Combo · CHAIN · 8 points

Power Nexus × World Atlas × Time Warp — eight points across two uninterrupted Beginning Phases

6 cards · mind · verified

Pieces

• Power Nexus ×1 SFD-214 · payoff

  When you hold here, you may pay 4 Power of any domain to score 1 point.

• Blue Sentinel ×2 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.)

• World Atlas ×2 SFD-086 · resource · mind

  [Equip] 1 Mind Power (1 Mind Power: Attach this to a unit you control.)

  When I hold, play two Gold gear tokens exhausted.

• Time Warp ×1 OGN-122 · payoff · mind

  Take a turn after this one. Banish this.

Payoff

Deck

• Any Mind legend — World Atlas, Blue Sentinel and Time Warp are mono-Mind and Power Nexus is colorless (103.1.b.1, 103.1.b.3).

Prerequisites

• THE FULL LEDGER, TURN BY TURN, WITH TWELVE RUNES ON THE BOARD AND TWELVE GOLD BANKED FROM THE PREVIOUS HOLD. Turn 1 Awaken (315.1.b) readies the twelve runes and the twelve Gold. Beginning Phase: base Hold 1 point; three Nexus triggers finalize, each paid by killing four Gold (429.3, 429.3.a; 383.3.b.1) for +3; the two Atlas triggers bank twelve fresh Gold; the two Sentinel triggers queue six rainbow. FOUR POINTS. Channel Phase adds nothing once all twelve runes are already on the board (315.3.b with 430.3, 'channel as many as possible'). Main Phase: 316.3 empties the pool, then 316.4 delivers the six rainbow. Exhaust ten runes for 10 Energy (164.2.a) and pay Time Warp's four Power out of the six rainbow (135.2.e.5.b). No rune is recycled, so the board still holds twelve. Turn 2 is the Additional Turn: Awaken readies the twelve runes and the twelve new Gold; the Beginning Phase repeats exactly — base Hold 1 plus three Nexus firings. FOUR POINTS. EIGHT, with no opponent turn in between.
• THIS IS WHY THE BARE THREE-CARD VERSION OF THE SAME IDEA DOES NOT WORK, AND THAT REFUTATION IS PART OF THE ENTRY. Power Nexus + 2 Blue Sentinel + Time Warp with no Gold source tops out at FIVE, not eight, and the arithmetic is forced. Nexus payments are Beginning-Phase Power, and without Gold the only Beginning-Phase Power is a rune recycle (164.2.b), which sends the rune to the Rune Deck (161.2.b) instead of leaving it to pay Energy. 161.2.a fixes the Rune Deck at exactly 12, so across the casting turn and the Additional Turn the whole Power budget is 12 runes plus the 2 that 315.3.b channels back — 14 Power, i.e. floor(14/4) = 3 Nexus firings whatever the split, plus 2 base Holds. And Time Warp needs 10 of those runes unrecycled for its Energy in the Main Phase, which caps turn 1 at one firing. Every split gives 5. The Gold is not an optimisation, it is the whole line. [2026-10-13, #338: all of this is for ONE Time Warp. With three Warps the same bare cards reach 8 from ten runes, every Nexus firing paid with rune recycles: power-nexus-sentinel-three-time-warps. The Gold is the whole line only at one Warp.]
• TIME WARP'S POWER COMES FREE FROM THE SENTINELS, WHICH IS THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIX. 316.2 puts 316.3 ('Each player's Rune Pool empties') BEFORE 316.4 ('At the start of Main Phase game effects take place'), so the six rainbow the Sentinels queue during the Hold survive into the Main Phase, and 135.2.e.5.b lets [A] pay Time Warp's four Mind Power. Without that ordering the six would be swept and four runes would have to be recycled, dropping the Energy to eight and the line to seven points.
• WHAT IT ASSUMES, STATED PLAINLY: Power Nexus is the battlefield in play (485.4, 485.4.a, 485.5; 103.4.c and Tournament Rules 402.1 forbid two copies) and already under your Control (190.1, 466.5); the previous turn's Hold already happened, which is what banks the first twelve Gold; twelve runes are on the board; and Time Warp is in hand — 427 banishes it, so it can never be recycled back.
• IT IS CHAIN, NOT BURST. Eight points arrive as eight separate Gains across two Beginning Phases (194.1.c for the six Nexus firings, 471.1 for the two base Holds), not in one scoring event. 471.1.a.1 is what lets the eighth land: 'points Gained from sources that are not Conquer are not beholden to' 471.1.b's Final Point restrictions.
• COMPARE time-warp-hold-burst, WHICH IS THE OTHER SHAPE OF THE SAME TRICK. That entry is three Time Warps riding the Lux infinite for Energy and Power, and takes both Duel battlefields to score 2 a turn. This one needs ONE Time Warp and no loop at all, because the Nexus turns a single battlefield into four points; the price is a specific colorless battlefield and a primed Gold bank. Neither is a version of the other and they share no card but OGN-122.
• IT DOES NOT SURVIVE A BURN OUT SCARE. The Additional Turn takes its own Draw Phase (315.4.b); keep at least one card in the Main Deck at the end of the casting turn or 315.4.b.1 Burns Out and 194.1.d hands the opponent a point. Nothing in this line empties the deck, so this is a check, not a cost.
• NOTHING IN THIS LINE IS PROTECTED FROM A GEAR KILL, AND THE POOL PRINTS SIXTEEN OF THEM. 718.5.b: 'Attached cards still can be chosen or targeted by game effects while Attached' - the Equipment's own printed Rules Text is Inactive while attached (718.2) and its [Equip] is unusable (721.2), but the CARD is a legal target for every turn it sits there. Swept with /\bkills?\b[^.]{0,80}\bgear\b/i over text+effect of every deckable base in data/cards.json, the pool has 16 base codes (15 names; Jayce, Man of Progress is printed twice) and EVERY ONE OF THE SIX DOMAINS prints at least one, so there is no identity this line can hide in. The unconditional enemy-facing ones are OGN-022 Thermo Beam, SFD-005 Detonate and VEN-003 Brittle Steel (Fury), OGN-224 Salvage (Order), SFD-032 Disarming Rake (Calm) and SFD-077 Rocket Barrage (Mind). OGN-022 Thermo Beam - Fury, E5 + 2 Fury Power, '[Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Kill all gear.' - is the only card in the pool that kills EVERY gear at once, so it answers the whole payoff with one card; it is symmetric, which makes it cheap for a gearless deck and expensive for anyone else (the shape acceptable-losses-ravenbloom-prefect-gearless-gear-hate already records for OGN-179).
