Combo · ENGINE

Noxian Guillotine — [Legion] kills now and blanks Tryndamere, or waits and feeds him

5 cards · fury + order · verified

Pieces

• Noxian Guillotine ×3 OGN-254 · enabler · fury/order

  [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Choose a unit. Kill it the next time it takes damage this turn. [Legion] — Kill it now instead. (Get the effect if you've played another card this turn.)

• Tryndamere, Barbarian ×1 OGN-034 · payoff · fury

  When I conquer after an attack, if you assigned 5 or more excess damage to enemy units, you score 1 point.

• Hand of Noxus ×1 OGN-253 · legend · fury/order

  Exhaust: [Reaction], [Legion] — [Add] 1 Energy. (Abilities that add resources can't be reacted to. Get the effect if you've played a card this turn.)

Payoff

Deck

• The legend IS Hand of Noxus (OGN-253 or OGN-302 — two base codes, one name, both Fury/Order), forced by 103.2.d.2 because Noxian Guillotine is a Signature card tagged Darius. Tryndamere is Fury, so the identity is the legend's own two domains (103.1.b.1).

Prerequisites

• THE FORK IS THE ENTRY, AND IT IS A CHOICE MADE INSIDE THE COMBAT. Both halves are printed on the one card. FAST: with [Legion] live — 'get the effect if you've played another card this turn' — the Guillotine kills the defender NOW, inside the Combat Showdown (464.2.f.1, 464.2.g). 465.1's 'If both Attacking and Defending units remain' is then false, no damage is assigned in either direction, and 466.3.a with 466.5.d gives a Conquer for 1 point with Tryndamere untouched. SLOW: decline [Legion] and the Guillotine only marks the defender; the damage step runs, Tryndamere assigns his 8 Might, and whatever he does not need is EXCESS.
• AND THE FAST MODE SWITCHES TRYNDAMERE OFF. This is the trap the whole bloodless-conquer family hides, stated here on the one entry where both sides are on the table. R28 = A makes excess damage attacking Might that never got ASSIGNED; 465.1 means nothing is assigned at all; so a combat won by removal generates ZERO excess and 'if you assigned 5 or more excess damage' is false. The fast mode is worth 1 point (the Conquer). The slow mode is worth 2 (the Conquer plus Tryndamere) whenever he clears his own 5-excess bar, i.e. against a garrison summing 3 or less — and the Guillotine's marked kill is what makes the slow mode safe against a defender BIGGER than that, since it dies to any damage at all rather than to lethal damage.
• SO THE RULE OF THUMB IS PRINTED IN THE ARITHMETIC: garrison summing 3 or less, decline [Legion] and take 2 points; garrison big enough to kill Tryndamere (8 or more summed Might, 465.2.c with 465.2.c.3), use [Legion] and take 1 point with the body intact. In between, the Guillotine's slow mode kills a defender Tryndamere cannot kill outright, because 'kill it the next time it takes damage this turn' needs only non-zero damage (143.2.a), not lethal damage.
• IT CAN NEVER SHARE A LIST WITH tryndamere-hextech-gauntlets-enforcer, AND THE REASON IS THE SIGNATURE RULE RATHER THAN THE DOMAINS. Both lines are Fury/Order and both run OGN-034. But 103.2.d.2 makes every Signature card carry the legend's champion tag, so Noxian Guillotine forces a DARIUS legend while that entry forces UNL-187 Piltover Enforcer, a Vi legend. One legend per deck: they are alternatives, not a package. 103.2.d.1 also caps Signature cards at three in total, so three Guillotines is the whole budget.
• THE LEGEND PAYS FOR ITS OWN CONDITION. Hand of Noxus is '[exhaust]: [Reaction], [Legion] — [Add] 1 Energy', and [Legion] on both cards asks the same thing: that you have already played another card this turn. On the turn the Guillotine goes fast, the legend's Energy is live too — 429.2 resolves an Add as soon as it is finalized and 429.3 lets a [Reaction] Add fire whenever a cost has to be paid, so that Energy is available in the Showdown itself.
• IT NEEDS A GARRISON, AND THE GUILLOTINE'S TARGET IS NOT RESTRICTED TO ONE. The card says 'Choose a unit' with no 'at a battlefield' clause, unlike Rebuke, Blast of Power and Drag Under — so it also reaches a unit at a base, which no other removal in this family does. Inside a combat that is irrelevant; outside one it is a real difference in the numbers. 461 still requires units of two players to meet for the combat to exist at all (807.1.d, 383.4.e).
• ONE CONQUER PER BATTLEFIELD PER TURN (469.1, 470), and Tryndamere has no [Ganking], so 144.4 keeps him to one battlefield a turn.

Steps

1. Play a card — any card — earlier in the Main Phase so [Legion] is live on both the Guillotine and the legend.
2. Standard-move Tryndamere, Barbarian into an enemy-garrisoned battlefield, paying his exhaust (144.2, 144.4). He takes the Attacker designation and the Combat opens into its Showdown.
3. Count the garrison. If it sums 3 or less, decline [Legion]: cast the Guillotine to mark the defender, let 465.2 resolve, assign Tryndamere's 8 Might, and take both the Conquer point and his excess-damage point.
4. If it is big enough to kill him, take [Legion] instead: the Guillotine kills the defender now, 465.1 finds no Defending units and the damage step never runs.
5. 466.3.a: you are the only player with units there. 466.5 and 466.5.d establish Control as a Conquer.
6. In the fast mode that is 1 point and an intact 8 Might body; in the slow mode it is 2 points and a body that took the garrison's damage.

How it ends

engine — 1 point per attack with the body kept, or 2 with it exposed; the card chooses which, and eight points is four attacks at best

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record
• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #118 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-2v2-showdown-action-lens.md) — the 18-card '[Action] spell that removes a unit at a battlefield' family 2026-09-06 record
• Issue #155 — Engine × payoff: 'OGN-034 Tryndamere, Barbarian is the only Might/damage-to-point bridge in the pool' 2026-09-06

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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