Combo · CHAIN · 8 points

Swain, Visionary ×3 — conquer both battlefields in one turn

5 cards · mind · 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.

• Jayce, Brilliant Inventor ×1 VEN-068 · engine · mind

  When you play me or the first time you play a non-token gear each turn, you may ready something besides me that's exhausted.

• Retreat ×1 OGN-104 · engine · mind

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Return a friendly unit to its owner's hand. Its owner channels 1 rune exhausted.

Payoff

Deck

• Legend domains cover Mind (Swain) — with the loop, Mind+Order.

Prerequisites

• Three Swains ready at base at the start of the turn (played the previous turn — units enter exhausted, 143.4). Neither battlefield scored yet this turn.
• The loop satisfies Swain's clause every pass (Forge = gear, Ekko = unit, Shadow's Call = spell).
• Points: 2 × (N + 1) for N Swains. N=3: 8 from zero. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): the formula counts every Swain as present at both Conquers, and after a combat a dead one is not. 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.' So each Conquer is 1 + (surviving Swains), and a Swain that died at A is not at B. The three Swains attack at 6 each, 18 in all. 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, each Conquer scores: an empty battlefield, since nobody fights (316.8.b.1: 'Showdowns that occur as a result of a player moving to an empty Battlefield are a stand-alone Phase and do not create a Combat.'), 4; G 1 to 5, 4; 6 to 11, 3 (a Swain dies); 12 to 17, 2; 18 or more, 0 (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.'). A Swain lost at A costs a point at both battlefields, so one death at A leaves 3 + 3 = 6 at most, and one death at B alone leaves 4 + 3 = 7. Re-derived on 2026-10-26 from the rules above. THE DECLARED QUANTITIES STILL REACH 8, so the class stays CHAIN: eight when both battlefields are empty or garrisoned with 1 to 5 summed Might.
• WHAT ANSWERS THIS, AND WHEN (added 2026-09-13, #200). FIRST THE CREDENTIAL, BECAUSE IT IS HALF THE ANSWER AND SAYING WHY A LINE IS HARD TO ANSWER BEATS SAYING NOTHING. This line's payoff is `VEN-065 Swain, Visionary`, three of them at **Might 6**, and `OGN-169 Gust` — the pool's only cheap Reaction-speed single-target answer, Chaos at **E1** — is gated at *"3 :rb_might: or less"*. The only other Reaction-speed single-target answer in the pool is `UNL-128 Star-Crossed` (Chaos, E3 P1), which returns *"a friendly unit and an enemy unit"* — AND, both of them —, so answering this body in the window costs the answerer one of their own. BUT THIS LINE OPENS THE WINDOW ITS SIBLINGS DO NOT: it Conquers TWO battlefields, so it opens a Showdown at each, and 806.1.c.1 puts every `[Action]` removal inside them — `OGS-012 Blast of Power` (Order, E6 + 1 Power, *"[Action] Kill a unit at a battlefield"*) reaches a Might-6 Swain there, and `OGN-229 Vengeance` (Order, E4 + 2 Power, *"Kill a unit."*) does it on the opponent's own turn. THREE SWAINS MEANS THREE ANSWERS NEEDED, which is the real reason this line is robust. AND A SECOND WINDOW IS GUARANTEED BY THE RULES: the spell this line spends. **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 thing the process stops for, and **425.1.c** with **425.1.c.1** refunds nothing. It spends `OGN-104 Retreat` (**E1**). AND THE COUNTER-CHOICE MATTERS, WHICH IS A SENTENCE A PLAYER CAN USE: 425.1.b makes a countered card *"not considered to have been played"*, so it goes to the TRASH — where this shell's own Forge recycles it. `UNL-131 Abandon` returns a countered spell *"to its owner's hand instead of putting it in their trash"*, so **Abandon is the WRONG counter to use against this loop**: it hands the card straight back. Any of the other ten is better. AND THE POOL'S ONE ANSWER TO THAT WINDOW IS LEGAL HERE: swept on the word *countered*, only two cards mention it and only one protects anything but itself — `VEN-069 Mel, Newly Awakened` (**mono-Mind**, E4 + 1 Power, M4), *"[Empower] :rb_energy_3:"* then *"Your spells and abilities can't be countered."* 441.2 makes Empowered a STATE, so once armed it is permanent, and this identity contains Mind. She is herself a Might-4 unit, so by the paragraph above she too is above Gust's ceiling.

Steps

1. Standard-Move the three ready Swains base -> battlefield A as one action (144.3); win and Establish Control. Conquer A: the Score's own point, then 1 per Swain (R2 = A makes those ability Gains) = 4. All three are now exhausted at A. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): 4 only if all three Swains survived the combat at A: an empty battlefield, or a garrison of 1 to 5 summed Might; 3 from 6 to 11, 2 from 12 to 17, 0 from 18 (the points notable).
2. Swain, Visionary has NO [Ganking], so 144.4.c rules out A -> B as a single Standard Move: each Swain goes A -> base -> B, two moves and therefore TWO readies each, six in all. Retreating a Swain and replaying it does not help - 143.4 makes it enter exhausted, which is what killed the first version of this entry.
3. Jayce supplies the readies: 'when you play me' fires on every play, while 'the first time you play a non-token gear each turn' fires once in the turn however many Jayce objects appear, because the loop plays Forge every pass. Readies = Jayce plays + 1, so five Jayce plays, each 6E + 1P plus a Retreat (1E) and the Retreat's redraw (1E + 1 Mind): about 40 Energy and 10 Power.
4. Conquer B the same way: 1 + 3 = 4. Total 8 in one turn, across two scoring events, with no opponent turn in between - which is what the CHAIN class means. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): 1 + 3 only with all three Swains alive at B. Eight needs no Swain lost at either battlefield, which is both empty or garrisoned with 1 to 5 summed Might (the points notable).

How it ends

8 points in one turn

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hunt v2 lens L4, entry L4-02 2026-09-02 record
• REFUTE pass 2026-09-03 2026-09-03 record
• Hand walk 2026-09-04 2026-09-04 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue