Combo · ENGINE

The Blade's cost is a friendly corpse, and the pool prints exactly two bodies that pay you for being it

7 cards · order + body · verified

Pieces

• Blade of the Ruined King ×1 SFD-178 · engine · order

  [Equip] — 1 Order Power, Kill a friendly unit (Pay the cost: Attach this to a unit you control.)

• Noxian Emissary ×3 VEN-128 · payoff · order

  [Empower] 1 Energy + 1 Order Power (1 Energy + 1 Order Power: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>][>>][Deathknell][>] Play two 1 Might Recruit unit tokens to your base. (When I die while Empowered, get the effect.)

• Baccai Witherclaw ×3 VEN-078 · payoff · body

  [Empower] 1 Energy + 2 Power of any domain (1 Energy + 2 Power of any domain: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>] I have +2 Might. [Empowered][>][>>][Deathknell][>] Channel 2 runes exhausted. (When I die while Empowered, get the effect.)

Payoff

Deck

• Body + Order: Blade of the Ruined King and Noxian Emissary are mono-Order and Baccai Witherclaw is mono-Body (103.1.b.3), so 103.1.b.2 requires a legend whose two domains cover both, and the pool prints exactly five such names - OGN-269/OGN-310 The Boss, OGS-023 Might of Demacia - Starter, SFD-205/SFD-251 Grand Duelist, UNL-203/UNL-237 Keeper of the Hammer, VEN-153/VEN-196 Matriarch of War.
• Drop VEN-078 Baccai Witherclaw and the line is mono-Order, legal under any legend whose pair includes Order (103.1.b.3) - seventeen names in the census, listed in full on the sibling entries solari-sunhawk-eye-of-herald-deflect-carrier and trifarian-gloryseeker-vanguard-helm-legion-buff. They are deliberately not spelled out as base codes here, because with the Witherclaw in uses[] the identity of THIS entry is Body/Order and a reader must not take a code off this line and build to it.
• One Order Power per activation, plus a body to spend. The Blade itself is E3 + 1 Power, once.

Prerequisites

• THE SWEEP, WITH ITS MEMBERS NAMED. `grep -in "Deathknell" data/corpus_flat.txt | grep -i "Empowered"` over the whole pool returns exactly TWO rows: VEN-078 Baccai Witherclaw and VEN-128 Noxian Emissary. Those are the only two bodies whose death payoff has to be BOUGHT in advance, and they are the only two the Blade's cost can be aimed at for profit rather than for loss. One is Body and one is Order, so a Body/Order legend runs both.
• WHY THE [EMPOWERED] STATE SURVIVES THE DEATH. 441.2 scopes Empowered to 'Game Objects on the board', which on a naive read would switch the Deathknell off at the moment the body leaves it. 808.1.d.3 is the paragraph that answers it: 'Before the card is moved to the Trash, note its location, its attributes, and any other details related to the effect of its triggered ability to process the trigger after it has been Finalized.' The Empowered state is one of those attributes, read before the move.
• 818.1.c.1 ORDERS THE CHAIN, AND IT IS CITED HERE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIS CATALOGUE. 'If paying costs or making choices for this ability causes triggered abilities to trigger, they will be placed on the chain above this ability in a Pending state.' So the Deathknell sits ABOVE the Equip and 340.1 resolves it first: the two Recruits are on the board before the sword finishes attaching. They still cannot be THIS attach's carrier, because 818.1.b.1 makes Equip's choice a Target picked when the ability is activated - they are fuel for the NEXT one.
• 185.2.d IS WHY THE TOKENS PAY THE NEXT TWO ATTACHES. 'Tokens have a type. They follow all rules for their type unless otherwise specified.' A 1 Might Recruit is a unit, so it satisfies 'Kill a friendly unit' and 203.3 ('If the game action associated with a Cost is impossible ... they cannot pay the Cost') never bites. This is the opposite side of the line from 416.1, which defines Recycling over CARDS only, and from 186.1, which keeps a dead token out of the trash. Net: one Empowered Emissary turns ONE sacrifice into THREE - itself and its two Recruits - for 1 Energy + 1 Order Power on top of its E2 body.
• THE WITHERCLAW REFUNDS ITS OWN EMPOWER, AND IT IS A REFILL RATHER THAN A RAMP. Its [Empower] is 1 Energy + 2 rainbow Power; its Deathknell channels 2 runes exhausted. 164.2.b gives a Basic Rune 'Recycle this: [Reaction] - [Add] [C]' with NO exhaust in the cost, so an exhausted rune still pays 1 Power of its domain at Reaction speed; 415.3.a readies it only in your own Awakening, so as ENERGY it is next turn's. But 161.2.a fixes the Rune Deck at 'Exactly 12 Rune cards' and 430.3 channels 'as many as possible', so once twelve runes are out the Deathknell is worth nothing - it returns what recycling put back, it does not add.
• 434.1.g IS THE ONE MISPLAY. 'Attaching a card to its current Top-Most Card will not have any effect', and 434.1.h says nothing additional happens - so every activation must name a DIFFERENT carrier, and 434.1.f detaches it from the previous one. 434.4.a keeps that relocation from being a Move, so no exhaust and no 144.4 destination check applies to the sword itself.
• 381 IS THE TIMING WALL. 'All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State.' The Blade carries neither [Action] (806.1.b) nor [Reaction] (813.1.c.1), so every attach is your own Main Phase: this is a sacrifice outlet you schedule, never a response.
• THE RECRUITS ARE BORN AT THE BASE, AND THAT IS THE BOTTLENECK. The Emissary's own text says 'to your base', so 355.2.a's default never comes up and the two bodies still have to walk (144.4, base to battlefield, paying 144.2's exhaust) - and 143.4 makes them enter exhausted, so the walk is next turn. Contrast solari-sunhawk-eye-of-herald-deflect-carrier, whose Recruit is born 'here' at the carrier's destination and needs no walk at all.
• THE FORK THIS ENTRY DELIBERATELY DOES NOT TAKE. OGN-236 Karthus, Eternal is mono-ORDER (not Fury), and 'Your [Deathknell] effects trigger an additional time' would make the Emissary four Recruits and the Witherclaw four runes. That family was six entries deep as of 2026-09-07 and is ten by the end of that day - blade-kogmaw-karthus-wipe, karthus-honest-broker-blade-gold, karthus-sacred-shears-blade-draw, karthus-machine-evangel-renata-plaza, karthus-glasc-mixologist-double-reanimate, ferrous-forerunner-karthus-mech-plaza - and every one of them is about what Karthus doubles. This entry is the other half: what makes the Blade's cost profitable with no multiplier at all, which is the pre-paid Empower. Add Karthus to this list and both halves are true at once.
• WHAT IT IS NOT. Nothing here scores. 469 defines Scoring as Conquer or Hold only, and none of these three cards touches either.
• THE PARAGRAPH THAT AUTHORISES THE NAMED DESTINATION, ADDED BESIDE 355.2.a RATHER THAN INSTEAD OF IT (#204, from #187 batch 18). 355.2.a is the DEFAULT for playing a card - 'By default, Valid locations include the controller's Base or a Battlefield the controller controls' - and it is what this entry already cites. It is not a permission for a token-creating effect to NARROW that, and the paragraph that is has been cited by nothing in 766 entries: 184.2, 'The effect may restrict the location to which the token may be played.' That is what makes a printed 'here' a legal instruction rather than a contradiction of the default. The system is three paragraphs - 184.2 narrows, 355.2.a defaults, 355.2.b widens - and this catalogue was citing two of the three. Both are true here and the pair is the finding.

Steps

1. Play Blade of the Ruined King (3 Energy + 1 Power) and Noxian Emissary (2 Energy).
2. Empower the Emissary for 1 Energy + 1 Order Power. 441.2 makes Empowered a permanent board state, so this is paid once and never again for that body.
3. When you want the sacrifice: activate the Blade's [Equip], paying 1 Order Power and killing the Empowered Emissary, and choose a different unit as the carrier (434.1.g).
4. 818.1.c.1 puts the Deathknell on the chain above the Equip; 340.1 resolves it first and two 1 Might Recruit tokens arrive at your base. 808.1.d.3 is what let the trigger read the Empowered state after the body left the board.
5. Activate the Blade twice more, paying 1 Order Power each time and killing a Recruit for the cost (185.2.d). One pre-paid Emissary has bought three activations.
6. With a Body/Order legend, do the same with Baccai Witherclaw: Empower it for 1 Energy + 2 rainbow Power, kill it to the Blade, and channel 2 runes exhausted - which 164.2.b turns straight back into 2 Power, refunding the Empower.

Per iteration

one Order Power and one body per attach; an Empowered Emissary converts one body into three, and an Empowered Witherclaw returns the Power its own Empower cost

How it ends

engine only - three attaches per Empowered Emissary, and a Power refund per Empowered Witherclaw that stops paying once twelve runes are out (161.2.a, 430.3); bounded by 103.2.b at three copies each and by 381, which confines every attach to your own Main Phase. 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
• Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt (built from Riot's gallery content API) 2026-09-07

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-07 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncatalogued-order.md, batch 5) 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue