RIFTCOMBO
← All plays

Mel's three banishes thin a battlefield nothing of yours can reach

Issue #370 (a slice of #200), 2026-10-14. 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: mel-defiant-soul-sanction-banish-cycle, the Calm/Chaos ENGINE in which VEN-110 Mel, Defiant Soul banishes an enemy unit of 3 Might or less each time she becomes [Empowered], her own [Empower] costs a discarded spell, and each VEN-035 Sanction in mode two disempowers her now and Empowers her again at end of turn. The entry counts four permanent banishes a game. Walked as a game, going first, Mel lands on T3 and banishes three times by the end of your T4: her own [Empower] on T3, then two Sanctions in mode two on T4, one followed by her [Empower] again (a banish now) and one left to end of turn. All three came off their battlefield, B, and none scored. Nothing of yours could reach B: your two units stood at G, Mel entered exhausted, and without [Ganking] a unit on a battlefield moves only to its base (144.4.b). B went from 11 to 6 by the end of your T4 and was a 14 after their T4: 3 to 3, the same score with or without the banishes. The banishes score only if their bodies stay off B. With their T3 bodies at base, two banishes leave the Diplomat alone there, Mel walks in herself, and it is 4 to 2 after your T4. That Conquer breaks for the one rune they have left on their T3: 9 cards do it, 3 from hand and 6 hidden at B.

Why this line. scripts/sequence-pick.mjs --unplayed, re-run on 2026-10-14 at 072409a, reads 773 entries, 262 with forced-ordering language, 100 in the queue and 27 of them with no play (90 plays, 85 distinct subjects, 73 of them in the queue). That is one fewer in the queue than the issue's 101 at 2cdd536; the two picks are unchanged and each moved up one rank. The pick is by global rank, skipping entries that already have a play: this entry is rank 74 (a hit on first), first in the list. The other entry of this slice is rank 75, mask-mother-ruthless-strike-doubled-payment, played in The Mother's +2 kept the attacker alive, and one rune answers the Strike eight ways.

1. Needs

LegendUNL-193 Gloomist (Calm/Chaos)
The pairVEN-110 Mel, Defiant Soul (Chaos, E5, M4), VEN-035 Sanction (Calm, E3 + 1 Power)
The fodderOGN-183 Stacked Deck (Chaos, E1), the spell her [Empower] discards
The bodiesOGN-052 Stalwart Poro (Calm, E2, M2), OGN-175 Shipyard Skulker (Chaos, E3, M3)

The entry names no legend, only the pair. This play takes Gloomist, because her draw on every Hold pays for the cards Mel's [Empower] eats: "When you or an ally hold, you may exhaust me to draw 1." 103.1.b.1: "Cards included in your deck must abide by your Domain Identity." Its Chosen Champion is UNL-150 Vex, Apathetic (Chaos, E4, M4). 103.2.a.2: "Must be a champion unit with a champion tag that matches the tag on your Champion Legend." No card of either deck is a Signature card (data/cards.json), and none is in data/legality.src.json or marked [BANNED] in data/corpus_flat.txt.

The card text the play turns on:

2. The price, and when each banish can happen

Mel is T3, Mel and a Sanction are T4. You channel two runes a turn, 315.3.b: "1. The Turn Player channels 2 runes from their Rune Deck." Going first gets no extra rune; going second does, 485.7: "First Turn Process: The player going second channels an extra Rune from their Rune Deck during their first Channel Phase of the game." So going first you have 2, 4, 6 and 8 runes on T1 to T4. Mel's E5 is T3. Her [Empower] costs no rune at all, so the first banish is on the turn she lands. Sanction is three runes: two exhausted for Energy and a Calm one exhausted and then recycled for the Power, 164.2.b: "Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]." That Power has to be Calm, 164.2.b.1: "The Power added this way corresponds to the Domain of the Rune that is being Recycled." Mel and one Sanction are eight runes, T4. The walk plays Mel on T3 and two Sanctions on T4, six of its eight runes.

