Combo · ENGINE

Wind and Ghosts clears the garrison — Nasus conquers without ever being assigned damage

4 cards · chaos + calm · verified

Pieces

• Wind and Ghosts ×3 VEN-106 · enabler · chaos

  [Action] (Play on your turn or in showdowns.) Choose a unit at a battlefield. If it has 3 Might or less, banish it. Otherwise, return it to its owner's hand.

• Nasus, Ascended ×1 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 Calm/Chaos legend — Nasus is Calm and Wind and Ghosts is Chaos (103.1.b.1). Calm/Chaos is a printed legend pair.

Prerequisites

• TWO POINTS AND NO DAMAGE STEP. Nasus takes the Attacker designation (464.2.c.1, 464.2.c.3), the Combat Showdown stays Open for plays (464.2.f.1, 464.2.g), and Wind and Ghosts removes the lone defender. 465.1 then reads 'If both Attacking and Defending units remain at this battlefield, the following Tasks become Outstanding' — they do not, so no damage is ever assigned. 466.3.a gives you the combat, 466.5 establishes Control and 466.5.d makes it a Conquer (+1, a 469.1 Score); Nasus's Empowered clause adds a second (+1, a 194.1.c Gain under R2 = A).
• IT IS THE CONQUER HALF OF THE FAMILY, WHICH IS WHY IT IS NOT draven-rebuke-bloodless-combat WITH A CARD SWAPPED. That entry's payoff is 'the first time I win a combat each turn', capped by 383.3.e.1; this one's is 'When I CONQUER', which has no such clause and does not care whether a combat happened at all. Different removal numbers too: Rebuke is E2 + TWO Chaos Power and only bounces; Wind and Ghosts is E3 + ONE Power and BANISHES anything of 3 Might or less, so a small defender cannot be replayed. The two lines share no card and no legend pair.
• THE BLOODLESS CONQUER IS ANTI-SYNERGIC WITH THE ENTIRE EXCESS-DAMAGE FAMILY, AND THAT IS THE TRAP THIS SHAPE HIDES. Excess damage under R28 = A is attacking Might that never got ASSIGNED, and 465.1 means nothing is assigned at all — so a combat won this way generates ZERO excess. Every card reading 'if you assigned N or more excess damage' is switched off by it: OGN-034 Tryndamere, SFD-120 Sivir, UNL-018 Yeti Brawler, UNL-187 Piltover Enforcer, UNL-188 Hextech Gauntlets and UNL-217 Trapping Grounds. Nasus is the right payoff here precisely because his trigger has no threshold on it. tryndamere-hextech-gauntlets-enforcer is the opposite line and the two are mutually exclusive in principle, not only by domain.
• AN 8-ENERGY BODY WITH [Deflect 2] IS WHAT MAKES THE PROTECTION WORTH BUYING. 809.1.c and 809.1.d already tax an opponent two rainbow to CHOOSE Nasus with a spell or ability; combat damage chooses nothing, so before this line the way to answer him was to out-Might him in a combat. 465.1 removes that route as well. Nothing dies on your side, so no Deathknell and no 808.1.d.1 question arises.
• GETTING HIM EMPOWERED IS THE REAL COST AND IT IS NOT FREE HERE. The printed route is his own [Empower] 8 Energy, permanent once reached (441.1.a, 441.2). In THIS identity the cheap route is VEN-035 Sanction (Calm, E3 P1, [Reaction], 'Empower a unit. Disempower it at end of turn') — one turn of Empowered Nasus for four resources, which is enough because the conquer happens on the turn you cast it. wild-claw-nasus-ascended-empowered is the other route and it is Body/Calm, so it can never share this shell (103.1.b.4). Sanction is deliberately not in uses: it is a route to a prerequisite, not an ingredient of the loop.
• IT NEEDS A GARRISON OF EXACTLY ONE. Wind and Ghosts removes one unit. Against two defenders 465.1's gate opens after all and 465.2.c has each side assign its summed Might — Nasus at 8 survives most garrisons, but he is then assigned damage and the point of the line is lost. Two copies in one turn is 6 Energy + 2 Chaos Power. And 461 still needs a garrison to exist at all: walking into an empty battlefield is no attack (807.1.d, 383.4.e) and simply Conquers by Non-Combat Showdown (316.8.b.1, 348.2.a.1) for the ordinary point, with Nasus's clause firing anyway since it says only 'When I conquer'.
• ONE CONQUER PER BATTLEFIELD PER 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 a turn. Eight points is four attacks.
• THE OTHER VEN-106 ENTRY IS A DIFFERENT MECHANISM. moonlight-affliction-wind-and-ghosts-banish pairs it with UNL-066 Moonlight Affliction so that the unfloored -10 Might reduction drops any printed body to 3 or less and the banish half becomes permanent removal. That line never enters a combat; this one is defined by entering one, and 465.1 is the rule it turns on. Nothing is shared but the spell.

Steps

1. Have Nasus, Ascended on the board and Empowered — his own 8-Energy [Empower], or Sanction for the turn.
2. Standard-move him to an enemy battlefield held by a single unit, paying his exhaust (144.2, 144.4). Contested stages the Combat and he takes the Attacker designation.
3. The Combat opens into its Showdown; 464.2.f.1 leaves the State Open and 464.2.g permits plays on the Chain.
4. Cast Wind and Ghosts on the defender: banished if it has 3 Might or less, returned to hand otherwise.
5. 465.1 finds no Defending units, so the damage step never becomes Outstanding and Nasus is assigned nothing.
6. 466.3.a: you are the only player with units there, so you won. 466.5 and 466.5.d establish Control as a Conquer — 1 point — and Nasus's '[Empowered][>] When I conquer, you score 1 point' adds the second.

Per iteration

+2 points per attack for 3 Energy + 1 Chaos Power, and Nasus takes no damage

How it ends

engine — 2 points per attack with no damage assigned to either side, one attack per battlefield per turn; eight points is four attacks

Sources

Walked here, in this project

• Hand walk 2026-09-06 2026-09-06 record
• Hand walk 2026-09-06, issue #118 (docs/phase0/walks/2026-09-06-2v2-showdown-action-lens.md) — the '[Action] spell that removes a unit at a battlefield' family recorded as a synergy shape 2026-09-06 record
• Issue #155 — Engine × payoff: the master payoff inventory listing VEN-046 Nasus with the parenthetical '(needs 8 Energy to Empower first)' 2026-09-06

Walked against Core Rules 2026-07-16

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