Combo · CHAIN · 8 points

The same three Iverns pay at both Conquers — the Bard trick in Chaos, for the identity that had nothing

7 cards · order + chaos · verified

Pieces

• Ivern, Friend to All ×3 UNL-177 · payoff · order

  As you play me, choose Bird, Cat, Dog, or Poro. I gain that tag. When I conquer or hold, score 1 point if your units have all of the following tags among them — Bird, Cat, Dog, and Poro.

• Daring Poro ×1 OGN-210 · enabler · order

  [Assault] (+1 Might while I'm an attacker.)

• Ride the Wind ×3 OGN-173 · enabler · chaos

  [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Move a friendly unit and ready it.

Payoff

Deck

• Legend domains cover Chaos and Order. Measured over data/cards.json on 2026-09-12, the pool prints exactly ONE Chaos/Order legend NAME: Heart of the Tempest (VEN-155 / VEN-197). Chaos/Order is a forced shell, and this entry is written for it.
• None of UNL-177, OGN-210 or OGN-173 is a Signature card (checked on the signature field in data/cards.json, all three false), so 103.2.d.2 binds nothing here and the Ivern champion tag forces no legend. 103.2.b allows the three copies of each: 'Your Main Deck can include up to 3 copies of the same named card.'

Run play

• Chaos/Order, the identity with one answer: is it actually viable?