Her own [Empower] is for your Main Phase only. It is an activated ability, and 145.2: "The Activated Ability of Units may be executed at any time during the controlling player's Main Phase during an Open State, and not during a Showdown." And 381: "All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State." It has no exhaust in its cost, so she can pay it the turn she enters, exhausted (143.4). The banish is a triggered ability, 383.3: "When a Condition is met, a Triggered Ability behaves like an Activated Ability and is placed on the Chain." The event it reads is 441.2.a: "When a Game Object becomes Empowered as a result of the Empower game action, that is an event that can similarly be referenced by game effects and abilities."

Once Empowered she stays Empowered, so each further banish needs a disempower first. 441.1.b: "An Empowered Game Object can not be Empowered." 441.1.c: "If a Game Object is instructed to be Empowered when it is already Empowered, nothing additional happens." Sanction is the disempower. Its two modes are not the same tool:

What "at a battlefield" and "end of turn" cost. The banish cannot reach a unit at a base. And a "this turn" bonus still counts when an end-of-turn banish reads "3 or less": 317.1 (the Ending Step) comes before 317.2.c, the Expiration Step where "this turn" effects expire. If the unit's Might rises over 3 before the banish resolves, the target is gone. The worked example under 359.3.e.4: "A unit with 3 or less Might is no longer a legal target if it is no longer a unit or if its Might is greater than 3."

Mel stays at base. The entry's step 1 plays her at a battlefield. Her banish reaches any battlefield from your base. At base no unit can reach her: units move from a base to a battlefield and back, 144.4.a: "Units may move from their Base to a Battlefield." 144.4.b: "Units may move from a Battlefield to their Base." Spells still can (§5).

3. Their deck: Fury/Body, Pridestalker

UNL-183 Pridestalker (Fury/Body): "When you play a unit, give a unit +1 :rb_might: this turn." Their Chosen Champion is SFD-025 Rengar, Pouncing (Fury, E3 + 1 Power, M3), and they never have three runes for him on your turn. They play small Body units:

None of them has [Ganking], and no unit of yours has it either; that decides this walk. 144.4.c.1: "Units with Ganking may use their Standard Move to Move from Battlefield to Battlefield." A buff is a permanent +1, one per unit, 702.3: "There can only be one Buff on a Unit at a time."

4. The turns, going first

Calm/Chaos against Fury/Body. Your battlefield is G; theirs is B. Your opening four are Stalwart Poro, Shipyard Skulker, Mel and Stacked Deck. Your draws are Sanction (T1), a second Stalwart Poro (T2), a second Skulker and OGN-171 Mystic Poro (the T3 draw and the Gloomist's), and a second Sanction and a second Stacked Deck (the T4 draw and the Gloomist's).

turn    runes   your turn                                                 points
T1      2       Stalwart Poro (E2) to base.                               0
their T1        Gemhand Hunter (E2) to base. Three runes, one left.
T2      4       The Poro walks to G, Conquer: +1. Shipyard Skulker (E3)   1
                to G. One rune left.
their T2        The Hunter walks to B, Conquer (1 XP). Crackshot
                Corsair (E3) and Demacian Diplomat (E2, 1 XP) straight
                to B: 2 + 3 + 2, a 7. Five runes, none left.
T3      6       Hold G: +1, the Gloomist draws. Mel (E5) to base. Her     2
                [Empower] discards Stacked Deck: the Corsair is
                banished. B is a 4, and nothing of yours can reach it.
                One rune left.
their T3        Hold B: +1 (1 XP). A second Corsair (E3) and Crowd
                Favorite (E3) to B; 2 XP buff the Favorite. B is
                2 + 2 + 3 + 4, an 11. Seven runes, one left.
T4      8       Hold G: +1, the Gloomist draws. Sanction (E3 + 1 Calm     3
                Power), mode two, on Mel. Her [Empower] discards the
                second Stacked Deck: the second Corsair is banished.
                The second Sanction, mode two, on Mel. A second
                Stalwart Poro (E2) to G. Eight runes exhausted, two
                recycled. At end of turn she is Empowered again: the
                Hunter is banished. B is a 6.
their T4        Hold B: +1. Pit Rookie (E2, buffs the Diplomat), Kinkou
                Initiate (E3, draws 1) and a second Diplomat (E2, 1 XP)
                to B: 4 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2, a 14. Nine runes, two left.

