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B · Engine & Sequencing · §7Core Engine: Reversible Showdowns

B · Engine & Sequencing · §7

Core Engine: Reversible Showdowns

The Legend is an evacuation tool before Empower and a tempo engine after it — but only on your turn.

Akali, Rogue Assassin can Empower for 3 Energy and one Power. Her Action exhausts the Legend to move a friendly unit in a showdown to base, but only on your turn. If the Legend is Empowered, the moved unit is readied.◆src

Before Empower — an evacuation tool

You can attack, force combat, observe opposing reactions, return the unit to base, and preserve it for a later turn. The unit remains in whatever readiness state results from the sequence, so the retreat does not automatically create another attack.

After Empower — a tempo engine

Move a ready unit to a battlefield, open or enter a showdown, force the opponent to commit, exhaust the Legend, move the unit to base, ready it, and move it to another battlefield later in the turn. The second battlefield does not need to be the original objective — the threat of the first conquest can exist primarily to pull resources away from the second.

What the opponent can do

Rules noteThe Legend is not blanket protection. It works only on your turn, the unit must already be in a showdown, the Legend must be ready, the opponent can react before the activation resolves, and moving the unit may concede the current battlefield.

The strongest opponent response is often simply to spend the minimum necessary and force you to decide whether preserving the unit is worth abandoning the point.

The central skill test

Strategy thesisThe key decision is not whether you can retreat. It is whether the opponent’s commitment has crossed the threshold that makes retreat profitable.

That threshold can be a premium combat trick, a removal spell, multiple defenders committed to one location, an activated ability that cannot be reused this turn, enough Energy spent that another battlefield becomes vulnerable, or a card whose value depends on combat completing favorably.