Prerequisites

• WHY THIS ENTRY EXISTS: CHAOS/ORDER HAD NO LEGAL FINISHER THAT SURVIVES A STALLED BOARD, AND THE ONE IT APPEARED TO HAVE IS BANNED. Measured on 2026-09-12 over the whole catalogue, chaos/order could run 8 finishers, of which exactly one classified outside the HOLD bucket - `pursuer-herald-recruits`, which uses OGN-177 Stealthy Pursuer. data/legality.json carries OGN-177 as status 'banned' in BOTH constructed and 2v2 (since 2026-07-24). Swept across all 76 finishers, it is the ONLY one in the catalogue with a banned card in uses[]. So the identity's true count of legal stall-surviving finishers was ZERO. A Hold pays only on battlefields you already control (315.2.b.2, 'The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control'), so a Hold-gated line is switched off by exactly the stall that makes a finisher necessary; a Conquer is the opposite, because a battlefield the opponent took is a Conquer target.
• THE MECHANISM IS CATALOGUED AND THE IDENTITY IS THE POINT. `ivern-bard-four-tag-double-conquer` does the same double-dip with SFD-079 Bard, Mercurial, and Bard is MIND - so that entry is mind/order and a Chaos/Order deck cannot run it (103.1.b). What OGN-173 Ride the Wind supplies is the same relocation in Chaos, at E26 + 3 Chaos Power against Bard's E24 + 1 Mind Power. Neither dominates: Bard moves ANY NUMBER of units for one card but costs your legend's exhaust as an additional cost and is a Main-Phase unit play, while Ride the Wind costs three cards and is an [Action] - 806.1.c.1, 'This can be played during showdowns on any player's turn' - so it can relocate an Ivern INSIDE an opened Showdown, which Bard cannot. Read the two entries together.
• THE FOURTH-TAG CLAUSE IS PART OF THE EFFECT, NOT THE TRIGGER CONDITION, AND FIVE EXISTING IVERN ENTRIES SAY THE OPPOSITE. 383.2.a.1 verbatim: 'Any additional conditional statement immediately after the Condition must be true in order for the Condition to be fulfilled. Such a conditional statement is part of the Trigger Condition and not the Effect.' Its test is POSITIONAL and it carries two worked examples pointing opposite ways. Sona, Harmonious - 'At the end of your turn, if I'm at a battlefield, ready up to 4 friendly runes' - has the conditional IMMEDIATELY after the trigger, and Riot's example ends 'If she is removed in reaction to the triggered ability, it will still resolve.' Loose Cannon - 'At the start of your Beginning Phase, draw 1 if you have one or fewer cards in your hand' - is the other shape, and Riot says of it: 'The "if you have one or fewer cards in your hand" conditional statement is not immediately after the trigger condition, so it is part of the effect and not the condition.' Ivern reads 'When I conquer or hold, score 1 point if your units have all of the following tags among them' - the effect verb comes first and the conditional after it, so he is the LOOSE CANNON shape and the tags are checked ON RESOLUTION. The practical consequence, and it runs against this line's own interest: removing the fourth-tag body in response to the Ivern triggers BLANKS every one of them at that scoring event. Compare VEN-138 Shen, 'When I hold, if there is exactly one other unit you control here, you score 1 point', which is genuinely the Sona shape - the catalogue is right about Shen and wrong about Ivern.
• AND THE POOL CANNOT PUNISH THAT, WHICH IS WHY THE LINE STANDS. Swept over data/cards.json for every non-banned card carrying [Reaction] in its OWN text whose text kills or deals damage - with parenthesised reminder text and quoted token text stripped first, because UNL-073 Deadly Flourish's [Reaction] belongs to the Gold token it makes and a naive grep reports it as an answer - the population is SEVEN: OGN-033 Shakedown, OGN-127 Cannon Barrage, OGN-133 Flurry of Blades, SFD-163 Deathgrip, UNL-142 Heedless Resurrection, UNL-173 Sacrifice and the Gold token itself. Of those, four kill only a FRIENDLY unit or are costs, OGN-127 reads 'in combat' and OGN-133 reads 'at battlefields' - neither reaches a base, and 1 damage cannot kill a Might-2 Poro anyway (143.2.a kills on marked damage at or above Might). The ONLY one that reaches a base is OGN-033 Shakedown, 'Choose an enemy unit. Deal 6 to it unless its controller has you draw 2' - and its own text lets the Poro's controller decline by giving the caster two cards, which on a turn that scores eight is trivially worth paying. So there is no unconditional [Reaction] answer to the fourth tag, and the opponent must kill that body on THEIR OWN turn, a full turn ahead and fully telegraphed: OGN-229 Vengeance (Order, E4 + 2 Power, 'Kill a unit.'), VEN-154 Public Execution (Body/Order, E2 + 1 Power) or SFD-158 Sandshifter (Order, E5 + 2 Power, Might 3 or less) all reach a base. THE ANSWER TO THE ANSWER IS TWO ENERGY: run a second Daring Poro, which 103.2.b permits to three.
