Combo · ENGINE
Wild Claw plays Nasus AND Empowers him — one card for a 16-Energy setup
Pieces
- Wild Claw ×3
VEN-089 · enabler · body
Look at the top 5 cards of your Main Deck. You may banish a unit or gear from among them and play it, reducing its Energy cost by 5 Energy. Recycle the rest. Then you may do this: Empower it. (It becomes Empowered if it's not already.)
- Nasus, Ascended ×3
VEN-046 · payoff · calm
[Deflect 2] (Opponents must pay 2 Power of any domain to choose me with a spell or ability.) [Empower] 8 Energy (8 Energy: Empower me. Use only if not Empowered.) [Empowered][>] When I conquer, you score 1 point.
Payoff
Deck
- A Body/Calm legend — Wild Claw is Body and Nasus is Calm (103.1.b.1). Body/Calm is a printed legend pair.
Prerequisites
- AN ABILITY THAT EMPOWERS NEVER PAYS THE TARGET'S PRINTED [Empower] COST, AND THAT IS WORTH SIX ENERGY AND A TURN HERE. 441.1: 'Empowering is the act of rendering one or more Game Objects Empowered.' Wild Claw's 'Then you may do this: Empower it' performs that act directly; 827.1.c.3 governs 'determining a card's Empower cost' and so has nothing to say about a route that never determines one. 441.1.a makes Empowered a binary state and 441.2 makes it a permanent board state, and Wild Claw attaches no 'disempower at end of turn' clause — unlike VEN-035 Sanction, which does. So the Empower is permanent.
- THE ARITHMETIC, AGAINST THE HONEST ALTERNATIVE. The hard way is Nasus at 8 Energy + 1 Calm Power, then his own [Empower] at 8 Energy: SIXTEEN ENERGY plus a Power, and against a Rune Deck of exactly 12 (161.2.a) that is two turns. Wild Claw is 7 Energy + 1 Body Power and plays him at 8 - 5 = 3 Energy + 1 Calm Power, Empowered: TEN ENERGY and two Power, in one Main Phase, from a card that was still in the deck.
- THE RANDOMNESS IS THE COST AND IT IS MEASURED, NOT WAVED AT. 'Look at the top 5 cards of your Main Deck' samples a 39-card deck — 103.2 counts the Chosen Champion inside the 40 and 103.2.a.1 puts it in the Champion Zone before play. With three copies of Nasus the chance he is in that five is 1 - C(36,5)/C(39,5) = 34.5%; with two it is 24.3% and with one 12.8%. Three copies of Wild Claw give three looks. Looking never Burns Out even on a short deck — 431.1.c: 'that player looks at or Reveals as many as possible, but does not Burn Out' — so a failed look costs the spell and nothing else, and Wild Claw still plays any other big unit or gear it finds at 5 Energy off.
- HE STILL CANNOT CONQUER THE TURN HE ARRIVES. 143.4 makes units enter the Board exhausted and 144.2 makes the Standard Move cost that exhaust, so the point starts from the next Awakening (315.1.b). Wild Claw grants no Accelerate.
- ONE POINT PER CONQUER, WHICH IS ONE A TURN. 469.1 defines Conquer as gaining Control of a battlefield 'they did not yet Score this turn' and Nasus has no [Ganking], so 144.4 keeps him to one battlefield per turn. R2 = A keeps his 'you score 1 point' outside 470's per-battlefield cap (194.1.c, a Gain by ability), which matters only when a conquer multiplier is added — see below. Unlike Tryndamere's, his trigger has NO excess-damage threshold and is not worded 'after an attack', so a Non-Combat Showdown conquer of an open battlefield (316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1) scores it too.
- IT IS THE ENABLER FOR THE TWO NASUS BURSTS, NOT A COMPETITOR TO THEM. nasus-ascended-brambleback-conquer (VEN-046 x2 + UNL-029 x3) and nasus-ascended-sentinel-arena-hold both assume an Empowered Nasus already standing on the board and neither prices the 8 Energy that gets him there. Red Brambleback is Fury, so it cannot share this line's Body/Calm identity (103.1.b.4) and the two are alternatives; the Blue Sentinel line is Mind and likewise. What travels is the fact, not the cards.
- [Deflect 2] IS PART OF WHY HE IS WORTH THE SETUP: 809.1.c and 809.1.d make an opponent pay two rainbow to CHOOSE him with a spell or ability, so the usual answer to a 10-Energy investment is taxed. It does not protect him in combat.
- VEN-163 Risen Altar ('[Empower] costs of your units here cost [1] or [A] less') is in zero entries and is the wrong tool here: it discounts the printed [Empower] cost this line never pays. VEN-035 Sanction (Calm, 3 Energy + 1 Power, [Reaction], 'Empower a unit. Disempower it at end of turn') is the right tool on a turn you want the point NOW and cannot afford ten Energy — one turn of Empowered Nasus for 4 resources — and it is mono-Calm, so it fits either identity. Deliberately not in uses: it is a different, temporary route to the same state.
Steps
- Cast Wild Claw for 7 Energy + 1 Body Power and look at the top five cards of your Main Deck.
- If Nasus, Ascended is among them, banish him from the five and play him, reducing his Energy cost by 5 — 3 Energy + 1 Calm Power. Recycle the other four to the bottom (416.1.a).
- Take the spell's last clause: Empower him. 441.1 performs the act directly, so his printed 8-Energy [Empower] cost is never paid, and 441.2 makes the state permanent.
- He entered exhausted (143.4). From the next Awakening, Standard-move him to a battlefield and take it.
- '[Empowered][>] When I conquer, you score 1 point' — one point per conquer, for as long as he keeps conquering.
How it ends
engine — 1 point per conquer once Nasus is Empowered, which this line reaches for 10 Energy and 2 Power in one Main Phase instead of 16 Energy across two turns
Sources
Walked here, in this project
- Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record
- Issue #155 — Engine × payoff: the master payoff inventory, which lists VEN-046 Nasus with the parenthetical '(needs 8 Energy to Empower first)' and never asks what pays it 2026-09-06
- Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #153 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-orphan-synergy-rules.md) — an ability that Empowers performs the act directly and never pays the target's printed [Empower] cost 2026-09-06 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 2026-09-06 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-engine-payoff-walk.md). VEN-089 Wild Claw was in ZERO entries; the sweep that found it was `grep -i empower data/corpus_flat.txt` with no brackets, per the project's own rule that a keyword lens opens on the bare word — the bracketed form misses every card that grants the state in prose, and Wild Claw's clause is 'Then you may do this: Empower it'. The #153 fact it stands on (an Empower granted by an ability skips the printed [Empower] cost) had been applied only to gear, through VEN-062 Hextech Formula; this is the same fact reaching a unit, and the unit it reaches is the one whose [Empower] cost is the highest in the pool. Card text verbatim from data/corpus_flat.txt; 103.2/103.2.a.1/103.2.b/103.1.b.1/103.1.b.4, 143.4, 144.2, 144.4, 161.2.a, 194.1.c, 315.1.b, 316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1, 416.1.a, 431.1.c, 441.1/441.1.a/441.1.b/441.1.c/441.2, 469.1, 470, 809.1.c/809.1.d and 827.1.c.3 opened and read. The 34.5% figure is 1 - C(36,5)/C(39,5) computed for three copies in a 39-card deck. Ban check: neither VEN-089 nor VEN-046 carries a [BANNED marker, and neither is a Signature card. Trap check: no [Temporary]; no [Repeat]; no token; no recall; the banish is Wild Claw's own instruction and the card is PLAYED from banishment by the same clause, so 108.6.c never comes up; looking does not Burn Out (431.1.c). Depends on R2 = A and on no open reading.
Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16