Combo · BURST · 8 points

Swain under Red Brambleback — the conquer payoff the BURST sweep missed, ten points on one bloodless Conquer

5 cards · mind + fury · verified

Pieces

• Swain, Visionary ×3 VEN-065 · payoff · mind

  [Vision] (When you play me, look at the top card of your Main Deck. You may recycle it.) When I conquer, if you've played a non-token unit, a non-token gear, and a spell this turn, you score 1 point.

• Red Brambleback ×2 UNL-029 · engine · fury

  [Accelerate] (You may pay 1 Energy + 1 Fury Power as an additional cost to have me enter ready.) Your conquer effects for conquering here trigger an additional time. When I conquer, [Buff] a friendly unit. (Give it a +1 Might buff if it doesn't have one.)

Payoff

Deck

• Legend domains cover Fury and Mind. Measured over data/cards.json 2026-09-07, the pool prints THREE Fury/Mind legend names across six base codes: Daughter of the Void (OGN-247 / OGN-299), Mechanized Menace (SFD-181 / SFD-240), Virtuoso (UNL-181 / UNL-226).
• Neither card is Signature (checked on the signature field in cards.json), and no legend in the pool carries the Swain tag, so 103.2.d.2 forces nothing and all three legend names are open.

Prerequisites

• THE ENTRY EXISTS BECAUSE A SWEEP MISSED A CELL, AND THAT IS ITS REAL CONTENT. CLAUDE.md's BURST-saturation sweep says 'six cards score on a Hold or a Conquer (Ahri, Trinity Force, Ivern Friend to All, Shen, Nasus Ascended, Power Nexus), all catalogued under at least one multiplier'. Swept again on 2026-09-07 over data/corpus_flat.txt with grep -inE for score/gain N point, the pool has THIRTEEN point-gaining cards - OGN-034 Tryndamere Barbarian, OGN-066 Ahri Alluring, OGN-205 Yasuo Windrider, SFD-088 Renata Glasc Mastermind, SFD-115 Trinity Force, SFD-148 Draven Audacious, SFD-214 Power Nexus, UNL-177 Ivern Friend to All, VEN-046 Nasus Ascended, VEN-053 Otterpus (a denial, not a gain), VEN-065 Swain Visionary, VEN-067 Bottled Constellation, VEN-138 Shen Leader of the Kinkou Order - and the hold-or-conquer subset is EIGHT, not six: the six named plus Tryndamere and Swain. Tryndamere is catalogued under this same multiplier (tryndamere-brambleback-conquer). Swain was under no multiplier at all: a card-set containment check on 2026-09-07 returns NONE for Swain with Brambleback, NONE for Swain with Reckoner's Arena and NONE for Swain with Svellsongur, and Swain's only two entries (swain-double-conquer, swain-shurelya-double-conquer) both reach 8 across TWO Conquers, one of them needing infinite-energy AND infinite-power to pay for itself.
• THE ARITHMETIC, WITH THE QUANTITIES THIS ENTRY DECLARES. One Conquer of one battlefield: the Conquer itself Scores 1 point (469.1 'Conquer: A player gains Control of a Battlefield they did not yet Score this turn', and 470 allows it once per battlefield per turn), and each of the three Swains fires three times under two Bramblebacks for 9 ability Gains. TEN. The Gains are not Scores - 194.1.c lists 'Spells, Triggered Abilities and Activated Abilities that instruct them to gain one or more points' as a way of gaining points separate from 194.1.a Holding and 194.1.b Conquering (R2 = A) - so 470's cap never touches them, and 471.1.a.1 says the same from the other end for the last point: 'Notably, points Gained from sources that are not Conquer are not beholden to these restrictions.'
• THE WHOLE CURVE ON THIS CARD SET, SO NOBODY RE-DERIVES IT. Two Bramblebacks give each Swain three instances; one gives two. Three Swains and ONE Brambleback is 6 Gains plus 1 Score = SEVEN at that battlefield, one short, and it becomes a CHAIN only by taking the other Duel battlefield with a spare body for the eighth point across two scoring events. Two Swains and three Bramblebacks is 8 Gains plus 1 Score = nine, at E24 + 2 Mind + 3 Fury against this entry's E26 + 3 Mind + 2 Fury. Three Swains and three Bramblebacks is the ceiling, 12 Gains plus 1 Score = thirteen. The board declared here is the cheapest one that crosses 8 in a SINGLE scoring event.
• A CONQUER TRIGGER IS PRESENCE, NOT PARTICIPATION, WHICH IS WHY THE PACK WALKS IN TOGETHER AND WHY NOTHING HAS TO ATTACK. 383.4.c.2: 'This category of Triggered Abilities encompasses only those that are triggered from Units that were present during the Conquer action, or Abilities that reference the player that performed the Conquer action.' 383.4.c.2.a: 'The Conquer Abilities of Units are put on the Chain as Pending Items after the Unit(s) these effects correspond to are present at a Battlefield when a player gains control of it and gains 1 Victory Point from Conquering.' And 144.3: 'Players may perform multiple Units' standard move simultaneously. This is treated as one game action performed on multiple Units', with 144.3.a requiring a shared Destination and 144.3.c paying the exhausts simultaneously. So all five bodies arrive in ONE game action.
• THE BLOODLESS ROUTE IS THE ONE TO TAKE, AND IT IS FREE ON AN OPEN BATTLEFIELD. Walking into a battlefield with no enemy units applies Contested (450), and 344.2 then reads 'If Control of a Battlefield is Contested, there aren't units controlled by different players there, and the turn is in a Neutral Open State, a Showdown is opened during the next Cleanup'; 348.2.a establishes Control and 348.2.a.1 says 'This results in a Conquer if that player has not yet scored that Battlefield this turn.' No damage step at all, so all five bodies are present at the Conquer. Against a garrison instead, 465.2.c assigns the defenders' summed Might back and Swain is Might 6, so a garrison summing 6 or more kills a Swain and costs THREE Gains - which is why this line wants removal or an evacuation rather than a big attack, and why 465.1's gate ('If both Attacking and Defending units remain at this battlefield, the following Tasks become Outstanding') is the sentence to aim at. This is where the conquer-engine bucket earns its keep: seventeen of the 36 uncommitted conquer-engines manufacture exactly this bloodless Conquer. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): a Swain is not the first loss. From 4 summed Might the defender kills a Brambleback, which also costs three Gains, and each further death costs more. 383.4.c.2.a: 'The Conquer Abilities of Units are put on the Chain as Pending Items after the Unit(s) these effects correspond to are present at a Battlefield when a player gains control of it and gains 1 Victory Point from Conquering.' 