Combo · ENGINE
Jae Medarda × Ki Barrier — the spell that saves him replaces itself
Pieces
- Jae Medarda ×1
SFD-142 · payoff · chaos
When you choose me with a spell, draw 1.
- Ki Barrier ×1
VEN-126 · engine · order
[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Choose a unit. Prevent the next 7 damage that would be dealt to it this turn. (Opponents can assign it extra combat damage to kill it.)
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains must cover Chaos (Jae) and Order (Ki Barrier) — Heart of the Tempest is the only Order/Chaos legend NAME in the pool, printed under two base codes, VEN-155 and VEN-197. Counted from data/cards.json by base code; this is the tightest identity available and it fixes the shell before the first card is chosen.
Prerequisites
- PREVENT IS NOT A SHIELD AND NOT A HEAL, AND THE DIFFERENCE MATTERS. 437.4: 'Damage dealt to a Unit that has that all of that damage Prevented is not considered to have been dealt to it at all.' No damage is marked, so no kill event is ever generated — which means nothing that keys on a friendly unit dying fires, and the heal/exhaust/recall family's 808.1.d.1 problem never arises. It is a different mechanism from the would-die replacements (#119).
- 437.5 is the caveat the card prints in its own reminder: 'Damage can still be assigned to Units in combat that are affected by Prevent', so an attacker with enough Might simply assigns 8 or more and kills Jae anyway. Seven buys a turn against a normal board, not immunity.
- AND THE CARD REPLACES ITSELF. Jae's 'When you choose me with a spell, draw 1' fires on the choose, before the prevention matters, so the protection is card-neutral: 2 Energy + 1 Order Power for a draw and a 7-damage shield on a 5-Might body.
- READ 'WITH A SPELL' STRICTLY. His trigger is narrower than Blade Dancer's or Spirit Wheel's — those fire on any choose, including a buff (702.2.a). Jae needs a SPELL, so a gear's activated ability that chooses him, or a unit's play trigger, does nothing at all. Of the nineteen candidate partners the matrix found, the units and the gear among them are false positives on this clause; the entry names a spell for that reason.
- It is a [Reaction] (813.1.c.1), so it can be held through the opponent's turn and spent in the middle of their attack, drawing the card then rather than on your own turn — the draw and the save happen in the same window.
- Three copies each (103.2.b), and 5 Energy + 2 Chaos Power for Jae himself, which is the real cost: he is a 5-Might body with no keywords and the pair does nothing until he is on the board.
- 437.2 IS WHY 437.4 WORKS, AND IT SITS ONE PARAGRAPH AWAY IN THE SAME BLOCK: "When damage is Prevented, it is replaced with an event where it deals that much damage reduced by the Prevent Value tracked on the Unit specifically." Prevent does not undo damage after the fact - it REPLACES the damage event with a smaller one, and at zero there is nothing left to mark, which is the mechanism behind 437.4's "not considered to have been dealt to it at all." 369.2 puts it beyond argument by naming it: "Some Game Actions are themselves Replacement Effects. Example: Burning Out is a replacement effect. Example: Preventing Damage is a replacement effect." So a Prevent and a heal/exhaust/recall would-die shield are BOTH Replacement Effects and differ in WHICH EVENT they replace - the damage event against the death event - which is the precise reason this line generates no kill event.
Steps
- Play Jae Medarda (5 Energy + 2 Chaos Power) to a battlefield, and hold Ki Barrier with 2 Energy and 1 Order Power available.
- When something threatens him — a removal spell, or the combat damage step of an attack — cast Ki Barrier as a [Reaction] (813.1.c.1), choosing Jae.
- The choose resolves his trigger first: draw 1. The spell has replaced itself.
- Ki Barrier's effect prevents the next 7 damage to him this turn. 437.4 means that damage is 'not considered to have been dealt to it at all' — nothing is marked and no kill happens.
- 437.5 still lets an attacker assign more than 7 in combat, so count their summed Might (465.2.c) before relying on it.
Per iteration
+1 card and a 7-damage prevention per Ki Barrier, three times a game
How it ends
engine — protection that costs no cards; it scores nothing by itself
Sources
Walked here, in this project
- Two-card pair walk, cause/trigger matrix rows 6-15 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-proven-rule-instances.md §24) 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.
Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.2.b, 437.4, 437.5, 465.2.c, 702.2.a and 813.1.c.1 opened in the Core Rules file. Both cards checked against data/legality.json by base code: legal in both formats. No unruled reading. The fourth notable records a false-positive class the matrix cannot see: Jae's clause says 'with a SPELL', so the units and gear among his nineteen candidates never trigger him, unlike the other two choose-friendly triggers in this slice.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16