• THE TIMING CUTS BOTH WAYS, AND NO [Reaction] GEAR KILL EXISTS. Swept over all sixteen gear kills: none carries [Reaction]. Thermo Beam and Salvage are [Action], which 806.1.c.1 makes short for 'This can be played during showdowns on any player's turn'; Detonate and Brittle Steel are plain spells, and 155 confines a spell to 'an Open State outside of Showdowns on its controller's turn'. The Score this line pays on happens at 315.2.b.2 inside your own Beginning Phase, where the opponent holds no priority in a Neutral Open State (312.2.a) and the Closed State the trigger opens admits only a [Reaction] (813.1.c.1). So the opponent can NEVER strip the gear in the window that pays - every answer has to be cast on their own turn, one full turn before. That is what keeps the line alive, and it is also the window in which to defend it: the removal spell on the Chain is a Closed State, 312.2.c hands out priority there and 813.1.c.1 admits a [Reaction] in response.
• THE FOUR RAINBOW DOES NOT HAVE TO BE BANKED, AND THIS ENTRY`S FUNDER IS AN OPTIMISATION RATHER THAN A REQUIREMENT (citation upgrade 2026-09-12, #200). 383.3.b makes the cost a BASE COST paid at finalization and 312.2.c withholds priority until every pending chain item finishes finalizing, which is why this catalogue concluded the Power had to be on the board already and reached for an Add-on-trigger card. **Priority is not payment.** 444.2.c: *"Players may activate abilities that Add resources with the Reaction keyword at any time that they are instructed to Pay resources. Those abilities finalize and resolve immediately, ignoring normal restrictions."* 164.2 gives every Basic Rune TWO abilities and both carry [Reaction], so 444.2.c reaches them; 164.2.b`s cost is the RECYCLE and not an exhaust, so a rune already tapped for Energy still pays; 164.2.b.1 Adds Power of that rune`s DOMAIN, which 135.2.e.5.a then makes legal against a rainbow cost (*"When required as a cost, [A] can be paid by Power of any Domain"*). So the Nexus is fundable out of runes in EVERY identity at four runes a point, and the Gold or Sentinel Add this entry uses is simply CHEAPER - see `power-nexus-rune-recycle-any-identity`, which walks the bare version.
• 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: OGS-013 Garen, Commander +1, 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.
• 204.3.a IS THE FIRST AND CLEANER SOURCE FOR THIS, AND IT CARRIES THE WORKED EXAMPLE: "When Costs within Instructions appear as the first part of the effect in triggered abilities, the cost is taken to be the base cost of the triggered ability. It must be paid to finalize the triggered ability", with Riot's example being Overzealous Fan - "When I defend, you may kill me to move an attacking unit to its base" - and the note that "in order to finalize the ability to the chain, its controller must kill Overzealous Fan". 383.3.b says the same thing later in the book. The companion is 204.3.b: a cost appearing in a SPELL, in an ACTIVATED ability, or in a LATER part of a trigger's effect is paid on resolution instead, which is the 205 "pay X. If you do, Y" family and the reason the two look alike on the card and behave differently on the chain.
• A SPELL PAYOFF IS ANSWERED IN A WINDOW THE RULES CREATE FOR IT, AFTER EVERY COST IS ALREADY SPENT (added 2026-09-13, #200). **359.3.c**: *"Other players have an opportunity to play Reactions before the resolution of spells."* A UNIT or GEAR payoff never gets that window — 337.2 sends it straight to Step 4 Resolve — and a BATTLEFIELD payoff is not removable at all (170.3, 170.4). A SPELL is the one payoff class the process stops for, and **425.1.c** with **425.1.c.1** refunds nothing: *"Countering does not refund any costs paid to play a card… This includes additional costs."* `OGN-122 Time Warp` at **E10 + 4 Power is the largest single cost in any finishing turn this catalogue prices**, and all of it is spent before the counter resolves. Swept on the bare word *counter*: 14 printings, three of which are not counters (`SFD-194 Counter Strike` is a PREVENT carrying the word in its name; `VEN-015` and `VEN-069` GRANT can’t-be-countered), leaving **ELEVEN — and CALM prints five of them**. Seven reach Time Warp and FOUR cannot, each for a printed reason: `OGN-045 Defy` and `VEN-152 Rebuttal` are priced out by its own cost, and `SFD-045 Not So Fast` and `UNL-106 Repulse` both need the spell to CHOOSE a friendly unit or gear, which Time Warp does not — **so the pool’s only two ABILITY-counters are exactly the two that cannot answer this spell.** Cheapest that reaches: `VEN-039 Crumbling Sands`, Calm, E1 + 1 Power, conditional on you having cast anything else that turn. Most punishing: `UNL-190 Lilting Lullaby`, Calm/Mind, E2 + 2 Power — *"Counter a spell. Its controller can't play spells this turn"* — which ends the finishing TURN rather than taking one card. And `VEN-152 Rebuttal` is not a counter at all against a cheap spell payoff: it *"gain[s] control of it and you may make new choices for it"*, so at 4 Energy or less it does not deny the line, **it takes it.**