Their points: 0 after their T1, 1 after their T2, 2 after their T3, 3 after their T4. After your T3 it is 2 to 1, after your T4 3 to 2, and after their T4 3 to 3.

Your hand, card by card: 5 after the T1 draw, 4 after the Poro; 5, then 4 after T2; 6 after the T3 draw and the Gloomist's, 4 after Mel and the discard; 6 after the T4 draws, then 2 after the two Sanctions, the discard and the second Poro (the second Skulker and Mystic Poro).

Why bodies go straight to a battlefield. A unit is played to your base or to a battlefield you control, 355.2.a: "By default, Valid locations include the controller’s Base or a Battlefield the controller controls." That is why their Corsair and Diplomat go straight to B on their T2, after the Hunter's Conquer, why their T3 and T4 bodies go there too, and why your second Poro goes to G on T4.

Your T2, why the Skulker goes to G. Beside the Poro it makes G a 6 on defence, 3 + 3 (the Poro's [Shield] counts on defence). Their T2 cannot attack that: the Hunter is their one ready unit, and two Pridestalker +1s make it a 4. The price is that the Skulker never reaches B: from G it moves only to its base (144.4.b). Played to base instead, it could walk to B on T3, but there it is a 3 against the Hunter and the Diplomat's 4 once the Corsair is banished, and it dies. It would also leave the Poro alone at G, a 3 that their Hunter kills on their T2 as a 4 for a Conquer, with the Corsair and the Diplomat played to their base first. On that line the T3 banish takes the Hunter at G, and the Skulker walks into an empty battlefield for a Conquer: 2 to 1, the point the Hold of G makes here. Going first, no T3 line gives the first banish a point the Hold would not have made.

Your T3, the banish. Mel enters exhausted (143.4) and pays her [Empower] at once with Stacked Deck. They hold no ready rune (all five went on their T2) and nothing facedown, so they pass. The trigger chooses the Corsair (a 3 at B) and banishes it, 108.6.b: "This space is where cards are placed when they are banished by a spell or effect." B is now the Hunter and the Diplomat, a 4. Nothing of yours can attack it. The Poro and the Skulker are at G, and only [Ganking] moves a unit from battlefield to battlefield (144.4.c.1). Mel cannot move at all, 144.2: "Exhausting the Unit is the Cost for this action." So the banish scores nothing on T3. The 2 to 1 is the Hold of G, and without the banish it is the same 2 to 1. OGN-169 Gust (Chaos, E1, "Return a unit at a battlefield with 3 :rb_might: or less to its owner's hand.") takes the Corsair off B for one rune too. The difference is that a bounced Corsair comes back for three of their T3 runes, and the banished one does not.

Their T3, why the bodies go to B. They Hold B, 315.2.b.2: "1. The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control." Their second Corsair and the Favorite go to B, not to base. At base they would be out of Mel's reach and could attack G on their T4. At B they are in her reach, but B is the battlefield she can take: Mel is ready on your T4, and the 4 at B (the Hunter and the Diplomat) is one banish from a lone 2 that she walks through (§5). At 11, two banishes leave a 6 or a 7. The Favorite's buff spends 2 of their 3 XP (the Hunter's Conquer, the Diplomat, the Hunter's Hold).

Your T4, two Sanctions in one turn. Sanction one, mode two, disempowers Mel. Her [Empower] is legal again, because the only bar on it was being Empowered. She discards the second Stacked Deck, and the trigger banishes the second Corsair (a 3) in your Main Phase. Sanction two, mode two, disempowers her again: the mode needs her Empowered, and the discard made her so. At end of turn the first delayed Empower finds her disempowered, so she is Empowered and the trigger banishes the Hunter (a 2). The second finds her Empowered and does nothing (441.1.c). Both Sanctions recycled a Calm rune, so you hold six runes, not eight, after T4.