365.1: 'Passive Abilities of Permanents are typically only active while on the Board.' The defender picks the deaths: 465.2.c: 'Starting with the Attacker, each player assigns an amount of damage equal to their summed Might among the other's Units.' With 465.2.c.3: 'Units must have lethal damage assigned to them in full before damage is assigned to a different Unit. Example: If a player has 5 damage to distribute among four 3 Might units, they may not choose to assign 2 damage to one of the units and 1 damage to each of the remaining 3. They must assign at least 3 damage to one, and the remaining 2 to another.' The five attack at 3 x 6 + 2 x 4 = 26. Against a garrison of summed Might G with no damage marked and nothing else changing Might in the combat, the defender choosing the deaths that cost most, the line scores 10 at G 1 to 3, 7 at 4 to 7, 4 at 8 to 13, 3 at 14 to 17, 1 at 18 to 25, and 0 from 26 (both sides die, or the garrison survives, and 466.5: 'If no Showdown or Combat is staged at this location, the player with Units remaining here Establishes Control if they didn’t already control this Battlefield.'). The open battlefield the steps take is unaffected and scores 10. Re-derived on 2026-10-26 from the rules above; the class stays BURST.
• SWAIN'S CONDITION IS PART OF THE TRIGGER CONDITION AND IS MEASURED IN THE MAIN PHASE. 383.2.a.1: 'Any additional conditional statement immediately after the Condition must be true in order for the Condition to be fulfilled. Such a conditional statement is part of the Trigger Condition and not the Effect.' So the non-token unit, the non-token gear and the spell must all have been played BEFORE the Conquer, in the same turn. Cheapest way to pay it: the third Swain IS the non-token unit if you deploy him on the finishing turn, a Seal is a gear at Energy 0, and any cheap spell closes it.
• REFUSAL, RECORDED WITH ITS SCOPE: SWAIN CAN NEVER BE BRIDGED ONTO A HOLD. OGN-286 Reckoner's Arena ('When you hold here, activate the conquer effects of units here') and SFD-030 Skyfall of Areion ('My hold effects are also conquer effects, and vice versa') both fail on the phase order, not on domains. 315.2.b.2 is 'The Turn Player Holds all Battlefields they Control' inside the Beginning Phase (315.2), and the Main Phase is 316, so at the instant of a Hold you have played nothing this turn and 383.2.a.1 makes that part of the Trigger Condition. CLAUDE.md already records this refusal for Skyfall; this walk confirms it transfers unchanged to the COLOURLESS Arena bridge, which is the one that would otherwise cost no domain. The refusal is scoped to Swain: it says nothing about the other conquer payoffs under either bridge.
• THE BATTLEFIELD IS GIVEN BACK IF THE PACK LEAVES, AND THAT DOES NOT REFUND THE POINTS. 323.6: 'Players lose control of any controlled Battlefields without their Units occupying them if the turn is in an Open State and there is no Showdown or Combat ongoing there.' The points are already Gained at the Conquer (471.1), so this costs board, not score - but on a board that has not yet won, leaving means no Hold next turn.
• RED BRAMBLEBACK'S OWN CONQUER EFFECT IS DOUBLED TOO AND SCORES NOTHING: 'When I conquer, [Buff] a friendly unit.' It names 'a friendly unit' rather than a fixed target, so each instance re-chooses and 702.3's one-buff-per-unit cap does not flatten the second - the buffs land on different bodies. Count it as Might, never as points.
• A BLOODLESS CONQUER IS NOT A FAIT ACCOMPLI, AND 46 OF THE 47 ENTRIES CITING 344.2 DID NOT SAY SO (added 2026-09-12, #187 batch 25). **316.8.b.1.a**: during a Non-Combat Showdown *"units controlled by a different player may become present at the Battlefield where the Showdown is"*, which converts it to a COMBAT Showdown in the following cleanup - so the opponent can turn your uncontested walk-in into a fight. 316.8.c is the permission (a Showdown is a Window of Opportunity for [Action] and [Reaction] cards). **The answer set is THREE CARDS, swept on the ACTOR rather than on the destination**: `OGN-173 Ride the Wind` (Chaos, E2+1), `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` (Calm/Order, E3+2) and `SFD-184 Relentless Pursuit` (Fury/Body, E2+1) - twelve printings move a friendly unit, and nine of them send it to base or need a body already there. They span three identities, so **no identity is safe**; and `OGN-262 Zenith Blade` is the worst to walk into, because it STUNS your body on the way in, and 423.1.b removes a stunned unit`s contribution to the damage step while 423.1.c keeps its full Might as the price to kill it - one 3-Energy card takes the unit and the battlefield. **[Ambush] is not a fourth answer**: 822.1.b needs a battlefield where the player already has units, and the defining feature of that board is that they have none there. **THE REMEDY IS A COUNTERSPELL, AND A FIRST VERSION OF THIS NOTABLE SAID SOMETHING FALSE THAT IS WITHDRAWN HERE (corrected within the hour, 2026-09-12).** It said that because all three answers are [Action] and 358.4 admits an Action card only as the card that CLOSES the state, the attacker - who holds Focus by 345 and priority by 335.1 - could shut them out by playing any cheap Action card first. Every step is true and the conclusion is false, because **a Showdown is a LOOP, not a single window**: 346 - *"When the last item on the chain resolves and the turn returns to an Open State during a Showdown, Focus passes, and the next Player gains both Focus and Priority"* - with 347.1.b and 347.2.a. Closing the state buys a lock-out lasting exactly that CHAIN; when it resolves the Showdown reopens, Focus passes TO THE DEFENDER, and they play their answer into an open Showdown after all. **The real sequence**: walk in, take Focus, **PASS** (acting first gains nothing); they play the answer, which closes the state as it is played; **you COUNTER it**, since 358.4`s other half now admits only [Reaction] and all eleven of the pool`s counters are Reaction, and 425.1.c refunds them nothing; all players then pass in sequence, 347.2.a ends the Showdown, and 348.2.a with 348.2.a.1 give you Control and the Conquer. The cheap counter is `OGN-045 Defy` (Calm, E1 + 1 Power, *"counter a spell that costs no more than 4 Energy and no more than one rainbow"*), which covers all three answers; `OGN-064 Wind Wall` is the unconditional one. **So the protection narrows to pairs containing CALM** - it is not the one-Energy insurance any deck can buy.

Steps

1. Over earlier turns, deploy three Swain, Visionary (E6 + 1 Mind Power each) and two Red Brambleback (E4 + 1 Fury Power each) to your base: E26 + 3 Mind + 2 Fury Power in total. [Accelerate] on Brambleback matters only if it is deployed on the finishing turn.
2. On the finishing turn, in the Main Phase, satisfy Swain's condition: play a non-token unit, a non-token gear and a spell. The third Swain can be the unit and a Seal is the gear at Energy 0.
3. Empty the target battlefield, or pick one that is open. 465.1 only opens the damage step if both attacking and defending units remain, so with no garrison there is no damage and nothing of yours dies.
4. Standard-move all three Swains and both Bramblebacks to that battlefield in ONE action (144.3, shared destination, exhausts paid simultaneously).
5. At the next Cleanup, 344.2 opens a Showdown, 348.2.a establishes Control and 348.2.a.1 makes it a Conquer: 1 Score, plus three Swain triggers at three instances each under two Bramblebacks = 9 ability Gains. Ten points from one scoring event.

How it ends

ten points on a single Conquer — one Score and nine ability Gains that 470 does not cap — for E26 + 3 Mind Power + 2 Fury Power of deployment spread over earlier turns, and on the finishing turn only a unit, a gear and a spell plus the move

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-07, conquer-engine finisher lane 2026-09-07 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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