Combo · ENGINE

One of five [Empower] costs in the pool that pay neither Energy nor Power — and the card it discards is one you get back

2 cards · fury + chaos · verified

Pieces

Punching Poro ×1 VEN-007 · payoff · fury
[Empower] — Discard 1 (Pay the cost: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>] I have +1 Might.
Morbid Return ×1 OGN-170 · engine · chaos
[Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Return a unit from your trash to your hand.

Payoff

Repeatable card advantage

Deck

Chaos + Fury, so five legend names (103.1.b.2): Loose Cannon (OGN-251), Dark Child - Starter (OGS-017), Glorious Executioner (SFD-185), Bloodharbor Ripper (UNL-185), Master of Shadows (VEN-143). VEN-143 Master of Shadows is himself a discard outlet, so the theme is native to the identity. NOTE 2026-10-23 (#436): only once he is Empowered. His discard costs 'Disempower me', and 203.3 with 442.1.a makes that cost unpayable while he is not Empowered (finding in docs/rules-notes/rules-findings.md, #436). He Empowers only 'When you banish a card you own', and nothing in this entry banishes, so the outlet needs a banisher from outside it.
A UNIT in hand to discard — Morbid Return only fetches units, so discarding a spell to the Poro is a real loss.

Run play

The Poro's free Empower is a turn-one play, it moves their attack to the other battlefield, and the discard that pays is the one that plays itself

Prerequisites

THE COST PAYS NO MANA AT ALL, AND THE POOL HAS FIVE OF THEM. Swept over every [Empower] cost string in the corpus, exactly five pay neither Energy nor Power: `VEN-007 Punching Poro` (Discard 1), `VEN-110 Mel, Defiant Soul` (Discard a spell), `VEN-054 Questionable Tome` and `VEN-087 Hextech Disc` (an exhaust each), and `VEN-124 Escaped Grayback` (kill a friendly unit, which 185.2.d makes free when it is a token). The Poro is the cheapest body of the five at 2 Energy.
AND THE DISCARD IS A LOAN IF IT IS A UNIT. `OGN-170 Morbid Return` is 2 Energy at [Action] speed for 'Return a unit from your trash to your hand' — so a unit discarded to the Poro comes back, and the only thing actually spent was the Return's 2 Energy. The pairing turns a mana-free Empower into a tempo-free one, at the cost of a card slot. CORRECTED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): off by a card. Morbid Return is a card, so the pair is one card for +1 Might on one body: the discarded unit comes back, and the Return is the card spent. In the walk the Return's 2 Energy came back as OGN-012 Noxus Hopeful's [Legion] discount (Fury unit, E4, M4, "[Legion] — I cost :rb_energy_2: less. (Get the effect if you've played another card this turn.)"), so it cost no Energy that turn; the card was still gone.
IT IS ONCE PER BODY AND PERMANENT. 441.1.b: 'An Empowered Game Object can not be Empowered', 441.1.c: 'If a Game Object is instructed to be Empowered when it is already Empowered, nothing additional happens', and 441.2 makes Empowered a board state. So the Poro's +1 Might is bought once and kept — three copies (103.2.b) is three purchases, not a repeatable engine, and this entry does not claim otherwise.
422.1.b IS WHAT MAKES THE DISCARD A REAL EVENT: '"When I am discarded" abilities or other Triggered Abilities that trigger on discarding are executed after discarding has occurred' — the card is in the trash when its own trigger resolves, which is also why 385.1 / 385.2 let a card outside the Board self-describe its context. A discard outlet in this identity is therefore a genuine enabler, not just a cost.
THE PAYOFF IS SMALL AND THE ENTRY LEADS WITH IT: +1 Might on a 2-Energy 2-Might body. What is worth cataloguing is the COST, not the effect — a free-in-mana Empower on the cheapest possible body is a tempo tool for a turn where every Energy is spoken for. CORRECTED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): the turn where every Energy is spoken for is the Poro's own T1 (step 2).
AND 431.2.b IS THE CLOCK ON THE WHOLE THEME: a Burn Out 'Recycles their trash into their Main Deck', so an over-drawn deck hands the Poro's discards back to the library and Morbid Return has nothing to fetch. A discard-and-recover list has to respect 431.1.a.
THE DISCARD THAT PAYS WAS NOT NAMED - ADDED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md). OGN-006 Flame Chompers (Fury unit, E3, M3, "When you discard me, you may pay :rb_rune_fury: to play me.") turns the Poro's discard into a 3-Might body for one Fury Power, a recycled rune (164.2.b: "Recycle this: [Reaction] — Add [C]."). Its trigger resolves after the discard (422.1.b, above). On T1 it put two 3s on the board, and walked against a Calm/Order Leona deck it was 6 to 1 after their T4, against the pair's 3 to 3. Morbid Return is what puts a dead Chompers back in hand to be discarded again. The play counts the line failing in 15 of 66 deals, those with no Fury rune among your first two.
NO ANSWER WAS NAMED - ADDED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md). These are from the walked Calm/Order Leona census (254 cards), not every deck's answers. The Empower has no target (827.1.b.1: "The source game object is not a target of the Empower ability."; 355.10.c: "It is included only as part of a cost, trigger condition, or replacement effect."), but Morbid Return does: its sentence is 355.10.a's own example (355.10: "A game object, player, or zone mentioned in the text of a spell, activated ability, or triggered ability is a target UNLESS any of the following are true:"; 355.10.a: "It is in a zone whose information status is not Public. e.g., “Ready a legend” targets a legend, because the Legend Zone is Public. e.g., “Return a unit from your trash to your hand” targets a unit card in your trash, because your trash is Public. e.g., “You may play a unit from your hand, ignoring its costs” does not target a unit card in your hand, because your hand is not a public zone."). OGN-045 Defy (Calm spell, E1 P1, "[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Counter a spell that costs no more than :rb_energy_4: and no more than :rb_rune_rainbow:.") counters it for one ready rune and one Calm Power. Four E1 Calm reactions undo the +1 in the combat it was bought for: OGN-046 En Garde ("[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Give a friendly unit +1 :rb_might: this turn, then an additional +1 :rb_might: this turn if it is the only unit you control there."), UNL-031 Combat Experience ("[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Give a unit +1 :rb_might: this turn. [Level 6][>] Give it +3 :rb_might: this turn instead. (While you have 6+ XP, get the effect.)"), UNL-046 Friendship ("[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Choose a unit. Give it +1 :rb_might: this turn for each of the following tags among your units — Bird, Cat, Dog, and Poro."; the walked attacker, OGN-210 Daring Poro, is a Poro) and VEN-040 Decree of Focus ("[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Choose a friendly unit that's in combat with an enemy Fury (:rb_rune_fury:) unit or that's being chosen by an enemy Fury spell. Give it +4 :rb_might: this turn."), and the Punching Poro is Fury.

Steps

Play Punching Poro (2 Energy).
On a turn when every Energy is committed, pay its [Empower] by discarding a unit from hand: no Energy, no Power. It is now Empowered and Might 3, permanently (441.2). CORRECTED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): that turn is the Poro's own. The [Empower] is an activated ability (381: "All Activated Abilities can only be activated on the Controlling Player's Turn and during an Open State.") whose cost carries no exhaust, so it can be paid the turn the Poro lands, though the Poro enters exhausted (143.4: "Units enter the Board exhausted."). On T1, going first, the Poro costs both runes and the discard is the only cost left; paid on a later turn, the discard is a card you could have played with the runes you had.
Later, play Morbid Return (2 Energy, [Action], so it also works inside a Showdown) and return that unit to your hand.
422.1.b is what put the discarded card in the trash before anything read it, so any 'when I am discarded' text on it has already resolved.
Repeat with the other copies (103.2.b); 441.1.b means each Poro is Empowered once and only once.

Per iteration

one Empower bought with no Energy and no Power, and the card it cost returned for 2 Energy CORRECTED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): the Return does not need the discard. "Return a unit from your trash to your hand" takes any unit of yours in the trash, and in the play's control, with the Empower never paid, it fetched the Punching Poro that died in combat.

How it ends

engine — a mana-free permanent +1 Might per Punching Poro, with the discarded unit recovered for 2 Energy; nothing here scores CORRECTED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): and the recovery costs a card, Morbid Return. Walked going first against a Calm/Order Leona deck, the pair moved no point: 3 to 3 after their T4, and 3 to 3 with the Empower never paid.

Sources

Published elsewhere

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 2026-09-07, issue #173 — the uncatalogued Fury / Chaos cards 2026-09-07 record
Run play 2026-10-23, issue #429 2026-10-23 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.

VEN-007 Punching Poro and OGN-170 Morbid Return were both in ZERO entries. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.1.b.2, 103.2.b, 185.2.d, 385.1, 385.2, 422.1.b, 431.1.a, 431.2.b, 441.1.b, 441.1.c, 441.2, 806.1.b opened in the Core Rules file. The five no-mana [Empower] costs were swept over the corpus and their members are named. Morbid Return was REFUSED in §18 of this walk as a cost cheat — correctly, since it returns to HAND — and is used here for what it is, a way to make a discard COST recoverable, which is a different job. NOTE 2026-10-23 (#436): the 'himself a discard outlet' prerequisite now says he is one only once Empowered. The Leads of the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md reported that as an unruled reading; #436 settled it from the rules: 442.1.a.1 is the effect-side no-op, the twin of Exhaust's 414.1.c, and 203.3 gates the cost the way 414.4's example does (finding in docs/rules-notes/rules-findings.md, #436). Citations added: 203.3, 442.1.a. REVISED 2026-10-23 (#439, from the run play docs/plays/2026-10-23-the-poros-free-empower-is-a-turn-one-play-it-moves-their-attack-to-the-other-battlefield-and-the-discard-that-pays-is-the-one-that-plays-itself.md): its Leads applied as dated notes on the LOAN and PAYOFF notables, step 2, netPerIteration and terminatesIn, plus two ADDED notables (Flame Chompers; the answers). Its Master of Shadows lead was settled by #436 and is applied above. "Exactly five pay neither Energy nor Power" was re-swept on 2026-10-23 over every [Empower] line in data/corpus_flat.txt (39 lines, 38 costs plus VEN-163 Risen Altar): the five named, the other 33 carry Energy or Power; the notable stands unedited. Citations added: 143.4, 164.2.b, 355.10, 355.10.a, 355.10.c, 381, 827.1.b.1. Still depends on no unruled reading.

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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