• THE COMBAT IS THE HONEST COST, AND THE COMBAT CLEANUP IS WHAT MAKES THE SECOND CONQUER AFFORDABLE. On a genuinely stalled board the opponent controls both battlefields, and 323.6 strips Control from a player with no units occupying a battlefield - so a controlled battlefield is a garrisoned one and 323.9 stages a Combat ('Mark a Combat as Staged at each Battlefield that Contested was applied to that have Units present controlled by opposing players'). Three Ivern at Might 6 attack as a summed 18 under 465.2.c, and 466.3.a gives the win to the player who is 'the only Player that has units remaining at this battlefield during this step', after which 466.5 establishes Control and 466.5.d makes it a Conquer. Between the two battlefields, 466.1.a.1 - 'Insert "3c. Heal all Units."' - wipes the marked damage, so the survivors arrive at the second battlefield at full Might with nothing carried over. The real price is a DEAD Ivern: the defender assigns damage equal to their own summed Might, and each Ivern lost before the second Conquer costs exactly one point, taking the line to seven. Heart of the Tempest prints '[Action][>] Disempower me, :rb_exhaust:: Give a unit [Assault 2] this turn. (+2 :rb_might: while it's an attacker.)', which is +2 Might on one attacker at Showdown speed and is the identity's free mitigation. Do NOT reach for SFD-173 Soraka, Wanderer to save an Ivern: her replacement RECALLS it, and 455 makes a Recall a relocation to the BASE, which takes that Ivern off the battlefield and costs you its Conquer trigger outright. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): a dead Ivern costs more than one point, and the line does not stop at seven. 383.4.c.2.a: 'The Conquer Abilities of Units are put on the Chain as Pending Items after the Unit(s) these effects correspond to are present at a Battlefield when a player gains control of it and gains 1 Victory Point from Conquering.' 365.1: 'Passive Abilities of Permanents are typically only active while on the Board.' The defender picks the deaths: 465.2.c: 'Starting with the Attacker, each player assigns an amount of damage equal to their summed Might among the other's Units.' With 465.2.c.3: 'Units must have lethal damage assigned to them in full before damage is assigned to a different Unit. Example: If a player has 5 damage to distribute among four 3 Might units, they may not choose to assign 2 damage to one of the units and 1 damage to each of the remaining 3. They must assign at least 3 damage to one, and the remaining 2 to another.' And a dead Ivern takes its tag with it: Ivern reads 'When I conquer or hold, score 1 point if your units have all of the following tags among them — Bird, Cat, Dog, and Poro.' Each of the three Ivern carries one of the four tags, the Daring Poro at the base the fourth, and the tag check is made as each instance resolves (the fourth-tag notable), so with one Ivern dead no survivor's instance finds all four tags and each Conquer is the Score alone. The three Ivern attack at 6 each, 18 in all. Against a garrison of summed Might G with no damage marked and nothing else changing Might in the combat, the defender choosing the deaths that cost most, each Conquer scores: an empty battlefield, since nobody fights (316.8.b.1: 'Showdowns that occur as a result of a player moving to an empty Battlefield are a stand-alone Phase and do not create a Combat.'), 4; G 1 to 5, 4; 6 to 17, 1 (an Ivern dies, every Gain blanks, the Score stands); 18 or more, 0 (both sides die, or the garrison survives, and 466.5: 'If no Showdown or Combat is staged at this location, the player with Units remaining here Establishes Control if they didn’t already control this Battlefield.'). A body that died at the first battlefield is not at the second, so an Ivern lost at the first battlefield leaves 1 + 1 = 2 for the turn at most, and one lost only at the second leaves 4 + 1 = 5. Re-derived on 2026-10-26 from the rules above. THE DECLARED QUANTITIES STILL REACH 8, so the class stays CHAIN: eight when both battlefields are open or garrisoned with 1 to 5 summed Might.
• IT ALSO WORKS ON AN EMPTY BOARD, BY A DIFFERENT PARAGRAPH, WHICH IS WHY IT IS NOT A PURE CREDENTIAL LINE. Where a battlefield is open rather than garrisoned, no combat is needed at all: 450, 'The Destination becomes Contested if it is an Uncontested Battlefield not controlled by the controller of the Unit or Units that moved', then 344.2, 'If Control of a Battlefield is Contested, there aren't units controlled by different players there, and the turn is in a Neutral Open State, a Showdown is opened during the next Cleanup', then 348.2.a establishes Control and 348.2.a.1 says 'This results in a Conquer if that player has not yet scored that Battlefield this turn.' The arithmetic is identical and no Ivern is ever at risk. Stated because the stalled board is the case the entry is FOR, not the only case it survives.
• THE EIGHTH POINT NEVER HAS TO PASS THE FINAL POINT CLAUSE. 383.4.c.2.a puts the conquer abilities on the Chain 'after the Unit(s) these effects correspond to are present at a Battlefield when a player gains control of it and gains 1 Victory Point from Conquering', so at each battlefield the Conquer's own Score is banked FIRST and the three Ivern Gains follow - which makes the eighth point an ability Gain, and 471.1.a.1 reads 'Notably, points Gained from sources that are not Conquer are not beholden to these restrictions.' The line would pass 471.1.b.1 anyway, since both battlefields are Scored this turn, but it never has to, and an entry that depended on that clause would be one clause more fragile. Separately, 470 - 'A player may only Score, from either method, once per Battlefield per turn' - is spent on the two Conquer Scores and cannot touch the six Gains, because 469 defines Scoring as Conquer or Hold only and Ivern's printed 'score 1 point' is a 194.1.c point Gain by ability (R2 = A).
• MOVING THE IVERNS OFF THE FIRST BATTLEFIELD COSTS NOTHING. 323.6 strips your Control of a battlefield once your last body leaves it, but the Conquer point was banked at the Score and losing Control afterwards does not unbank it; and 470 would refuse a second Score there this turn in any case. The three Iverns walk to the first battlefield as ONE game action - 144.3, 'Players may perform multiple Units' standard move simultaneously. This is treated as one game action performed on multiple Units', with 144.3.a requiring the shared destination - each paying its own exhaust under 144.2. They are exhausted from that moment on, which is exactly why the second leg has to be an effect move and cannot be a second Standard Move.
• THE READY THAT RIDE THE WIND THROWS IN IS WORTH ALMOST NOTHING HERE, AND SAYING SO IS THE POINT. It readies each Ivern as it lands, but 485.4 is 'Battlefield Count: 2' and 470 has already spent both Scores for the turn, so there is nowhere profitable left to walk; combat does not read exhaustion either. Its value is optional and situational - a readied Ivern can make a Standard Move back to base to dodge a sweeper - and it is NOT a reason to prefer this line over the Bard one. The reason is 103.1.b.
• THE TAG BODY IS PARKED AT BASE TO DODGE `OGN-133`, AND THREE CARDS REACH IT THERE (added 2026-09-13, #200). `UNL-177 Ivern, Friend to All` reads *"When I conquer or hold, score 1 point if your units have all of the following tags among them — Bird, Cat, Dog, and Poro"*, and that clause carries NO location clause — which is exactly why this entry declares `OGN-210 Daring Poro` (Might 2) in zone BASE, where `OGN-133 Flurry of Blades` (*"Deal 1 to all units at battlefields"*) cannot reach it. THAT REASONING IS RIGHT AND IT IS INCOMPLETE. Measured over the twenty cards in the pool that remove more than one body in one action (the table is in `docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-13-might-1-survivability.md`), FOUR carry no location clause of their own and take the base too — corrected from THREE on 2026-09-13, and the fourth is the CHEAPEST of them: `UNL-132 Angler Beast` (Chaos, E5 P1, *"return all units with 2 :rb_might: or less to their owners' hands"*), `VEN-133 Glowstone` (Order, **E2**), `UNL-180 The Ruination` (Order, E9 P3, *"Kill all units."*) and `SFD-147 Downwell` (Chaos, E8 P2, *"Return all units and gear to their owners' hands."*). Glowstone's route is printed on the card: its own activated ability reads *"Disempower this, :rb_exhaust:: Choose a player. They gain control of this and recall it."*, and its delayed clause reads *"At the end of your turn, kill this and deal 5 to all units you control."* So an opponent plays it, Empowers it, then disempowers and exhausts to HAND IT TO YOU, and 053.2 makes a gear say "this" and *"your turn"* its CONTROLLER's turn, so the end of YOUR turn deals 5 to all units YOU control, base included. Against a Hold line the timing works: the body dies at the end of turn N and the Hold at the start of N+1 finds three tags. Two qualifications, because they decide what to do about it: it is FIVE damage, so no +Might in the pool reaches it and it belongs in this census rather than in any repair list; and it costs the opponent a cross-turn setup that sits visibly on their board first. The tag body sits inside Angler Beast's band and THERE IS NOWHERE FURTHER BACK TO PARK IT, because the base is already the safe zone. And the loss is total rather than partial — though NOT for the reason the first version of this note gave, which had 383.2.a.1 exactly backwards (corrected 2026-09-13). THAT RULE’S TEST IS POSITIONAL and Riot works both sides of it: `Sona, Harmonious` puts the *"if"* IMMEDIATELY after the Condition, so it is part of the Trigger Condition and *"if she is removed in reaction to the triggered ability, it will still resolve"*; `Loose Cannon` puts it after the effect verb and Riot says outright it *"is not immediately after the trigger condition, so it is part of the effect and not the condition"*. `UNL-177` reads *"When I conquer or hold, score 1 point if your units have all of the following tags among them"* — THE EFFECT VERB FIRST, which is the Loose Cannon shape — so the tag check is part of the EFFECT and is made ON RESOLUTION. The loss is total because the card says *"all of the following tags"*, and the TIMING runs the opposite way from a Trigger Condition: killing the tag body IN RESPONSE to the trigger BLANKS the whole Score, where a Trigger Condition would have survived it. **That makes parking the body at base MORE load-bearing, not less** — and it is why the three no-location threats above are the ones that matter. PARKING AT BASE IS A DEFENCE AGAINST FLURRY AND NOT A DEFENCE AGAINST THE LENS — eighteen entries in the catalogue park a Might-2-or-less body at base and, before this note, none named any of the three. AND THE REPAIR FOR A BASE-PARKED BODY MUST BE BOARD-WIDE, WHICH NO NOTABLE IN THIS FAMILY SAID UNTIL 2026-09-13. The six static +Might grants split on location exactly as the threats do. `OGS-013 Garen, Commander` and `OGN-243 Darius, Executioner` read *"Other friendly units have +1 :rb_might: here"* — the last word is HERE —, so they are complete against the sixteen location-scoped sweeps AND ONLY AT THAT BATTLEFIELD, and they do NOTHING for a body at base. `VEN-018 Rage Amplifier`, `UNL-077 Soul Shepherd`, `UNL-147 Baron Nashor` and `UNL-191 Wuju Master` carry no location clause, so they reach the body wherever it stands, up to their own Might threshold. A SCOPE IS SAFE EXACTLY WHEN IT MATCHES THE THREAT: `OGN-133` reads *"all units at battlefields"* and a Plaza counts its seven *here*, which is why a here-scoped +1 answers it completely — and this body is at the BASE, which is the one place that grant cannot follow it. The reason no earlier notable said so is structural rather than careless: the Ivern notables were written about the base-reaching threats and the Plaza notables about the here-scoped one, and nobody put the two halves in the same sentence.