Steps

1. Have Power Nexus under Control with two Blue Sentinels on it, each wearing a World Atlas, twelve runes on the board, twelve Gold banked from the previous turn's Hold, and Time Warp in hand.
2. Awaken readies the runes, the Sentinels and the twelve Gold (315.1.b).
3. Beginning Phase: Hold the Nexus. Score 1. Pay four Gold for each of the three Nexus triggers as they finalize (383.3.b.1, 429.3.a) — three more points. The Atlases bank twelve fresh Gold; the Sentinels queue six rainbow.
4. Main Phase: 316.4 delivers the six rainbow after 316.3's sweep. Exhaust ten runes for Energy and cast Time Warp for 10 Energy + 4 rainbow. Recycle nothing.
5. The Additional Turn (735, 737): Awaken readies the twelve runes and the twelve new Gold. Hold the Nexus again — 469.2's 'did not yet Score this turn' resets — for a fourth base point and three more Nexus firings. Eight.

How it ends

8 points across the casting turn's Beginning Phase and the Additional Turn's Beginning Phase, with no opponent turn in between

Sources

Published elsewhere

• RiftJudge Q10155 — Blue Sentinel multiplies its own hold trigger (fan judge database, not official) 2026-05-08

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record
• Issue #155 — Engine × payoff, candidate 1 (Power Nexus × 2 Blue Sentinel × Time Warp), whose Power ledger the hunt explicitly left to a walk session 2026-09-06

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue