Combo · ENGINE
Ivern, Nurturer digs three on every Hold — the only free repeatable draw that cannot Burn Out
Pieces
- Ivern, Nurturer ×3
UNL-051 · engine · calm
When you play me or when I hold, look at the top 3 cards of your Main Deck. You may reveal a unit from among them and draw it. Recycle the rest. Then if you revealed a Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro, do this: [Buff] a friendly unit. (Give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't have one.)
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains only need Calm — Ivern, Nurturer is mono-Calm.
- He has to be standing at the battlefield when you Hold it: 383.4.d.2.a puts a Hold ability on the Chain only for a unit 'present at a Battlefield when a player maintains control of it and Gains 1 Victory Point during their Beginning Phase from Holding'.
Prerequisites
- 431.1.c IS THE WHOLE POINT AND IT IS PRINTED IN THE NEGATIVE. 'If an instruction directs a player to look at or reveal cards in excess to the number of cards in a player's Main Deck, that player looks at or Reveals as many as possible, BUT DOES NOT BURN OUT.' 431.1.c.1 repeats it for the follow-up actions and adds the reminder that 'Cards are considered in the zone of origin while being looked at or revealed, in this case the Main Deck' — so the draw can never reach past what you already saw. With a Main Deck of 0 this looks at nothing and costs nothing. Every other repeatable draw in the pool is 431.1.a waiting to happen.
- IT IS CARD ADVANTAGE, WHICH ITS OWN HUNT DENIED. Issue #59 filed it as 'consistency, not card advantage'. 'You may reveal a unit from among them and draw it' moves a card from the Main Deck to your hand: hand +1, deck -1, on top of the Draw Phase (315.4.b). What is conditional is the hit rate — a Hold that turns up no unit in the top 3 gives nothing.
- ARITHMETIC WITH THE QUANTITY DECLARED. +1 card per Hold, 0 Energy, 0 Power, every turn, unbounded in turns. The body is E5 + 1 Power once. Three Ivern on three held battlefields is three cards a turn, and 315.2.b.2 is where the Holds happen.
- THE TWO REJECTS GO TO THE BOTTOM AND ARE RANDOMISED ONLY AGAINST EACH OTHER. 416.1 puts recycled cards on the bottom of the deck, 416.1.a sends Main Deck cards to the Main Deck, and 416.5 randomises only cards recycled 'simultaneously' — these two, not the rest of the deck.
- IT IS THE ONLY ONE OF ITS FAMILY ON A REPEATING EVENT. UNL-064 Fate Weaver and SFD-188 Void Rush are one-shots; UNL-032 Double Trouble is capped by 820.1.c.3 ('Each Repeat Cost can be paid only a single time') at two executions; UNL-179 Rift Herald, SFD-041 Apprentice Smith and VEN-033 Pakaa Protector all hang off a move. Ivern hangs off a Hold, which is the only free repeating event in the game.
- NOT THE CATALOGUED IVERN. ivern-sentinel-hold and ivern-arena-sentinel-hold both use UNL-177 Ivern, Friend to All. UNL-051 appeared in no entry before this.
- The [Buff] rider needs a Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro among the three; Ivern's own tags are Ivern and Ionia, so he never feeds himself. It is a Calm-tribal bonus, not part of the claim.
- 424.1.a.2 is the MECHANISM under the 431.1.c protection this entry already cites, and the entry carries the consequence without it: "Cards remain in the zone they are being Revealed from." Riot's own example is that a card Revealed from the top of the Main Deck "is still the top card of that player's Main Deck." So revealing can never Burn Out because NOTHING LEAVES THE DECK, which 424.1.a states as the general fact: "Revealed is a temporary state and is not a zone." Same shape this file records for 355.7 against 355.10.d and 811.6 against the tail of 811.1.b.
Steps
- Play Ivern, Nurturer (5 Energy + 1 Power). His play trigger already digs three.
- Get him to a battlefield you control and keep him there through your opponent's turn.
- Your Beginning Phase, Scoring Step (315.2.b.2): you Hold, and 383.4.d.2.a puts his Hold ability on the Chain.
- Look at the top 3. Reveal a unit from among them and draw it; recycle the other two to the bottom (416.1, 416.5).
- If the reveal was a Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro, [Buff] a friendly unit.
- Repeat every turn he survives. With an empty Main Deck it does nothing and costs nothing — 431.1.c, no Burn Out.
Per iteration
+1 card per Hold, for 0 Energy and 0 Power, conditional only on a unit being among the top 3 — and it can never Burn Out
How it ends
engine only — one card per Hold per Ivern, for as long as he stands there; the ceiling is how many battlefields you hold, not the deck
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Lente del draw — issue #59 (GitHub) 2026-09-06
- 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 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 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.
HAND-WALKED 2026-09-06 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-draw-lens-candidates.md), issue #59 candidate 5. UNL-051 appeared in no entry before this. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 431.1.c, 431.1.c.1, 431.1.a, 416.1, 416.1.a, 416.5, 315.2.b.2, 315.4.b, 383.4.d.2.a and 820.1.c.3 opened in the Core Rules. Ban check: UNL-051 carries no [BANNED marker. THE WALK'S CORRECTION to the hunt: #59 called this 'consistency, not card advantage' and it is card advantage — the revealed unit is DRAWN, so the hand grows by one on top of the Draw Phase. What the entry does not claim is unconditionality. Trap check: no attack designation; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; no token; no Gold; no recall; no battlefield of its own; the Hold requires the body present (383.4.d.2.a), which is the same condition the [Temporary] trap turns on. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16