Combo · ENGINE

Rebuke inside the opened combat — Draven wins it without a damage step

5 cards · chaos + fury · verified

Pieces

• Draven, Audacious ×1 SFD-148 · payoff · chaos

  [Deflect] (Opponents must pay 1 Power of any domain to choose me with a spell or ability.) The first time I win a combat each turn, you score 1 point. When I die in combat, choose an opponent. They score 1 point.

• Rebuke ×3 OGN-172 · enabler · chaos

  [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Return a unit at a battlefield to its owner's hand.

• Glorious Executioner ×1 SFD-185 · legend · fury/chaos

  When you win a combat, draw 1. (You win if only your units remain after combat.)

Payoff

Deck

• The legend IS Glorious Executioner (Fury/Chaos). Draven and Rebuke are both mono-Chaos (103.1.b.1).

Run play

• Draven passes first and Rebukes their answer

Prerequisites

• IT ANSWERS THE TWO WEAKNESSES draven-glorious-executioner-point STATES ABOUT ITSELF, WHICH IS WHY IT IS A SEPARATE ENTRY. That entry's notable[0] says 'This engine DEPENDS ON THE OPPONENT ... Against a board that never garrisons, Draven scores zero', and its notable[2] says 'he dies to a bigger garrison and hands the point over'. Rebuke answers both: you attack on YOUR turn instead of waiting to be attacked, and 465.1 skips the damage step entirely, so Draven cannot die and the 'they score 1 point' clause never fires. OGN-172 is in zero entries.
• THE WINDOW IS INSIDE THE COMBAT, NOT BEFORE IT, AND THAT IS THE POINT. 464.2.f.1: 'Otherwise the Combat Showdown continues, with the State Open as normal', and 464.2.g: 'Players proceed with any play on the Chain as normal.' Rebuke's own reminder permits a Showdown. Then 465.1 gates the whole damage step — 'If both Attacking and Defending units remain at this battlefield, the following Tasks become Outstanding' — so with the garrison in its owner's hand there is no 465.2 damage at all. This window is wider than the pre-open evacuation window of the #58 walk: there the spell had to be cast BEFORE the entering move, here it is cast after the Attacker designation has already been made, which is exactly what Draven's trigger needs.
• TWO POINTS AND A CARD PER ATTACK. 466.3.a: 'A Player has won a combat if they received either the attacker or defender designation and are the only Player that has units remaining at this battlefield during this step' — Draven's first win of the turn scores 1 (a 194.1.c Gain under R2 = A, outside 470's cap). Then 466.5: 'the player with Units remaining here Establishes Control if they didn't already control this Battlefield', and 466.5.d: 'Establishing Control results in a Conquer if that player has not yet scored this Battlefield' — a second point, this one a 469.1 Score. The legend draws 1 on top, with no once-per-turn clause of its own.
• IT NEEDS A GARRISON OF EXACTLY ONE, AND THAT IS THE HONEST LIMIT. Rebuke returns ONE unit. Against two defenders the damage step happens after all: 465.2.c has each side assign its summed Might and 465.2.c.3 forces lethal onto one body first, so a 6 Might Draven against a garrison summing 6 or more dies and hands over a point. Two Rebukes in one turn clears two defenders for 4 Energy + FOUR Chaos Power, which is most of a turn's Power against the 12-rune ceiling (161.2.a). VEN-106 Wind and Ghosts (Chaos, E3 P1, [Action], 'Choose a unit at a battlefield. If it has 3 Might or less, banish it. Otherwise, return it to its owner's hand') is the same effect at 1 Power instead of 2 and banishes the small ones so they cannot be replayed — the better card whenever the Power is tighter than the Energy, and now the payoff card of wind-and-ghosts-nasus-bloodless-conquer, which pairs it with a CONQUER payoff instead of this entry's win-a-combat one. Deliberately not in uses: it is an alternative, not an addition.
• IT STILL NEEDS THEM TO GARRISON SOMETHING, just not to attack you. 461 stages a combat only where units of two players meet, and 807.1.d with 383.4.e make an empty battlefield no attack at all — so against a board with nothing on it there is no combat to win, and you simply Conquer the open battlefield for the ordinary point (316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1) with Draven's ability idle. The dependency is softened, not removed, and this entry says so rather than claiming otherwise.
• ONE POINT PER COPY OF DRAVEN PER TURN, AND THIS NOTABLE SAID ONE POINT FULL STOP (corrected 2026-09-12, #200). 383.3.e.1 - *"Such a Triggered Ability will only be performed the specified number of times each turn"* - caps *"the first time I win a combat each turn"* on EACH COPY individually, not on the card: 466.3.c says *"Units at this battlefield inherit the same combat result as their controllers"*, so three Dravens present at one won combat are three separate Triggered Abilities and three points. That correction was applied to `draven-glorious-executioner-point` on 2026-09-09 and this entry contradicted it for three days - the diagnosed-but-unapplied shape CLAUDE.md warns about, found by the synthesis lane while building a different Draven line. The Conquer half is capped separately by 470 at one Score per battlefield per turn and 485.4 puts two battlefields on a Duel table, so **the ceiling at three copies is FIVE points a turn** - three Dravens plus a Conquer at each battlefield - not the 3 this note used to state.
• [Deflect] IS NOT WHAT KEEPS HIM ALIVE HERE. 809.1.c and 809.1.d charge an opponent one rainbow only to CHOOSE him with a spell or ability; combat damage chooses nothing. What keeps him alive is 465.1 never opening the damage step — a different mechanism from the heal/exhaust/recall shields of 808.1.d.1, and one that leaves no Deathknell question to answer because nothing dies.

Steps

1. Draven, Audacious on the board and ready, with Rebuke in hand and 2 Energy + 2 Chaos Power available.
2. Standard-move Draven to an enemy battlefield garrisoned by a single unit, paying his exhaust (144.2, 144.4). The Contested status stages a Combat and he takes the Attacker designation (464.2.c.1, 464.2.c.3).
3. The Combat opens into its Showdown. 464.2.f.1 leaves the State Open and 464.2.g lets players play on the Chain.
4. Cast Rebuke ([Action], legal in a Showdown): return the lone defender to its owner's hand.
5. 465.1 asks whether both Attacking AND Defending units remain. They do not, so the damage step never becomes Outstanding and Draven takes nothing.
6. 466.3.a: you are the only player with units remaining, so you WON the combat. Draven's first win of the turn scores 1 point and the legend draws 1.
7. 466.5 and 466.5.d: you establish Control and that is a Conquer — a second point.

Per iteration

+2 points (one ability Gain, one Conquer Score) and +1 card per attack, for 2 Energy + 2 Chaos Power

How it ends

engine — 2 points and a card per attack, three times a game on three copies of Rebuke; Draven never takes combat damage, so his own 'they score 1 point' drawback never fires

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record
• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #118 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-2v2-showdown-action-lens.md) — the 18-card '[Action] spell that removes a unit at a battlefield' family, recorded there as a synergy shape with 464.2.f.1 / 464.2.g / 465.1 / 466.3.a / 466.5.d 2026-09-06 record
• Issue #155 — Engine × payoff: the master payoff inventory naming SFD-148 Draven, Audacious as one of the twelve direct point converters 2026-09-06

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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