Steps

1. Over earlier turns, deploy three Ivern, Friend to All to your base (E6 each, no Power), each choosing a DIFFERENT tag of Bird, Cat, Dog or Poro, plus one Daring Poro (E2) for the fourth. 143.4 has them enter exhausted, so they cannot move the turn they arrive; 315.1.b readies them at your next Awakening. The Poro never has to leave the base.
2. On the finishing turn, in your Main Phase, Standard-Move all three Iverns from your base to the first battlefield in ONE action (144.3 with 144.3.a's shared destination), each paying its exhaust under 144.2. 450 applies Contested status to the destination.
3. At the Cleanup the battlefield resolves into a Conquer: with an enemy garrison present, 323.9 stages a Combat, you win it under 466.3.a and 466.5 establishes Control, which 466.5.d makes a Conquer; with the battlefield open instead, 344.2 opens a Showdown and 348.2.a / 348.2.a.1 do the same bloodlessly.
4. The Conquer gains its own point (469.1, 471.1). Then 383.4.c.2.a places the conquer ability of every Ivern PRESENT there, and each resolves - the four tags are among your units, so each scores. FOUR POINTS. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): four only if all three Ivern survived the combat: an open battlefield, or a garrison of 1 to 5 summed Might. From 6 the defender kills an Ivern and its tag, and the Conquer is the Score alone (the combat notable).
5. Still in the same Main Phase, play Ride the Wind three times (E2 + 1 Chaos Power each), moving each Ivern from the first battlefield to the second and readying it. The move is by effect (449, 420.2.b), so 144.4 does not restrict the destination and 420.3.a's exhaust is not charged - which is the only reason three already-exhausted Iverns can make this trip at all.
6. At the Cleanup the second battlefield Conquers by whichever of the two routes applies, exactly as the first did. 470 permits it because this is a DIFFERENT battlefield.
7. One more Score plus three more Ivern Gains. FOUR AGAIN - eight points, two scoring events, a single turn with no opponent turn in between, for E26 and 3 Chaos Power counted from scratch, of which only E6 + 3 Power is paid on the finishing turn. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): eight only if no Ivern died at either battlefield. An Ivern lost at the first leaves 2 for the turn at most, and one lost only at the second leaves 5 (the combat notable).

How it ends

eight points in one turn across two Conquers - two Scores and six ability Gains that 470 does not cap - on a board the opponent controls, which is the board its identity previously had no legal finisher for; E26 + 3 Chaos Power counted whole, E6 + 3 Power on the finishing turn itself

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-12, issue #200 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-12-synthesised-lines.md section 20) 2026-09-12 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue