Comprehensive Rules

100.1The match

1. 100.1aA match is a co-op run of exactly 10 rounds for 1 to 4 players.
2. 100.1bStandard is the only live ruleset. The two live queue modes, Ranked and Unranked, both run it unchanged; they differ only in whether the match moves hidden matchmaking rating and feeds it into nemesis selection. Unranked is the default and moves nothing.
3. 100.1cEvery match runs on the server. There is no offline, local, or single-player ruleset; a solo run uses the same rules as a four-player run.
4. 100.1dIn multiplayer, each boss result and each nemesis result is team-shared and recorded identically for every player. The 10 shared nemesis outcomes decide the match: 6 or more wins is a victory, exactly 5 is a tie, fewer than 5 is a defeat.

100.2Boards and ownership

1. 100.2aEach player owns exactly one board. You can never change another player's board, and spectating a teammate is read-only.
2. 100.2bThe full build zone is 8 columns wide and 4 rows tall. A normal unit occupies a 2x2 footprint, so a fully unlocked zone holds 8 normal units.
3. 100.2cA combat board is 8 columns by 8 rows: 4 rows for the player's units and 4 rows reserved for the enemy zone above them.
4. 100.2dGiant units occupy a 3x3 (Large) or 4x4 (Huge) footprint. Giant Tools and Scrip Pennies occupy a single cell.
5. 100.2eThe two rune boards have fixed shapes. The board below the grid is 8 columns by 2 rows and tracks the unit grid's width as Level unlocks it. The board to the right of the grid is 2 columns by 4 rows and stays locked entirely until Level 3, then opens at full size.

100.3Runes and projection

1. 100.3aNormal runes sit on two rune boards and project onto the play grid. Units never equip runes or resonances directly.
2. 100.3bOne rune board sits to the right of your play grid and projects across rows. The other sits below the grid and projects across columns. The enemy's boards mirror yours.
3. 100.3cProjection is evaluated per rune. A 2x2 through 4x4 unit that intersects only one of a rune's two projected rows or columns receives that rune at 50% potency; covering both gives full potency.
4. 100.3dSize-1 Scrip units receive full potency from a projected rune. Tools are ineligible. Runic units receive full potency from board runes even through partial coverage.
5. 100.3eA unit at a row-and-column intersection can receive both runes, with each rune's coverage and potency evaluated independently.
6. 100.3fRunes are tiered, normally 1 through 4. Matching two runes of the same base and tier forges them into the next tier.
7. 100.3gA rune family may be generic or gated to a tribe. A gated family only benefits units of that tribe.

100.4Adjacency

1. 100.4aTwo units are adjacent when their footprints share an edge. Corner contact is not adjacency.
2. 100.4bAdjacent means the four directions: left, right, up, and down.
3. 100.4cFlank means only the left and right neighbors.
4. 100.4dBecause adjacency is measured by footprint edge, a Large or Huge Giant is adjacent to every unit along an entire side of itself.
5. 100.4eAdjacency-derived state — auras, Braced, Brute, Consecrate — is recomputed whenever the board changes, including after a Displace or a death.

100.5Board reading orderpage

One shared order that several rules sort by. Everything in the document that says "board reading order" means this.

1. 100.5aBoard reading order is left to right across each row, then top to bottom.
2. 100.5bIt decides which unit pays a Bloodletting cost: the first eligible unit in this order pays the whole cost.
3. 100.5cIt decides the order battle-start effects resolve in, Markup included. Each unit with a battle-start effect resolves once, in this order.
4. 100.5dIt is not used for targeting. Targeting is Focus-weighted.
5. 100.5eNot every ordered rule uses it. Acclimate on a displaced pair and Settle across several Hubs each resolve in a fixed internal order that is not board reading order.

See also Bloodletting Markup

100.6Tiers

1. 100.6aCombining two identical units raises their tier by one and scales their stats by 1.5x per step. Scaling down divides by the same factor.
2. 100.6bA unit's tier scales its authored ability values as well as its stats.
3. 100.6cSmash temporarily reduces a unit's tier and rescales its stats accordingly, preserving its current Vitality as a fraction.
4. 100.6dHighland fails for any unit whose current tier differs from its native tier.

100.7Rank and level

1. 100.7aRank is monthly competitive progression derived from hidden MMR. Only Ranked matches move it; the current tier determines the player's crest.
2. 100.7bLevel is match-scoped economy progression. It controls shop odds and which parts of the unit and rune boards are unlocked, and resets for every match.
3. 100.7cThere is no persistent profile Level. Rank and Level are separate systems and are never interchangeable terms.

200.1Round structure

1. 200.1aEvery round runs a boss fight and a nemesis fight, separated by two shop phases.
2. 200.1bShop 1, the General Store: spend gold, buy units and runes, place, manage the rune boards, level up, ready up.
3. 200.1cBoss draft: solo offers 3 options; multiplayer offers active players plus 1, capped at 5. Each player claims one distinct boss option and may cancel the claim before combat starts.
4. 200.1dBoss combat: each player fights the boss and minion they drafted, in a parallel simulation.
5. 200.1eBoss reward: gold and XP are always offered. After a team win each player also receives their drafted boss's signature reward.
6. 200.1fShop 2: after the boss, each player picks a shop destination from a weighted set of choices, then spends, places, and readies up. Buyback can page through items sold by any player.
7. 200.1gNemesis draft: solo offers up to two distinct real boards; multiplayer requires one distinct source per active player. Each player claims one board, and their own board remains editable until committing freezes it and durably records the round contribution.
8. 200.1hNemesis combat: a fight against the claimed ghost board, using the same combat pipeline as the boss fight. A confirmed empty or unrecoverable pool produces a visible bye, never fake combat.
9. 200.1iNemesis reward: non-terminal fights award team-shared win or loss gold and XP, then the next round begins. Round 10 ends the match instead of opening rewards.

200.2Rescue fights

1. 200.2aWhen the natural boss batch produces mixed outcomes, the server assigns eligible rescue pairs in player-ring order. Players do not claim, pass, or choose among rescue options.
2. 200.2bPairing is one-to-one first, walking backwards around the seat ring, so while survivors outnumber the fallen each survivor receives at most one defeated teammate. Any surplus fallen teammates are chained onto a survivor as an ordered list, in forward ring distance.
3. 200.2cA rescuer runs one real follow-up combat per teammate in their chain. Each fight opens from the rescuer's current state (vitality, statuses, charges, and ledger carry over with no heal) against the enemy exactly as it stood when that teammate was wiped. The chain stops at the first fight the rescuer does not win.
4. 200.2dAfter that single rescue batch, clearing every required boss fight records a win for every player; leaving any required fight unresolved records a loss for every player. There is no second rescue wave.

200.3What persists

1. 200.3aForge Cores, the equipped resonance, Dividend, Profit, and Quest progress persist for the rest of the match.
2. 200.3bA card's named counter — the printed X on the Tally Savant and Master Appraiser Pennies — persists with that unit for the rest of the match and keeps accumulating each battle.
3. 200.3cStock, Burn, Venom, Maim, Dread, Shield, and every combat-scoped buff reset between battles.
4. 200.3dA player's ordered Forge Core list travels with their board into nemesis fights.

200.4Party membership changes

1. 200.4aIn a match that began with multiple players, the current party leader may remove another active member, including a disconnected member.
2. 200.4bThe remaining party continues the same match. The removed player returns to the lobby and receives a solo fork of the run rather than a loss.
3. 200.4cThe server makes the solo fork and the smaller-party checkpoint durable before excluding the player. If either write fails, the removal rolls back and the player remains active in the original match.

300.1Combat model

1. 300.1aCombat is simulated on the server, then played back for each player. Playback does not depend on connection speed: a high-ping player starts later but watches the round at the same rate.
2. 300.1bThe simulation advances in fixed steps. Every timer in these rules — charge, status duration, tick interval — advances on that fixed step.
3. 300.1cRandom outcomes are seeded and deterministic. Re-simulating the same battle produces the same result.

