Combo · BURST · 8 points
Nasus, Ascended under Reckoner's Arena — nine points on one Hold, on an M8 body
Pieces
- Nasus, Ascended ×2
VEN-046 · payoff · calm
[Deflect 2] (Opponents must pay 2 Power of any domain to choose me with a spell or ability.) [Empower] 8 Energy (8 Energy: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>] When I conquer, you score 1 point.
- Blue Sentinel ×3
UNL-087 · engine · mind
[Shield 2] (+2 Might while I'm a defender.) Your hold effects for holding here trigger an additional time. When I hold, [Add] 1 Power of any domain at the start of your next Main Phase. (Abilities that add resources can't be reacted to.)
- Reckoner's Arena ×1
OGN-286 · engine
When you hold here, activate the conquer effects of units here.
Payoff
Deck
- Legend domains cover Calm and Mind (103.1.b). Four exist: OGN-255 Nine-Tailed Fox, SFD-189 Fire Below the Mountain, UNL-189 Bashful Bloom and VEN-145 Curator of the Sands.
Prerequisites
- The battlefield must be the one in play, and a deck may not carry two of it (Core Rules 103.4.c, Tournament Rules 402.1): random 1 of 3 in Duel (485.5) and Skirmish (487.5), chosen in Match (486.5). Reckoner's Arena is one of YOUR three, and in a Duel only two battlefields are on the table (485.4).
- Points per Hold: 1 + N × (1 + K), N = Empowered Nasus present, K = Blue Sentinel present. N=2, K=3 gives 9. Neighbours, written so nobody repeats the 2026-09-04 audit's mistake: N=2, K=2 gives 7 and N=1, K=3 gives 5.
- N × (1 + K) = 8 on its own, so the entry clears the Victory Score even if the battlefield's own Score point never lands. 471.1.a.1 exempts non-Conquer Gains from the Final Point restriction, and R2 = A keeps Nasus's card-text point outside 470's once-per-battlefield cap.
- Cost is 44 Energy and 5 Power: two Nasus (16E + 2P), two Empower activations (16E), three Blue Sentinel (12E + 3P). With a 12-card Rune Deck (103.3.a) that is roughly a six-turn build, not one expensive turn — 441.2 is why it can be spread out, because the Empowered state persists.
- Against ahri-blue-sentinel-hold, which runs the same formula for 23 Energy: what this buys is durability, and that is exactly what Ahri's own notable flags as her single weakness. OGN-066 Ahri is M4 naked; VEN-046 Nasus is M8 with [Deflect 2], so an opponent pays 2 rainbow Power for every spell or ability aimed at him. The 44E price is the honest counterweight.
- Against nasus-ascended-brambleback-conquer, which reaches the same 9: that one wins on a Conquer and needs no battlefield of yours; this one wins on a HOLD, with no combat at all. The catalogue already carries both faces of the Ahri package for the same reason.
- VEN-145 Curator of the Sands is the legend that completes the package: Calm/Mind with the Nasus tag, and 'When you play a unit, gear, or activated ability with Energy cost 7 or more, you may exhaust me to ready up to 2 runes' — Nasus's body (E8) and his Empower (E8, an Activated Ability by 827.1) both qualify.
- All five units must survive the opponent's whole turn at the Arena, and the Arena must already be yours (190.1).
- 7 ENERGY ANSWERS THE GARRISON THIS LINE NEEDS. OGN-123 Unchecked Power is mind, 7 Energy + 2 Power: "Exhaust all friendly units, then deal 12 to ALL units at battlefields.". 143.2.a kills on marked damage at or above Might, so it kills every body at or below Might 12 SIMULTANEOUSLY however many there are: the binding constraint is MIGHT PER BODY, not the number of bodies, so going wider answers nothing. A CHEAPER ANSWER EXISTS AND IT IS NOT AVAILABLE TO EVERY OPPONENT: OGN-268 Bullet Time costs 1 Energy + 4 Power here (it pays per point of damage, so it scales to any garrison) and is [Action], so 806.1.c.1 puts it inside any showdown on any player's turn - but it is a SIGNATURE card tagged Miss Fortune, and 103.2.d.2 requires every Signature card to carry the Chosen Champion Legend's tag, so only a Miss Fortune legend can run it. Count it as a matchup, not as the field. THE IDENTITY DOES HOLD AN ANSWER: SFD-089 Rumble, Scrapper +1 (Mech bodies only), UNL-077 Soul Shepherd +1 (token bodies only) - a permanent, garrison-wide +Might is the only thing that lifts every body at once, since a single-target pump is useless against a sweep that hits all of them. (A battlefield-based protection is NOT available here, because this line already requires a battlefield: 485.4.a gives each player three and "Only 1 will be used, chosen during setup", and 103.4.c forbids duplicate names, so two of your own battlefields never share a board.) WHEN THE ANSWER LANDS, AND IT IS NOT INSIDE THE HOLD. A Hold resolves at 315.2.b.2, which Holds "all Battlefields they Control", inside YOUR Beginning Phase - and 312.2.a gives a player priority only "When the turn is in a Neutral Open State during their Main Phase", i.e. their own. So the opponent cannot answer in the Hold window itself; they answer on THEIR turn, which is the turn immediately before it. The cost of that is yours, not theirs: your own Main Phase comes AFTER your Beginning Phase (315 then 316), so there is no window in which to rebuild the garrison. Holding up a [Reaction] on their turn is the only response this line has.
Steps
- Establish Control of Reckoner's Arena and assemble two Nasus and three Blue Sentinel there over several turns.
- Pay each Nasus's [Empower] for 8 Energy (827.1.c.1). 441.2 keeps them Empowered from then on, so 828.1.b.1 gives each of them 'When I conquer, you score 1 point' permanently.
- At your Beginning Phase you Hold the Arena (469.2): that is the Score, worth 1 point, capped by 470.
- The Arena's hold trigger is one of your hold effects (R8 = A), so Blue Sentinel ×3 makes it run four times (R1 = A).
- Each run activates the conquer effects of every unit there (383.4.g.1), so each of the two Nasus gains a point per run: eight ability Gains (194.1.c, R2 = A). Nine points in one Hold.
How it ends
burst of nine points in one Hold, eight of them ability Gains that 470 does not cap
Sources
Published elsewhere
- Hunt lens [Empower]/[Flow]/[Level N] — issue #34 (GitHub) 2026-09-05
- 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 2026-09-05 2026-09-05 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 2026-09-05 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-05-escalation-empower-flow-candidates.md), issue #34. All card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; every rule opened in the Core Rules file. No new rules reading: the entry stands entirely on R1 = A with stacking, R2 = A and R8 = A, all already ruled, plus 383.4.g.1, which is the strongest citation available because Riot writes the interaction with the card named. The formula was checked against its own declared quantities before authoring, which is the check the 2026-09-04 audit found four BURSTs had skipped: 1 + 2 × 4 = 9, and N × (1+K) = 8 without the battlefield point. Trap check: a Hold needs no Attacker designation, so 807.1.d/383.4.e/461 cannot bite (this is the whole reason the Hold version exists beside the Conquer one); no [Repeat]; no [Temporary]; no recall; no rune recycled for Power; the Empower cost is a Main Phase activation so 167 does not bite.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16