Combo · ENGINE

Master of Shadows turns any banish into a free aimed discard, once a turn

9 cards · fury + chaos · verified

Pieces

Master of Shadows ×1 VEN-143 · legend · fury/chaos
When you banish a card you own, empower me. (I become Empowered if I'm not already.) [Action][>] Disempower me, Exhaust: Discard 1, then draw 1.
Kennen, Storm of Shuriken ×1 VEN-113 · engine · chaos
When you play me, [Burn 2]. (Put the top 2 cards of your Main Deck into your trash.) When I conquer, give a spell in your trash [Flow] equal to its cost this turn. (You may play it from your trash for its Flow cost. Then banish it.)
Stargazer ×1 VEN-098 · enabler · chaos
Spells with [Flow] you play from your trash cost 2 Energy less, to a minimum of 1 Energy.
Death Mark ×3 VEN-144 · enabler · fury/chaos
[Burn 3]. (Put the top 3 cards of your Main Deck into your trash.) Play a 0 Might Shadow Clone unit token. (It has "When I attack, you may banish a unit from your trash. If you do, give me [Assault 4] this turn.") [Flow] 1 Energy + 2 Power of any domain (You may play this from your trash for its Flow cost. Then banish it.)
Flame Chompers ×3 OGN-006 · payoff · fury
When you discard me, you may pay 1 Fury Power to play me.

Payoff

Repeatable card advantage

Deck

The legend IS the requirement: VEN-143 Master of Shadows, Fury/Chaos, which covers every card here (103.1.b.1, 103.1.b.2).
A battlefield to conquer with Kennen, for the renewable half. No battlefield of its own.

Prerequisites

THE ISSUE CITED THE WRONG RULE FOR THE GATE, AND THE WALK FIXES IT. #95 cited 827.1.c.1 for 'Disempower me cannot be paid while not Empowered'. 827.1.c.1 is the shorthand of the [Empower] KEYWORD ("[Cost]: Empower this. Play only if not Empowered.") and Master of Shadows carries no such keyword - he carries a Triggered Ability that empowers him and an Activated Ability whose cost is 'Disempower me, [exhaust]'. The rules that gate it are 442.1.a ("Disempowering affects only cards that are currently Empowered.") and 203.3 ("If the game action associated with a Cost is impossible for any reason such that a player cannot perform it, then they cannot pay the Cost and they will not execute the linked Effect."). Same verdict, right citation.
203.3 IS THE GENERAL RULE AND THE CATALOGUE HAD NEVER CITED IT (grep: 0 hits before this walk). The catalogue quotes 414.4 for exhaust, 416.3 for recycle and 422.3 for discard, each saying 'the Action must be able to be completed for the cost to be paid' for one action. 203.3 is the form that covers a cost action the rules wrote no paragraph for.
A SECOND BANISH THE SAME TURN IS WORTH NOTHING. 441.1.a "Empowered is a binary state." 441.1.b "An Empowered Game Object can not be Empowered." So it is one activation per banish - and the exhaust in the cost caps it at one per turn regardless, because 315.1.b readies him in the AWAKEN PHASE, i.e. next turn.
THE FULL IN-DOMAIN INVENTORY OF 'BANISH A CARD YOU OWN', COUNTED FROM THE CORPUS. (a) 829.1.b - "You may play this from your trash for its flow cost. Then banish it." - every [Flow] play is a banish, but each consumes the card; VEN-144 Death Mark is the Fury/Chaos one. (b) VEN-113 Kennen grants [Flow] to any spell in your trash on a conquer, which is one per-turn renewable source, on a conquer. (c) VEN-101 Gust Monk's optional additional cost, 1 Energy, 'banish a card from any trash' - three copies. (d) UNL-148 Cursed Sarcophagus banishes all units from your trash, and 441.1.b makes that one empower, not many. (e) the Shadow Clone token's 'When I attack, you may banish a unit from your trash' needs the Attacker designation (807.1.d, 383.4.e) but no conquer, so it is a SECOND renewable source and this entry runs three copies of the card that prints it - the earlier form of this note called Kennen the only one, which its own card set refutes; grep -i 'shadow clone' returns VEN-023, VEN-112 and VEN-144, all Fury/Chaos. The issue built the candidate on Stargazer, which is only a discount.
[Action] REACHES THE OPPONENT'S TURN. 806.1.c.2: "On Activated Abilities: 'This can be activated during showdowns on any player's turn.'"
THE ONE FURY POWER IS THE WHOLE PRICE OF THE FLAME CHOMPERS BODY, and this walk re-checked the reading rather than inheriting it. 051 maps card wording onto the rules' own terms and 356.1.a says "If an ability or instruction allows you to play a card 'for [Cost]', replace the card's Base Costs with [Cost]." The pool supplies the contrast: SFD-150 Last Rites also plays a unit out of the trash and prints "(You still pay its costs.)"; OGN-006 and OGN-037 Immortal Phoenix, which prints the same "pay X to play me" shape, print no such clause. Under the additive reading Chompers from the trash would cost 3 Energy PLUS 1 Fury Power - strictly worse than playing it from hand - and both cards would be dead letter against rule 002. Same reading the catalogue already uses in flame-chompers-discard-recursion and death-from-below-recurring-kill. No reading is filed.
WHAT IT DOES NOT DO. Discard 1 then draw 1 is CARD-NEUTRAL by itself; the whole value is in what the discard hits. Without Flame Chompers, VEN-094 Mask Mother, OGN-202 Jinx, Rebel or OGN-019 Raging Soul in the deck this ability is a filter, not an engine. The entry claims a filter that converts one dead card into a 3 Might body per turn, and nothing more.
OVERLAP, DECLARED. kennen-stargazer-arena-flow already pairs VEN-113 with VEN-098 under Reckoner's Arena, for the replayed spell. This entry uses the same conquer for the BANISH the [Flow] play leaves behind, which that entry never counted.
411.4 IS WHY THIS ENTRY`S TRIGGER IS AS WIDE AS IT IS, AND IT WAS NOT CITED (upgrade 2026-09-12, #187 batch 19). An ability that triggers when *"you"* do something triggers on any Game Action you are RESPONSIBLE for (411.4), which is the opposite end of the same block from 411.6`s *"with"* check - so this legend is fed by all 41 banish sources in the pool, including every [Flow] replay, where `UNL-181 Virtuoso`s *"banished with me"* can be fed by nothing but itself.

