Combo · ENGINE
Risen Altar takes a POWER off an [Empower] cost, and 441.2 makes the discount permanent after one payment
Pieces
- Risen Altar ×1
VEN-163 · battlefield
[Empower] costs of your units here cost 1 Energy or 1 Power of any domain less.
- Ambessa, Respected and Feared ×3
VEN-136 · payoff · order
[Empower] 1 Energy + 2 Order Power (1 Energy + 2 Order Power: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>] I have [Assault 2]. (+2 Might while I'm an attacker.) [Empowered][>] When I attack, kill an enemy unit here with less Might than me.
Payoff
Deck
- Ambessa, Respected and Feared is mono-Order and Risen Altar is Colorless, so 103.1.b.3 admits any legend with Order in its pair: SFD-201/SFD-249 Chem-Baroness, UNL-199/UNL-235 Deceiver, SFD-197/SFD-247 Emperor of the Sands, VEN-147/VEN-193 Eye of Twilight, SFD-205/SFD-251 Grand Duelist, UNL-195/UNL-233 Green Father, OGN-253/OGN-302 Hand of Noxus, VEN-155/VEN-197 Heart of the Tempest, OGN-265/OGN-308 Herald of the Arcane, UNL-203/UNL-237 Keeper of the Hammer, OGS-021 Lady of Luminosity, VEN-153/VEN-196 Matriarch of War, UNL-187/UNL-229 Piltover Enforcer, OGN-261/OGN-306 Radiant Dawn, OGN-269/OGN-310 The Boss, SFD-187/SFD-243 Void Burrower, OGS-023 Might of Demacia - Starter. She is NOT a Signature card (cards.json: signature false), so this is a domain line and not a one-legend one.
Prerequisites
- A 'ONE RAINBOW LESS' DISCOUNT REMOVES A DOMAIN POWER OR IT IS DEAD LETTER. No card in the pool prints a rainbow Power COST — the rainbow icon appears only as a Deflect payment and as an [Add] output — so under rule 002 the Altar's rainbow component has to reach a domain rune. On Ambessa that turns E1 + 2 Order Power into E1 + 1 Order Power; taking the Energy instead would leave E0 + 2 Order and 356.6 floors nothing further.
- IT IS ONE DISCOUNT PER BODY, FOREVER, AND THAT IS 441 NOT A DRAWBACK. 441.1.b: 'An Empowered Game Object can not be Empowered', and 441.2 makes Empowered a permanent state of the object. So the Altar pays once per unit — but it pays on every Empower unit the deck ever plays, and what it buys never wears off. Three copies of Ambessa is three rebates.
- SHE HAS TO BE STANDING AT RISEN ALTAR WHEN YOU PAY, AND NOWHERE AFTER. 'Your units HERE' is read when the cost is determined; 441.2 then keeps her Empowered wherever she goes, so the battlefield is a toll booth and not a leash.
- WHAT THE EMPOWER BUYS IS REMOVAL, WHICH IS WHY THE CLASS IS repeatable-removal: 'When I attack, kill an enemy unit here with less Might than me' fires on every attack, and [Assault 2] raises the Might the comparison uses while she is the attacker — an Empowered Ambessa attacks at 7 and kills anything below that at her battlefield. 383.4.e and 464.2.c.3 require a real Attacker designation, so this needs an enemy garrison; an empty battlefield is not an attack.
- THE ALTAR SAYS 'UNITS', SO GEAR IS OUT. VEN-045 Helm of Suppression, VEN-054 Questionable Tome, VEN-062 Hextech Formula and VEN-018 Rage Amplifier all carry [Empower] costs and none of them is discounted here. Count units only.
- RISEN ALTAR IS NOT GUARANTEED TO BE ON THE TABLE, and unlike the five 'no you' battlefields of this walk it also has to be CONQUERED before it does anything: 485.4.a, 485.5, 486.5, 103.4.c, plus 190.1 and 466.5.
Steps
- Take Risen Altar and hold it. 190.1 makes a battlefield you provide uncontrolled at setup and 190.6.d ignores 'your units here' until somebody controls it.
- Play Ambessa, Respected and Feared (E5) and walk her to Risen Altar.
- Pay her [Empower] cost while she stands there. The printed cost is 1 Energy + 2 Order Power; the Altar's component discount removes one rainbow, which under rule 002 has to come off a domain rune, so you pay 1 Energy + 1 Order Power.
- 441.1 performs the act and 441.2 makes Empowered a permanent state: [Assault 2] and 'When I attack, kill an enemy unit here with less Might than me' are hers for the rest of the game, wherever she stands.
- Attack a garrisoned battlefield. 190.3.a.1 applies Contested, 323.9 stages the Combat and 464.2.c.1 makes you the Attacker; her trigger kills an enemy unit there with less Might than her 7.
Per iteration
one Order Power saved per Empower unit, once each, permanently
How it ends
engine only — one rebate per unit (441.1.b allows no second Empower) and one kill per attack thereafter; nothing here scores and 103.2.b caps the named payoff at three copies
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 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-07-uncatalogued-cards.md), issue #171 2026-09-07 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 2026-09-07, issue #171 — the first entry to use either card. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; the 'heaviest Empower cost in Power among units' claim was checked by extracting every [Empower] cost string in the corpus and sorting them, and Ambessa's one-Energy-two-runes is one of three unit [Empower] costs with two DOMAIN runes (with VEN-086 Gangplank, Naval at two Body runes and no Energy, and VEN-114 Kharox at E6 + two Chaos), corrected by the #181 cross-audit on 2026-09-07 - Ambessa is the only one of the three that pairs a domain-rune pair with a single Energy, and Gangplank is outright lighter. The rainbow-removes-a-domain-Power reading is the project's own R28-shaped argument (rule 002: a discount that cannot apply is dead letter), already recorded for the #85 walk. Trap check: 190.6.d is cited for what it DOES do here — this battlefield says 'your' and therefore has to be conquered, unlike the five found earlier in this walk; the attack half is stated with 383.4.e / 464.2.c.1 and needs a real garrison; 441.1.b is cited so the rebate is not counted twice; gear is excluded explicitly; exactly one battlefield is named, so 485.4.a is respected.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16