What the T4 banishes bought: no point. B falls from 11 to 6: the Favorite's 4 and the Diplomat's 2. Mel is the one unit of yours that could attack it, and she is a 4. Your other three are at G (144.4.b), the second Poro among them, since it entered there. The walk spends the second Sanction to measure it. Spent on the second Skulker and Mystic Poro in your base, those five runes would put 5 Might in reach of B on T5, against the 14 their T4 makes it.

Their T4, B grows back. They Hold B: 3 to 3. Pit Rookie's buff goes to the Diplomat, a 3, since the Favorite already has one (702.3). The Initiate draws: the Favorite, the Diplomat and the Rookie are 4 + 3 + 2 before Pridestalker. B is 14. They added two bodies on their T3 and three on their T4. Each banish costs you a Sanction and three runes, and you run three Sanctions (103.2.b). Nothing of theirs reaches G either: their base is empty, and no unit at B has [Ganking]. UNL-010 Vault Breaker (Fury, E1 + 1 Power, "Give a unit [Assault 2] and [Ganking] this turn.") would grant it for a turn. Their hand in the walk holds none.

How often this happens. The draw pile is 39 cards, the 40 of Tournament Rules 402.1 less the Chosen Champion, which 103.2.a.1 places in the Champion Zone. Going first you have seen 7 cards by your T3 draw, and 8 with the Gloomist's draw from the Hold of G. With three of each (103.2.b), a Mel among the first 7 is 45.73%, and among the first 8 50.82%. By your T4 you have seen 10 cards (four opening, four draws, two Gloomist draws). A Mel among the first 8 and two Sanctions among the first 10 is 7.02%. That counts only those cards; the walk also needs a spell to discard on T3 and another on T4, and a two-drop on T1.

5. Breaks to

The predicate is the walk's result: three banishes off B by the end of your T4, and no point from any of them. Undo all three and it is still 3 to 3 after their T4. So two things are priced here: what stops the banishes, and the line on which they do score, with what stops that.

Where the banishes score: their T3 bodies at base. If the second Corsair and the Favorite go to their base, B on your T4 is the Hunter and the Diplomat, a 4. One Sanction in mode two, then her [Empower] on the second Stacked Deck, banishes the Hunter. Mel walks to B (144.4.a), 4 against the Diplomat's 2. She kills it, takes 2 and lives, and you Conquer, 466.5.d: "Establishing Control results in a Conquer if that player has not yet scored this Battlefield this turn." That is 4 to 2 after your T4, with five runes left. Two banishes open B, and the turn of the first does not matter. With her [Empower] held from T3, it banishes the Corsair on T4, and one Sanction gives the second, for the same three runes. On their T4 the pair from base attack with Pit Rookie's buff on the Corsair and three Pridestalker +1s: 4 + 4 + 3, an 11, and the Corsair's ping. Your sixteen Might of defenders (G's 6, Mel's 4, and the second Skulker and Poro, 3 each on defence) cannot make both battlefields bigger than that. They retake one, and it is 4 to 3, a point better for you than the walk. That is why the walk has them build B.

The cheapest break of that Conquer is one rune, and they have it. Seven T3 runes less two three-drops leave one. The scope: a Fury/Body deck plays only Fury, Body and Fury/Body cards (103.1.b.1). In data/cards.json, folded by name and type with reprints and legends left out, 61 of them print [Reaction] (on the card, on an ability or by [Ambush] or [Quick-Draw]), [Hidden], or [Action]. Two are out under 103.2.d.2, "All of the Signature cards must have the Champion tag that corresponds to the Champion Legend of the deck.": SFD-184 Relentless Pursuit (Lucian) and VEN-142 Dominus (Renekton). Draven, Vanquisher, the one banned Fury/Body card, has none of the three keywords. That leaves 59. Eleven of them cost one rune, and seven can be hidden.

The other eight do not. OGN-004 Cleave, SFD-003 Blood Rush and Vault Breaker give [Assault], which counts only while attacking, and theirs defend. OGN-133 Flurry of Blades puts 1 on Mel, and with the Diplomat's 2 that is 3. OGN-145 Unyielding Spirit prevents damage, and a banish is not damage. VEN-015 Decree of Rage hits only a Calm unit, and Mel is Chaos. OGN-040 Seal of Rage and OGN-163 Seal of Strength carry [Reaction] on an ability, not on the card, and neither is on the board.

The seventh, SFD-004 Bushwhack, readies units that enter and makes an exhausted Gold token.

So 9 break it. By their T3 they have seen 7 cards (four opening, three draws). If they run three of one of the 9, one is among them in 45.73%. With two of them (six cards) it is 72.23%, and with three (nine cards) 86.76%. Each is 7 of 39.

The walk's three banishes, in four windows. None changes a point through their T4.

So the Main Phase banish on a 3 has five answers at their one rune, and the end-of-turn one on a 2 has one, Repulse.

Their T3: one card takes G, and Mel can never banish it. G is the Poro and the Skulker, a 3 and a 3 on defence. UNL-120 Rengar, Trophy Hunter (Body, E5 + 1 Power, M6, six runes of their seven): "I can [Ambush] to a battlefield where there are enemy units (even if you don't have units there)." Played there, it applies Contested (190.3.a.1) and is the attacker, 464.2.c.1: "The Attacker is the player whose unit(s) applied the Contested status to the Battlefield." With Pridestalker's +1 it is a 7: both of yours die, it takes 6 and lives, and they Conquer G. They lead 3 to 2. It also leaves B a 4, so on your T4 one banish and Mel take B, and it is 3 to 3. The scope is every Fury, Body and Fury/Body card in data/corpus_flat.txt whose text lets it be played to a battlefield that is "occupied", "where there are enemy units" or that they are "attacking". That is five. SFD-093 Dauntless Vanguard (M4, a 5 with the +1) dies to G's 6 and kills one of the two. UNL-117 Arachnoid Horror needs an enemy unit alone, and G has two. OGN-161 Deadbloom Predator is ten runes. Rengar, Pouncing needs a battlefield they are attacking, and they have no unit to attack with. The other [Ambush] units (Inferna, Grim Apothecary, Nidalee, Lord Broadmane, Morgana) need a unit of theirs already there. If they run three Rengars, one is among their 7 cards in 45.73%.

6. Verdict

Right that nothing here scores, and wrong that its banish cannot come at instant speed. Mel's first banish is free in runes and lands the turn she does: T3, going first. In the walk she banished three times by the end of your T4, all at B, and none scored. Your units stood at G and could not move to B without [Ganking]. Their T3 and T4 bodies rebuilt B faster than a Sanction a turn could thin it. The banishes score only when they open a battlefield for a unit that can still move there. On the line where their T3 bodies stay at base, two banishes leave a 2 at B, Mel walks in herself, and it is 4 to 2. One rune breaks that Conquer, nine ways. The entry says the re-fired banish comes only at end of turn. That is true of mode two alone on an Empowered Mel. Mode two followed by her own [Empower] banishes now, for a discarded spell. Mode one on a Mel who is not Empowered banishes at once from a [Reaction], in their combat too.

7. Not verified

I did not deal the channel order. The walk assumes six Calm and six Chaos runes, Gloomist's two domains, in the twelve of Tournament Rules 402.1. Every card before T4 costs Energy only. T4's two Sanctions need two Calm runes among the eight channelled, and eight of twelve always hold at least two Calm: all 495 deals (0 fail). Their main line costs Energy only.

Their breaks name a Power domain, which the walk does not deal:

I did not walk these:

Their hand holding no answer, their T3 bodies going to B, and their T3 holding no Rengar, Trophy Hunter are the walk's assumptions; §5 prices all three. The probabilities in §4 and §5 count only the cards named.

Leads