Steps

Conquer a battlefield with Kennen, Storm of Shuriken: 'give a spell in your trash [Flow] equal to its cost this turn.'
Play that spell from your trash for its Flow cost - Stargazer takes 2 Energy off it, to a minimum of 1.
829.1.b banishes it on the way out. That is a card you own, so Master of Shadows' first sentence empowers him (441.1.a/b: binary, so one banish is as good as five).
Activate him: '[Action][>] Disempower me, [exhaust]: Discard 1, then draw 1.' 442.1.a and 203.3 are why the empower was needed; 806.1.c.2 is why this also works in a showdown on the opponent's turn.
Aim the discard at a Flame Chompers (422.1.a). 422.1.b runs its trigger from the trash: 1 Fury Power, a 3 Might body at your base or a battlefield you control (355.2.a), exhausted (143.4). The draw replaces the card you spent.
315.1.b readies him in your next Awaken Phase; the next conquer, or the next Death Mark played out of the trash, re-empowers him.

Per iteration

one free aimed discard-and-draw per banish, capped at one per turn by the exhaust, converting a dead card into a 3 Might body for 1 Fury Power

How it ends

engine only - one activation per turn, and only on a turn you can banish a card you own; 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
Lente de descarte y recursión desde el trash — issue #95 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

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-discard-trash-lens.md), issue #95 candidate 4. REWRITTEN ON TWO POINTS. (1) THE ISSUE CITED THE WRONG GATING RULE: 827.1.c.1 is the [Empower] KEYWORD's shorthand and VEN-143 has no such keyword; the gate is 442.1.a plus 203.3, the general 'a cost you cannot perform cannot be paid' rule that this catalogue had never cited (0 hits before today) and that generalises the 414.4 / 416.3 / 422.3 it does cite. (2) THE ISSUE'S BANISH SOURCE WAS A DISCOUNT: it built the line on VEN-098 Stargazer, which only makes [Flow] cheaper. The walk inventoried every 'banish a card you own' in Fury/Chaos and found exactly one RENEWABLE source - VEN-113 Kennen's conquer trigger - with VEN-144 Death Mark as three one-shots inside the legend's own Zed package. 441.1.a/441.1.b were opened to establish that a second banish in a turn buys nothing. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt. Citations opened: 002, 051, 103.1.b.1, 103.1.b.2, 143.4, 203.3, 315.1.b, 355.2.a, 356.1.a, 383.4.e, 414.4, 416.3, 422.1.a, 422.1.b, 422.3, 441.1.a, 441.1.b, 442.1.a, 806.1.c.2, 807.1.d, 827.1.c.1, 829.1.b. Ban check: none of the five carries a [BANNED marker. Trap check: the Shadow Clone route is explicitly priced as needing an Attacker designation rather than assumed free; no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; no token is recycled or trashed, so 185/186.1 never arise; no recall; no Gold; no battlefield of its own. Depends on no unruled reading. CONFIRMED 2026-10-23 (#436): the gate this entry states, 442.1.a plus 203.3, was questioned because 442.1.a.1 calls Disempowering a card that is not Empowered a no-op rather than impossible. The rules settle it: 442.1.a.1 is the effect-side no-op, the twin of Exhaust's 414.1.c, and 414.4's own example refuses the cost in that case ("An exhausted friendly unit may not be exhausted again as the additional cost for the spell, and the additional cost has not been paid."). Finding in docs/rules-notes/rules-findings.md, #436. Citations added: 055, 203.1, 414.1.b, 414.1.c, 442.1, 442.1.a.1. Still depends on no unruled reading.

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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