casting replays the Golem — 419.3.a, "This treats Play as a Limited Action." — and 419.4.a fires his trigger again: "Any such triggered abilities trigger when the act of playing the card has been completed by the resolution of the card." Thirteen Golds, a 9-Might body at the base, and no Energy left to do anything with them.

4. Breaks to

The bank breaks to OGN-022 Thermo Beam (Fury, E5 + 2 Power, "[Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Kill all gear."). The Golds are [Reaction], so you can kill them in response and add the Power — but the pool empties at the end of the turn (167), so a response only helps if you have a [Reaction] sink for rainbow Power in hand. One card, E5 + 2, takes all thirteen.

One casting breaks to OGN-045 Defy (Calm, E1 + 1 Power, "Counter a spell that costs no more than :rb_energy_4: and no more than :rb_rune_rainbow:."). Portal Rescue prints E3 + 1, inside both limits, and the counter refunds nothing — 425.1.c: "Countering does not refund any costs paid to play a card, activate an ability, or trigger an ability." The Golem stays where it was and the four Golds never come; you are out three runes, a Gold and a card for their E1 + 1.

Portal Rescue cannot save the Golem from removal. The entry calls it a save because it is [Action]. But a removal spell on the chain is a Closed State, and 358.4 lets in only a card that closed the state with [Action] or [Reaction], or a [Reaction] card after that: "If the state is Closed and the card wasn’t the one that Closed the state, ensure that it has [Reaction]." Portal Rescue can be cast pre-emptively in an open Showdown, never in response.

The body is not the problem. The Golem and Renata stand at your base, out of reach of every removal worded "at a battlefield"; reaching them takes something like OGN-229 Vengeance (Order, E4 + 2 Power, "Kill a unit."). Nothing in the line is worth that.

5. Verdict

The ledger is right and the currency is wrong. Each Portal Rescue costs three Energy to buy three net Power, and Power without Energy buys nothing in this deck: by the end of T6 every rune is tapped and thirteen Golds sit on the board waiting for a spell that costs Power and no Energy. The line is a bank, and it needs a teller — a legend or card that turns the Golds into Energy, or a Power-heavy sink that the deck can afford in Energy on the following turn.

It scores nothing: thirteen rainbow Power banked by T6, one replayed 9-Might body at the base, and three cards spent. It breaks to OGN-022 Thermo Beam for E5 + 2 Fury on the bank, and to OGN-045 Defy for E1 + 1 Calm on any single casting.

6. Not verified

I did not walk a list that spends the Golds (the obvious sink is OGN-122 Time Warp, E10 + 4 Power, which still needs ten Energy), the sibling line with VEN-066 Temporal Breach, or 2v2.

Leads

The entry's ledger counts only Power. Every casting costs E3 from runes and the Golds never add Energy (187.5, 135.2.e.5.b), so on the turn the Golem lands (T5 going first) Portal Rescue is not castable at all, and by T6 three castings take every rune.
The entry's own legend list contains the teller: SFD-201 Chem-Baroness reads "While your score is within 3 points of the Victory Score, your Gold [Add] an additional :rb_energy_1:." Under her, the thirteen banked Golds are thirteen Energy as well, and the line becomes a finisher's fuel. No notable connects them.
The notable "[Action] speed ... doubles as a save from removal" does not hold: a removal spell on the chain is a Closed State and 358.4 admits only a [Reaction] card there. Portal Rescue saves only when cast first, in an open Showdown.