Combo · ENGINE

424.3.a.1 - a hand reveal is a SNAPSHOT that never updates, so Ashe's banish is confined to it, and the one hole it leaves is the facedown card exactly one card in the pool can see

6 cards · order + calm · verified

Pieces

• Ashe, Focused ×3 UNL-169 · payoff · order

  When you play me, choose an opponent. They reveal their hand. Choose a card revealed this way and banish it. When they hold, return it to their hand (even if I'm no longer on the board).

• Scuttle Crab ×3 UNL-053 · enabler · calm

  (Units with 0 Might can conquer and hold.) When you play me, draw 1. [Deathknell][>] Choose an opponent. They reveal their hand. You can look at their facedown cards this turn. Gain 1 XP. (When I die, get the effects.)

Payoff

Deck

• Scuttle Crab is mono-Calm and Ashe, Focused is mono-Order, so 103.1.b.1 forces a legend carrying both. The census run against data/cards.json on 2026-09-09 returns FOUR names for Calm+Order: Radiant Dawn (OGN-261), Emperor of the Sands (SFD-197), Green Father (UNL-195) and Eye of Twilight (VEN-147).
• Neither card is Signature (data/cards.json, signature=false on both) and neither appears in data/legality.json in either format - checked 2026-09-09.

Prerequisites

• 424.3.a AND 424.3.a.1 WERE BOTH UNCITED, AND THE SECOND IS WHAT BOUNDS ASHE. 424.3.a: 'When the zone is instructed to be Revealed without indicating a number of cards, that refers to "All cards currently in the specified zone."' 424.3.a.1: 'The Revealed state is applied to those cards. Any further cards added to that zone after the instruction has been executed do not become Revealed.' So 'a card revealed this way' is a snapshot of the hand at that instant and never widens - a card drawn afterwards is not Revealed and can never be the banish target. The strip is exactly one card and cannot be re-aimed later.
• AND IT SETS THE TIMING. 315.4 gives them a Draw Phase, so a hand emptied by the strip refills before their Main Phase; the reveal is worth most against a hand they have already committed from, and worth least immediately after their draw. That is a scheduling fact about the whole family, not about Ashe.
• 424.3'S OWN EXAMPLE SAYS A REVEAL COSTS THE REVEALER NOTHING. 'Reveal 2 cards from the top of your Main Deck' would be executed by taking the two cards from the top of your Main Deck, and then presenting them to all players to clearly read and understand at the table. Then, when all players have had a chance to understand the revealed information, return them to the top of the Main Deck in the same order.' A reveal is non-destructive AND order-preserving; it is not a mill, not a shuffle, and 431.1.c keeps it clear of Burn Out. What Ashe adds to a bare reveal is the banish, and that is the only part with a price.
• THE HOLE, AND THE ONE CARD THAT FILLS IT. 424.1: 'Revealing is the act of presenting a card to all players from a zone that one or more players do not have access to the information of.' 811.1.b hides a card at a battlefield, not in the hand, so NO hand reveal in the pool ever shows a facedown card. Swept over data/corpus_flat.txt on 2026-09-09, six cards reveal an opponent's hand - OGN-156 Sabotage, OGN-192 Mindsplitter, UNL-053 Scuttle Crab, UNL-135 Insightful Investigator, UNL-169 Ashe, Focused and VEN-085 Decree of Strength - and exactly ONE of them also opens the facedown: Scuttle Crab. The other facedown rows in the pool are OGN-101 Mushroom Pouch and UNL-014 Monster Harpoon, which read or hit YOUR OWN facedown card, and OGN-181 Pack of Wonders, which returns one to hand without looking.
• THE FACEDOWN INFORMATION IS BOUNDED AND SMALL, WHICH IS WHY IT IS WORTH ONE CARD. 811.1.b hides 'at a battlefield you control that doesn't already have a facedown card hidden there', and 485.4 puts two battlefields on a Duel table, so an opponent can hold at most two facedown cards at once. Scuttle Crab sees both, and its clause lasts 'this turn', which is exactly the window in which you would spend removal into them.
• THE SHORTFALL. Ashe's banish is not permanent by its own text - 'When they hold, return it to their hand' - and 469.2 ('Hold: A player maintains Control of a Battlefield they did not yet Score this turn during their Beginning Phase') is the only thing that makes it so: against an opponent with no battlefield the return clause never fires. That is a board state you have to create, not one the pair supplies. And Scuttle Crab has to DIE for its half, so the information arrives on a schedule you do not fully control. Nothing here scores; the class is ENGINE.
• `UNL-169 Ashe, Focused` prints *"(even if I`m no longer on the board)"*, which is reminder text for **392**: Delayed Abilities *"are executed when their condition and/or specified time occurs regardless of whether the source of the Delayed Ability is still on the board or not."* This entry cites 424.1 through 424.4.a for the reveal and nothing at all for the delayed return, which is half the card. **390.5.c.1 supplies the zone**: if the linked ability moved the object to a non-board zone, that is where the delayed ability`s window lives - so a delayed ability follows what it affected into Banishment. The whole 390.5 block, 391 and 392 were cited by nothing, and 391`s two worked examples are Ravenborn Tome and Noxian Guillotine, both printed in this pool.

Steps

1. Play Scuttle Crab for 2 Energy. It draws 1 on play, so the body replaces itself, and its own parenthetical lets a Might 0 unit conquer and hold.
2. When Scuttle Crab dies, its [Deathknell] reveals the opponent's hand and opens their facedown cards for the turn, and gains 1 XP.
3. 424.3.a makes that reveal ALL the cards then in their hand, and 424.3.a.1 applies the Revealed state to those cards only.
4. Play Ashe, Focused for 5 Energy + 1 Order Power in the same turn while the information is live. Her play trigger reveals the hand again and banishes one card revealed this way.
5. 424.3.a.1 confines the choice to that second snapshot: anything they draw afterwards is never Revealed and is not a legal choice for her banish.
6. Hold their battlefields. 469.2 defines Hold on a battlefield the player controls, so an opponent who controls none never triggers Ashe's return clause and the banish stands.

Per iteration

one full read of the opponent's hand and both facedown cards, and one card of that hand banished

How it ends

engine - one card banished from a hand you have already read in full, plus a turn in which both of their facedown cards are open to you, for 7 Energy + 1 Order Power across two bodies; the banish returns the moment they hold, so it is permanent only against a board they cannot hold. Nothing here scores

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-09, issue #187 - uncited Core Rules sub-rules 300-499 2026-09-09 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue