Combo · ENGINE
Ornn's Hold recycles for free — Karma turns every Beginning Phase into a buff, with no loop
Pieces
- Karma, Channeler ×1
OGN-235 · payoff · order
[Vision] (When you play me, look at the top card of your Main Deck. You may recycle it.) When you recycle one or more cards to your Main Deck, buff a friendly unit. (If it doesn't have a buff, it gets a +1 Might buff. Runes aren't cards.)
- Ornn, Blacksmith ×1
SFD-058 · engine · calm
When you play me or when I hold, look at the top 4 cards of your Main Deck. You may reveal a gear from among them and draw it. Then recycle the rest.
Payoff
Deck
- A Calm/Order legend — Karma is Order and Ornn is Calm (103.1.b.1). Calm/Order is a printed legend pair.
Prerequisites
- THE RECYCLE IS FREE AND IT REPEATS, WHICH IS WHAT THE THREE EXISTING KARMA ENTRIES DO NOT HAVE. karma-lux-recycle-buff-army rides the Lux infinite, and gemcraft-karma-herald-buff-faucet buys its trigger with Gemcraft and the legend's Energy. Ornn's second clause is a HOLD trigger — 383.4.d.1 gives 'When I hold…' as the standard wording and 315.2.b.2 fires it in the Beginning Phase — so it costs nothing at all, every turn, for as long as he garrisons a battlefield you control. One Ornn Hold is one Karma buff, forever, with no loop underneath.
- 'RUNES AREN'T CARDS' IS THE TRAP AND IT IS PRINTED ON KARMA HERSELF. Her reminder text says it outright, and 161.2.b confirms the mechanism: a recycled rune is 'returned to the Rune Deck, not the Main Deck'. So the whole rune-recycling half of the pool — every 164.2.b Power activation, every 'recycle a rune' cost — is dead to her. Only a recycle that reaches the MAIN Deck counts, which is what Ornn's 'then recycle the rest' does.
- ONE BUFF PER TURN, BOUNDED BY NEW UNBUFFED BODIES, NOT BY TRIGGERS. 702.3: 'There can only be one Buff on a Unit at a time', and 702.3.a: a second buff on a buffed unit 'is not placed instead'. The #106 walk measured the general form — a repeatable buffer yields min(triggers, new unbuffed bodies) — and here the trigger rate is one a turn, so a second recycler adds nothing and the honest product is one +1 Might counter per turn placed on whatever arrived since the last one.
- ORNN ALSO PAYS FOR HIMSELF IN CARDS. 'Look at the top 4 … reveal a gear from among them and draw it' is a gear tutor every Beginning Phase, and looking never Burns Out (431.1.c). In a deck with gear worth drawing that is the real value and the buff is the rider; in a deck without, the recycle still fires Karma.
- HE HAS TO HOLD, SO HE HAS TO SURVIVE. 469.2 defines Hold as maintaining Control of a battlefield you did not yet Score this turn during your Beginning Phase, and 323.6 strips Control the moment your last body leaves it. Ornn at 5 Might is the whole engine standing exposed; Karma at 6 can sit at base, since her trigger names no location.
- NOTHING HERE SCORES, and the buff is not a Might race either — 703 gives exactly +1 Might per Buff and 702.3 caps it at one per unit. The value is a card a turn plus a body that is one Might harder to kill. Both existing Karma entries end the same way: the points come from whatever walks the bodies to a battlefield.
- 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 Karma, Channeler (6 Energy + 1 Order Power) — she may stay at your base, since her trigger names no location.
- Play Ornn, Blacksmith (5 Energy + 1 Calm Power) and walk him to a battlefield you control. His play trigger already fires the first recycle and the first Karma buff.
- Every Beginning Phase after that, 315.2.b.2 Holds the battlefield and Ornn's Hold trigger looks at the top four cards of your Main Deck.
- Reveal a gear from among them and draw it if there is one; then recycle the rest to the Main Deck.
- Karma sees one or more cards recycled to the Main Deck and buffs a friendly unit — one +1 Might counter a turn, placed on a body that does not already carry one (702.3).
Per iteration
+1 buff and up to +1 card per turn, for zero Energy after the two bodies are down
How it ends
engine — one free recycle, one gear tutor and one buff every Beginning Phase for as long as Ornn holds; nothing here scores
Sources
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-engine-payoff-walk.md, section 27) 2026-09-06 record
- Cause/trigger matrix over the pool, row 19 (recycle-main, 35 partners) 2026-09-06
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-engine-payoff-walk.md, section 27). Chosen from the 35 matrix partners of OGN-235 because it is the only one whose recycle costs nothing and repeats without a loop: Ornn's 'when I hold' half is a 383.4.d Hold Effect fired by 315.2.b.2. The 'Runes aren't cards' parenthetical is recorded as the false-positive family for the synergy rule, since the matrix's cause regex catches every rune recycler and 161.2.b sends those to the Rune Deck rather than the Main Deck. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.1.b.1, 161.2.b, 315.2.b.2, 323.6, 383.4.d/383.4.d.1, 431.1.c, 469.2, 702.3/702.3.a and 703 opened and read. Ban check: neither OGN-235 nor SFD-058 carries a [BANNED marker and neither is a Signature card. Trap check: no attack; no [Temporary]; no [Repeat]; no token; no recall; the recycle goes to the bottom of the Main Deck (416.1.a) and looking never Burns Out. Depends on no unruled reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16