Combo · CHAIN · 8 points

Shurelya's Requiem carries the Swains across — the double conquer off one ordinary turn

7 cards · mind + calm · 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.

• Shurelya's Requiem ×1 SFD-192 · engine · calm/mind

  [Unique] (Your deck can have only 1 card with this name.) [Equip] 1 Power of any domain (1 Power of any domain: Attach this to a unit you control.) When you play this, ready your units.

  Your units here have [Ganking]. (We can move from battlefield to battlefield.)

• Cloth Armor ×1 SFD-064 · enabler · mind

  [Quick-Draw] (This has [Reaction]. When you play it, attach it to a unit you control.) [Equip] 1 Mind Power (1 Mind Power: Attach this to a unit you control.)

  [Shield 2] (+2 Might while I'm a defender.)

• Decree of Insight ×1 VEN-061 · enabler · mind

  [Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Ignore [Deflect] while paying this spell's cost. Give an enemy Body (1 Body Power) unit -5 Might this turn.

• Watchful Sentry ×1 OGN-096 · enabler · mind

  [Deathknell] — Draw 1. (When I die, get the effect.)

Payoff

Deck

• SFD-192 Shurelya's Requiem is a SIGNATURE card tagged Ornn, so 103.2.d.2 forces a Ornn legend that also covers mind + calm: SFD-189 Fire Below the Mountain — the only one. Domain-legal legends without the Ornn tag cannot run the list. (Rebuilt from the census by test/legend-lines.test.ts, 2026-09-07; an earlier line named legends that cannot hold a Ornn Signature card.)
• Two battlefields on the table, which is what a Duel gives (485.4), and the Swains ready at Awaken.

Prerequisites

• THIS IS swain-double-conquer WITHOUT THE LOOP, AND THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT. That entry carries needs: ['infinite-energy','infinite-power'] and prices itself at 'about 40 Energy and 10 Power', because it buys six separate readies out of five Jayce, Brilliant Inventor plays so that each Swain can walk A -> base -> B. Shurelya's Requiem replaces every one of them with one card: 'When you play this, ready your units' is a MASS ready, and '[Effect] Your units here have [Ganking]' turns the two-leg walk into one leg (144.4.c.1: 'Units with Ganking may use their Standard Move to Move from Battlefield to Battlefield').
• The finishing turn, priced against the entry's own quantities: Cloth Armor E1, Decree of Insight E1, Watchful Sentry E2, Shurelya's Requiem E4 + 2 Power, and 1 rainbow to [Equip] it. **8 Energy and 3 Power** — an ordinary twelve-rune turn, against a line that could not be attempted outside an infinite-energy engine.
• THE ORDER OF THE GEAR IS FORCED and it is the one thing that looks wrong until it is walked. Swain's condition needs a non-token gear played THIS TURN and it is checked on each Conquer, so a gear must be down before the first one — but Shurelya's own ready is only useful AFTER it, since the Swains are already ready at Awaken. Playing Shurelya's early wastes the ready and leaves nothing to stand the Swains up at A. Hence a second, throwaway E1 gear.
• Points, checked against the declared quantities: Conquer A is 1 Score (469.1, capped at one per battlefield per turn by 470) plus 1 per Swain as an ability Gain (194.1.c, R2 = A, uncapped) = 4. Conquer B is the same 4, and 470's cap is per battlefield so B is untouched by A. 8 exactly, in two scoring events, with no opponent turn between them — CHAIN.
• It is 8 EXACTLY, so nothing may be lost. Three Swains are required; two give 6. If a Swain dies in the combat at A the line stops at 6 or 7, which is the honest fragility and the reason the catalogued version buys redundancy with the loop instead. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): the fragility is right and the numbers are not quite: a Swain that dies at A stops the line at 6 at most, not 6 or 7, because it is missing at B as well. 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 three Swains attack A at 6 each, 18 in all; at B the one wearing Shurelya's Requiem attacks at 8 (its Might Bonus is +2), 20 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, Conquer A scores: an empty battlefield, 4 (316.8.b.1); G 1 to 5, 4; 6 to 11, 3; 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.'). Conquer B with all three Swains: G 1 to 5, 4; 6 to 11, 3; 12 to 19, 2; 20 or more, 0. One Swain lost at A leaves 3 + 3 = 6 at most; one lost only at B 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.
• Leaving A is legal and costs nothing that matters. 190.4.c takes Control of A away in the following cleanup once no units of yours remain there — but A was already Scored this turn, so 470 would have refused a second Score anyway.
• In 2v2 it is three points short: 489.3 sets the Victory Score at 11 against 194.3's 8.
• Shurelya's is [Unique] — one copy in the deck (Tournament Rules and the card's own reminder), which is all this needs, because one mass ready covers all three Swains at once where Jayce's readies one unit at a time.
• VEN-041 / VEN-171 Riven, Shattered (Calm, E3 P1 M3, [Weaponmaster]) is the Weaponmaster body for Calm/Mind: she attaches Shurelya’s Requiem (one rainbow) for nothing on the turn she is played, and her own "When I attack, choose an enemy unit here. Deal 2 to it for each Equipment attached to me" makes her the only Weaponmaster that pays for what it accumulates. In no entry before this note (#161, 2026-09-06).
• THE SPELL LEG HAS A TARGET DEPENDENCY (#166 cross-audit, 2026-09-07): VEN-061 Decree of Insight reads "Give an enemy Body unit -5 Might", so against an opponent with no Body unit on the board it has no legal target and cannot be played — Swain's three-part condition then fails and all six ability points evaporate. Any Calm or Mind spell you can always cast fills the leg; OGN-104 Retreat (Mind, E1) targets a friendly unit and can bounce the Watchful Sentry after it has already counted as the non-token unit played this turn.
• 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.
• OGN-133 FLURRY OF BLADES DOES NOT REACH THIS BODY, AND THE CARD'S OWN TEXT IS WHY. OGN-096 Watchful Sentry satisfies Swain's 'non-token unit played this turn' clause, and this entry declares it in zone BASE because the clause it serves reads "your units" with no location - it never has to leave. OGN-133 Flurry of Blades is Body, E1, "[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Deal 1 to all units at battlefields", so a body at your base is outside it entirely; 143.2.a would kill it on 1 damage if it were ever there, which is exactly why the body stays home. THE BODY IS STILL ANSWERABLE, JUST NOT BY THE SWEEPER: what reaches a base is single-target removal with no location clause - OGN-229 Vengeance (Order, 4 Energy + 2 Power, "Kill a unit.") is the pool's only one with neither a location clause nor any other gate, with VEN-154 Public Execution (Body/Order, 2 Energy + 1 Power) and SFD-158 Sandshifter (Order, 5 Energy + 2 Power, Might 3 or less) beside it. And none of the three carries [Reaction], so the answer has to be cast on the opponent's own turn, a full turn ahead and fully telegraphed. OGN-133 Flurry of Blades is Body, E1: "[Reaction] (Play any time, even before spells and abilities resolve.) Deal 1 to all units at battlefields." 143.2.a kills on marked damage at or above Might, so it kills every 1-Might body on the board SIMULTANEOUSLY however many there are - the binding constraint is Might PER BODY, not the number of bodies, so no amount of going wider answers it - and 813.1.c.1 lets it land in any Closed State on either player's turn. CORRECTED 2026-09-13: this sentence read that the repairs are narrow and that UNL-077 Soul Shepherd is the ONLY permanent board-wide one, which narrowed the shell to Mind. It is not. FIVE OF THE SIX DOMAINS PRINT A FIX (re-swept 2026-09-13, every hit read rather than classified from the match): board-wide and ungated are VEN-018 Rage Amplifier (fury, E4 + 1 Power, a GEAR - so no body slot and no location clause - and STRICTLY WIDER than the Shepherd, since "Your units have +1 [M]" reaches every unit and not only tokens), UNL-077 Soul Shepherd (mind), UNL-147 Baron Nashor (chaos, E10 + 3 Power, +2) and UNL-191 Wuju Master (calm/body, a LEGEND at [Level 6], so no card slot at all); location-scoped, which costs a body slot AND fills one of the seven, are OGS-013 Garen, Commander and OGN-243 Darius, Executioner (both order). Excluded and named so nobody re-finds them: OGN-294 Trifarian War Camp, UNL-T03 Brush and VEN-159 Kinkou Temple are BATTLEFIELDS, which 485.4.a with 103.4.c makes mutually exclusive with a battlefield the line already needs; OGN-151 Lee Sin, Centered is buff-gated and location-scoped; SFD-089 Rumble, Scrapper is Mech-scoped; and VEN-130 Aurok General reaches only units that are [Empowered], which a token never is. UNL-077 Soul Shepherd ("Your token units have +1 Might") is one of them and is Mind, OGN-266 Siphon Power is one turn and one battlefield, and UNL-T03 Brush reaches only Bird, Cat, Dog, Poro and Ivern units.
• 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. Earlier turns: land three Swain, Visionary. Awaken (315.1.b) readies them on the finishing turn.
2. Main Phase: play Cloth Armor (E1, the non-token gear), Decree of Insight (E1, the spell) and Watchful Sentry (E2, the non-token unit). Swain's three-part condition is now satisfied for the rest of the turn.
3. Standard-Move all three Swains from base to battlefield A as ONE action (144.3, shared destination; 144.4.a). Each exhausts as its own cost (144.2).
4. Win at A and establish Control: that is a Conquer (466.5.d). 1 point from the Score, then each Swain's trigger scores 1 — four points. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): four only if all three Swains survived: an empty battlefield, or a garrison of 1 to 5 summed Might (the fragility notable).
5. Play Shurelya's Requiem (E4 + 2 Power). 'When you play this, ready your units' stands all three Swains back up.
6. [Equip] Shurelya's to one of the Swains at A for 1 rainbow. Its Effect now grants [Ganking] to your units there.
7. Standard-Move all three from A to B as one action — 144.4.c.1 allows battlefield to battlefield with [Ganking], and 190.4.c only costs you Control of A, which you had already Scored.
8. Conquer B: 1 Score plus 3 ability Gains. Eight points across two scoring events in one turn, and 194.2 wins it in the cleanup. CORRECTED 2026-10-26 (#472, the follow-up PR #471 listed for #464): eight only with all three Swains alive at B, which needs both garrisons at 1 to 5 summed Might or the battlefields empty (the fragility notable).

How it ends

eight points in one turn across two Conquers, for 8 Energy and 3 Power on the finishing turn and no loop at all

Sources

Published elsewhere

• Riftbound Core Rules, Last Updated 2026-07-16 (data/Riftbound-Core-Rules-2026-07-16.txt) 2026-07-16
• Issue #161 (GitHub) 2026-09-06

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #161 — uncatalogued feeders of the 36 finishers 2026-09-06 record

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

Match a deck list against the whole catalogue