Combo · ENGINE

Tornado Warrior empowers the Matriarch for free, and undoes it at end of turn

2 cards · chaos · verified

Pieces

Tail-Cloaked Matriarch ×1 VEN-104 · payoff · chaos
[Empower] 2 Energy + 1 Chaos Power (2 Energy + 1 Chaos Power: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) When I become [Empowered], you may choose a unit in your trash with Energy cost no more than 3 Energy and Power cost no more than 1 Power of any domain. Play it to your base, ignoring its cost.
Tornado Warrior ×1 VEN-099 · engine · chaos
[Hidden] (Hide now for 1 Power of any domain to react with later for 0 Energy.) When you play me from face down, you may empower something here. Disempower it at end of turn.

Payoff

Repeatable card advantage

Deck

Legend domains cover Chaos — both cards are mono-Chaos, so any Chaos legend runs it.

Prerequisites

Tornado Warrior is [Hidden], and the 2026-09-04 walk found the entry had understated its price by two whole costs. 811.1.b: 'you may pay [A] to hide this facedown at a battlefield you control that doesn't already have a facedown card hidden there … Beginning on the next turn, this gains [Reaction] and you may play this, ignoring its base cost.' So each cycle costs (a) 1 Power to hide, which by 164.2.b normally recycles a rune off your board for good, (b) a full turn of delay, and (c) a battlefield you control with no other facedown card on it. 811.1.d.1 — 'A hidden permanent must be played to that battlefield' — pins where he lands, and the Matriarch has to be standing there for 'empower something here' to reach her. CORRECTED 2026-10-24 (#452): not for good. 416.1.b: 'Runes are Recycled to the Rune Deck.' 430.1 channels it again when the deck reaches it, so a recycled rune is off the board on every turn until the Rune Deck runs dry, which once a rune is recycled is T7 at the earliest going first and T6 at the earliest going second with only the Channel Phase's two a turn (161.2.a, 315.3.b, 485.7); each two more runes recycled push it a turn later, and a card that channels more (430.2) brings it back sooner. The cycle's price is unchanged for those turns.
The Matriarch's payoff has a hard ceiling: a unit in your trash with Energy cost no more than 3 AND Power cost no more than 1, and it arrives at your BASE, entering exhausted (143.4). If the trash holds no such unit the trigger resolves into nothing — declare the trash contents, do not assume them.
One Tornado Warrior per empower, so this costs a card per cycle. The no-card version is paying the Matriarch's own [Empower] cost (2 Energy + 1 Chaos Power), and that is a single use: 827.1.c.1 makes Empower short for '[Cost]: Empower this. Play only if not Empowered.'
Two alternatives outside mono-Chaos, both checked in the walk. VEN-035 Sanction (Calm, E3 P1, Reaction) has the same self-cleanup with no hide tax and no delay, but costs a card AND 1 Power, and moves the line to calm+chaos where kharox-sanction-burn already runs this exact trick. VEN-082 Profiteer (Body, E4, NO Power) spends no rune and has no delay, but CORRECTION to the L7 note that first proposed it: Profiteer is a TRANSFER, not a source — 'you may disempower something you control to empower a legend, unit, or gear' needs something already Empowered, so it cannot start the first cycle by itself. Sanction is already the anchor of the sanction-empower-unit pattern and already has kharox-sanction-burn, so a Sanction version would be the same trick with a different payoff.
(Original wording, kept for the record: Tornado Warrior must arrive at the Matriarch's location — 'empower something HERE'.)
323.7 — EACH CYCLE'S CARD IS AT RISK BETWEEN THE HIDE AND THE FLIP. Tornado Warrior sits facedown for a whole turn (811.1.b), and 323.7 removes Hidden cards from battlefields "not controlled by the same player" and places them "in their owner's Trash" — 466.5.c the moment Control is established. Losing that battlefield in the window costs the card as well as the empower.

Steps

Tail-Cloaked Matriarch on the board, not Empowered.
Play Tornado Warrior from face down at that battlefield (811.1.d.1), having hidden him there on an earlier turn for 1 Power (811.1.b): 'you may empower something here' — empower the Matriarch for free. 441.3.a lets any Game Effect empower, and 441.2.a is the moment she BECOMES Empowered, which is what her trigger reads.
Her trigger fires: play a unit from your trash with Energy cost 3 or less and Power cost 1 or less to your base, ignoring its cost.
At end of turn Tornado Warrior's own delayed clause disempowers her, so 441.1.b ('An Empowered Game Object can not be Empowered') stops blocking and the next Tornado Warrior can do it again.

How it ends

engine — one free unit out of the trash per empower; the real price per cycle is one card, 1 Power to hide (a rune off the board for good) and a turn of delay, and the self-cleanup is what makes it repeatable at all; CORRECTED 2026-10-24 (#452): the rune is off the board until the Rune Deck runs dry (416.1.b, 430.1), not for good

Sources

Walked here, in this project

Hunt L7 — Chaos (docs/phase0/hunt3/L7-chaos.md), candidate C3 2026-09-04 record
Hand walk 2026-09-04 2026-09-04 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 2026-09-04 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-04-nine-domain-lens-candidates.md), issue #29. Both texts verified verbatim against data/corpus_flat.txt on 2026-09-04. The point of the line is that Tornado Warrior is not just a free empowerer, it is a free empowerer that CLEANS UP AFTER ITSELF: 441.1.b would otherwise lock the Matriarch out after the first empower, and her own [Empower] ability is single-use by 827.1.c.1. PRODUCES IS EMPTY ON PURPOSE — data/features.json has no outcome for 'free replay out of the trash', and features.json is capped at ~20 entries by design, so nothing was invented. Trap check: no [Temporary]; units enter exhausted (143.4) and the entry says the revived body lands at your base; no attack trigger; no rune recycled; no Awaken Energy. WALK: holds after a rewrite that triples the stated price. The mechanism is sound — 441.3.a, 441.2.a, 441.1.b and 827.1.c.1 all check out, and Tornado Warrior's end-of-turn disempower is what clears 441.1.b for the next cycle. But [Hidden] is not free: 811.1.b charges 1 Power to hide, delays the play to the following turn, and requires a battlefield you control with no other facedown card, while 811.1.d.1 pins where he lands. Two cheaper orderings were tried before accepting the price, per the project rule; neither is free, and the Profiteer claim from the L7 document was wrong and is corrected in prerequisites. [2026-09-06, #157: tagged card-advantage-engine after all — by then the catalogue had been using that value for free replays out of the trash (last-rites-lunar-boon-trash-recursion, kennen-stargazer-arena-flow), so the precedent in the file beat this note.]

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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