Combo · CHAIN · 8 points
Bottled Constellation ×3 + Time Warp ×3 — fodder from the loop
Pieces
- Bottled Constellation ×3
VEN-067 · payoff · mind
At the start of your Main Phase, you may kill 3 other friendly units and/or gear to score 1 point.
- Time Warp ×3
OGN-122 · engine · mind
Take a turn after this one. Banish this.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains cover Mind and Order.
Run play
Prerequisites
- Three Constellations in play before the Main Phase that should fire them; nine or more fodder permanents at each Main Phase start.
- Leave the Main Deck non-empty at each end of turn — the extra turn's draw would otherwise Burn Out (431.2.c).
- THE PAYOFF IS A GEAR AND NOTHING IN THIS ENTRY ANSWERS IT (added 2026-09-13, #200). Swept over every printing for an enemy-facing removal reaching a gear or an Equipment: **FIFTEEN, and every domain prints at least one**, so no identity hides from it. The cheapest is `SFD-005 Detonate` — Fury, E1 + 1 Power — *"Kill a gear. Its controller draws 2."* `OGN-022 Thermo Beam` kills ALL gear at `[Action]` speed. And the one a kill-predicate cannot see is `SFD-011 Angle Shot` (Fury, E2, `[Reaction]`), which chooses *"a unit and an Equipment with the same controller"* — a controller who need not be you — and DETACHES it, taking the Might Bonus (137.3.a) and the appended Effect Text (718.3, 719.1) off an enemy carrier **without killing anything**, at Reaction speed, and drawing a card. It is the pool’s only Reaction-speed answer to an attached Equipment. 718.5.b is why all of this reaches: *"Attached cards still can be chosen or targeted by game effects while Attached"*, even though 718.2 makes their printed text Inactive.
- A SPELL PAYOFF IS ANSWERED IN A WINDOW THE RULES CREATE FOR IT, AFTER EVERY COST IS ALREADY SPENT (added 2026-09-13, #200). **359.3.c**: *"Other players have an opportunity to play Reactions before the resolution of spells."* A UNIT or GEAR payoff never gets that window — 337.2 sends it straight to Step 4 Resolve — and a BATTLEFIELD payoff is not removable at all (170.3, 170.4). A SPELL is the one payoff class the process stops for, and **425.1.c** with **425.1.c.1** refunds nothing: *"Countering does not refund any costs paid to play a card… This includes additional costs."* `OGN-122 Time Warp` at **E10 + 4 Power is the largest single cost in any finishing turn this catalogue prices**, and all of it is spent before the counter resolves. Swept on the bare word *counter*: 14 printings, three of which are not counters (`SFD-194 Counter Strike` is a PREVENT carrying the word in its name; `VEN-015` and `VEN-069` GRANT can’t-be-countered), leaving **ELEVEN — and CALM prints five of them**. Seven reach Time Warp and FOUR cannot, each for a printed reason: `OGN-045 Defy` and `VEN-152 Rebuttal` are priced out by its own cost, and `SFD-045 Not So Fast` and `UNL-106 Repulse` both need the spell to CHOOSE a friendly unit or gear, which Time Warp does not — **so the pool’s only two ABILITY-counters are exactly the two that cannot answer this spell.** Cheapest that reaches: `VEN-039 Crumbling Sands`, Calm, E1 + 1 Power, conditional on you having cast anything else that turn. Most punishing: `UNL-190 Lilting Lullaby`, Calm/Mind, E2 + 2 Power — *"Counter a spell. Its controller can't play spells this turn"* — which ends the finishing TURN rather than taking one card. And `VEN-152 Rebuttal` is not a counter at all against a cheap spell payoff: it *"gain[s] control of it and you may make new choices for it"*, so at 4 Energy or less it does not deny the line, **it takes it.**
Steps
- Turn N: loop; play three Constellations (30E+6P); Time Warp.
- Extra turn: Main Phase start → three Constellations, kill 9 fodder → +3. Loop again; Time Warp.
- Repeat: +3, +3. Nine points across three extra turns.
How it ends
9 points, opponent never acts
Sources
Walked here, in this project
- Hunt v2 lens L4, entry L4-03 2026-09-02 record
- REFUTE pass 2026-09-03 2026-09-03 record
- Hand walk 2026-09-04 2026-09-04 record
How this entry was audited
REFUTE = a refutation pass, with its date and verdict · WOUNDED = the pass found a flaw and the entry was rewritten · BUDGETED = the pass checked the recycle-and-draw ledger · lens = the hunt that proposed it.
Capped at three by Time Warp's deck limit and banish (427). The Draw Phase Burn Out trap is what actually goes wrong at the table. REFUTE 2026-09-03: SURVIVES — 9 confirmed. Constellations played this turn fire only from the next Main Phase start. Time Warps cannot ride the loop (banished): three in hand. Needs infinite Power (4 per Time Warp, 2 per Constellation). HAND-WALKED 2026-09-04 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-04-the-three-chain-finishers.md), and reclassed BURST -> CHAIN under issue #20. The fodder only exists because of the same day's Shadow's Call fix to lux-infinite-energy: the Constellations fire at the START of the Main Phase, so the bodies must have been made the previous turn and survived that turn's Beginning Phase, and under the old reading every pass marked one [Temporary] for 816.1.b to kill before scoring. Pointing Shadow's Call at Ekko leaves the Recruits clean. The Burn Out caveat bites every extra turn here, because the trigger is at the Main Phase start, well after the Draw Phase (315.4); 431.2.c is the right citation for the point it hands away.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16