300.2Charge and Speed

1. 300.2aA unit activates when its charge completes. Charge time in seconds is 1 + 7 / (1 + Speed / 50).
2. 300.2bAt 0 Speed that is 8 seconds. The curve is asymptotic to 1 second and never reaches it, so Speed has strong diminishing returns.
3. 300.2cSpeed is clamped to 0 for this formula, so Dread, Crippling Scream, and any other Speed loss can slow a unit to the 8-second floor but never past it.
4. 300.2dFreeze multiplies the rate at which charge accumulates by 0.5. Stun stops it entirely.
5. 300.2eCharge progress is preserved, not reset, by Stun, Freeze, Entrap, and Dormant.
6. 300.2fA Shock-forced activation restores the unit's charge state afterwards, so it does not disturb the normal cycle.
7. 300.2gA quick reactivation — from Cascade or a reactivate roll — uses a 0.1 second cycle, then the unit returns to its normal charge time.

300.3The activation sequencepage

One activation resolves in this order. Every ordering ruling in Chapter 800 is a consequence of this list.

1. 300.3-1The unit's charge completes.
2. 300.3-2Keyword auras are refreshed and stats are flushed, so the activation reads current values.
3. 300.3-3The primary enemy target is selected by Focus-weighted roll, filtered by Rabid.
4. 300.3-4The Feral misfire roll is made. On a hit, the whole activation redirects to a random unit — ally or enemy — instead.
5. 300.3-5Scrip activation-start effects resolve. The activating unit pays off its own accumulated Interest here, and a Penny rolls its Stock mint and fires the Penny-activated channel here.
6. 300.3-6Activation-start triggers fire. Giant Tool packages on the "ally activated" event resolve here, with armor-setup Tools, packages, and effects — the ones carrying a Crush or a Smash — hoisted to the front. Poach fires here.
7. 300.3-7Rabid records the unit actually being attacked, including an ally hit by a Feral misfire.
8. 300.3-8New-target rune effects fire if this is a target incarnation the unit has not attacked before. This is a rune lane; no card Passive listens to it.
9. 300.3-9Bloodletting pays its cost, from the first eligible unit in board reading order. This can kill the payer. If the chosen payer cannot pay — a Tool or a Hub — the activation is aborted here, before damage.
10. 300.3-10Base damage is computed from the ability formula against the unit's live stats.
11. 300.3-11The ability fires: the cast event and every projectile are emitted.
12. 300.3-12Immediate rune effects resolve.
13. 300.3-13The ability's pre-effects resolve.
14. 300.3-14Activation effects resolve. Ordinary Crush and Smash effects are hoisted to the front as armor setup; everything else keeps authored order. Initiative effects gate here, and Initiative repeats resolve immediately after the first pass. Lucid effects resolve last, only if the unit is at full Vitality.
15. 300.3-15Base damage plus all bonus damage accumulated in the previous step is dealt to the primary target as one instance. The target's own retaliation — Thorns, Riposte, Retort — resolves inside that step, before anything below it.
16. 300.3-16Boss Reflect resolves, if the target has it, dealing 5% of the damage the hit just delivered back at the attacker.
17. 300.3-17On-hit rune effects resolve.
18. 300.3-18Post-damage effects resolve, in authored order. Maim, Cull, and most riders live here. They read the target's post-damage state.
19. 300.3-19Giant Tool packages on the post-impact pass resolve.
20. 300.3-20The Scrip Interest rider is applied if it was not consumed natively.
21. 300.3-21The reactivate roll and then the Cascade roll are made.
22. 300.3-22Activation followups run: Giant Tool post-activation packages, then post-activation rune effects, then Haywire, then Supercharge on adjacent allies.
23. 300.3-23Overclock settles last. If the activating unit still holds stacks, it rolls its blowout here, after everything above has read them.

1. 300.3aAn activation that finds no living target skips the attack entirely but still resolves its immediate rune effects.
2. 300.3bAn activation whose damage formula is invalid is aborted before any effect resolves.
3. 300.3cAn activation that deals 0 damage, or whose target died earlier in the same step, skips the damage step but still resolves its post-damage effects.
4. 300.3dNothing is granted for activating by itself. A unit gains Focus, Power, or any other stat on activation only where its card says so.
5. 300.3eA boss activation runs this same shape: armor setup, then the activation lane, then the delivery, then the post-damage lane. That is what makes a keyword behave identically on a boss and on the minion beside it.
6. 300.3fA boss picks its primary target the same way too. Rabid stops it repeating last activation's victim, and a Feral misfire can redirect the swing onto its own minions. Rabid remembers whichever unit was actually attacked.
7. 300.3gBonus damage a boss's keywords add folds into the single base hit rather than landing as a second strike, so the target pays its Armor once. On a spread delivery it joins the budget before the split, so a spread keyword is worth the same total a single-target one would be.

300.4Effect timing lanes

1. 300.4aEvery authored effect belongs to one lane: activation, post-damage, or a trigger channel.
2. 300.4bActivation-lane effects resolve before the base hit and may add bonus damage to it.
3. 300.4cPost-damage-lane effects resolve after the base hit and read the resulting board state.
4. 300.4dTrigger-channel effects resolve when their event fires and are not part of the activation lanes.
5. 300.4eAn effect flagged "once" fires at most once per unit per battle, and only spends its charge when it actually resolves — a gated or rejected effect can still land later.
6. 300.4fAn effect flagged "once per target" tracks its charge per target, so it can resolve again against a different unit.

300.5Overtime

1. 300.5aAfter 60 seconds every combatant begins taking overtime damage once per second. Tools and Hubs are excluded, because they discard combat interactions. An Entrapped unit is not: overtime is environmental rather than an ability.
2. 300.5bOvertime damage grows with the square of the seconds past the threshold: at N seconds past 60, it is N x N.
3. 300.5cAn overtime tick is an ordinary damage instance and runs the pipeline in 500.1, so Armor reduces it and Insurance and Shield absorb it, spending those points with their full consequences. The match clock is nobody's attacker, though, so a tick answers no Thorns, no Riposte, and no Subrogated Insurance.
4. 300.5dA combat is hard-capped at 120 seconds.
5. 300.5eOvertime exists to end stalemates and is not intended to be survived.

400.1Anatomy of an ability

1. 400.1aAn ability is printed as a list of lines. The first line is normally the base attack, written "Deal {power} damage".
2. 400.1bA line that is only a keyword name — for example "Large", "Rabid", "Cull", "Bloodlust" — states that the unit has that keyword. Its rules are in chapter 800.
3. 400.1cA line of the form "Keyword: N" or "Keyword N" applies that keyword with amount N to the ability's target — "Maim: 27", "Kindled: 3", "Burn 12".
4. 400.1dA line that names its recipients before the word "gain" grants that keyword to those units instead of to the target — "Adjacent allies gain Hallow: 4", "Allies with Relentless gain Kindled: 2". "Gain Keyword: N" with no named recipient grants it to the activating unit.
5. 400.1eA line beginning "Passive:" is a trigger-channel effect. It does not resolve during the activation; it resolves when its stated event happens, however often that is.
6. 400.1fA line beginning "Bloodlust:", "Lucid:", "Initiative:", "Ignited", "Highland", or "Overmatch" is a conditional rider. The condition is checked when the rider resolves, not when the activation starts.
7. 400.1gEvery {placeholder} in printed text is substituted with a real number before the card is shown, using the unit's live stats and the ability's own fields.
8. 400.1hA unit's ability has no separate name. The unit name is the card's only heading. Bosses are the exception: one boss can present several named abilities, one per phase.

400.2Where a number comes from

1. 400.2aAn amount is resolved from one of: a named field on the ability, a flat value on the clause, or a stat of the unit.
2. 400.2bA flat authored value is multiplied by the unit's tier. A per-tier list is read literally by tier and is not multiplied again. A formula is evaluated with the unit's tier available to it and is not multiplied again — a formula that should scale must say so, as in "8 * tier".
3. 400.2cStat sources are: the unit's live value of a named stat (Power by default), effective Power, Burn Power, raw Power, Armor, or base Speed.
4. 400.2dEffective Power is the unit's Power after Lucid doubling and after Blind's 50% reduction. "{power}" on a card is effective Power.
5. 400.2eOn a boss it is the printed Power less enemy drain, then Lucid doubling. A boss is never Blinded, so that step is skipped.
6. 400.2fBurn Power is 75% of effective Power, minimum 1. A card that reads "Burn {burn_power}" applies that, not full Power.
7. 400.2gA clause may divide or multiply its amount by a fixed value or by another field on the ability before anything else is applied.
8. 400.2hA card may also declare a named counter — printed as a bare capital letter, currently always X — and read it as an amount. The counter belongs to that one copy of the card, starts at its authored value, and is written by the card's own battle-start line. A clause that names the counter resolves to whatever it holds when that clause fires.
9. 400.2iA counter is never reset. It is declared once, keeps its value through the rest of the match, and every later battle-start line adds to the running total, so the clauses that read it grow round over round.
10. 400.2jUntil the counter has been written at least once, the card prints the letter rather than a number.
11. 400.2kStats are flushed immediately before the amount is computed, so a buff applied earlier in the same activation is included.

400.3"Per" clauses and counted valuespage

A clause that reads "per <something>" multiplies its resolved amount by a runtime count. Two rules decide almost every question about them.

1. 400.3aThe count is sampled at the moment the clause resolves, from the board as it stands then. It is not sampled at the start of the activation and not cached from a previous one.
2. 400.3bA count of enemies or allies only ever includes living, targetable units. A unit that died earlier in this same activation is not counted, and neither is an Entrapped, Dormant, or untargetable one — that means Tools and Hubs are never counted by a unit count.
3. 400.3cIf the count resolves to 0, the whole clause resolves to 0 and nothing happens. A "per" clause is never floored up to a minimum of 1, unlike an ordinary amount.
4. 400.3dBecause of the two rules above, a clause that counts a status on enemies and resolves after the hit will find nothing if the hit killed the only unit carrying that status.
5. 400.3eThe only exception to the flooring rule is a duration-scaled clause, which floors after multiplying and uses a minimum of 0. A positive fractional total below 1 resolves to 0 rather than being rounded up.
6. 400.3fA clause scaled by the unit's own rune-effect count resolves to 0 when the unit has no rune effects.

See also Bloodlust Feral Overclock Shatter Tool

400.4Conditions and gates

1. 400.4aA conditional clause is evaluated when it resolves. If the condition is false the clause is skipped entirely and produces nothing.
2. 400.4bSelf conditions test the acting unit: Bloodlust, Highland, a Kindled threshold, holding a Shield, holding Insurance, holding no Insurance, being Hallowed, being dead, a base-Speed threshold in either direction, or a threshold on the number of rune effects the unit currently carries.
3. 400.4cThere is no Feral condition and no self-Lucid condition. Lucid is not a gate a clause can name; it is the separate lane in 300.3 that resolves last and only at full Vitality, plus a per-clause Lucid flag that trigger-channel effects use for the same test.
4. 400.4dTarget conditions test the primary target: Burning, Envenomed, Frozen, Blinded, Maimed, not Maimed, Burning and Envenomed at once, carrying a named set of required statuses, Relentless, Everlasting, Lucid, holding Haywire, holding Interest, holding Dread, zero Armor, a Burn or Venom amount threshold, Venom exceeding Armor, having any negative status, or having at most N negative statuses.
5. 400.4eTwo further target conditions test which side the recipient is on: whether it is an ally of the acting unit, or an enemy. Cards that can hit either side use these to split their payload.
6. 400.4fBoard conditions test the field: any enemy Burning, any enemy Frozen, any ally Frozen, or a count of Burning enemies at or above a threshold.
7. 400.4gSequence conditions test history: Initiative, or the Nth activation.
8. 400.4hA stat gate compares a stat between two units. Overmatch is a stat gate: strictly greater than, so ties fail. A gate may either skip the clause or multiply its amount instead.
9. 400.4iA clause flagged "once" resolves at most once per unit per battle, and only spends its charge when it actually resolves — a clause skipped by its condition can still land on a later activation. A clause flagged "once per target" tracks its charge separately for each target.
10. 400.4j"Require hit" clauses in the post-damage lane are skipped when no damage actually landed.

See also Bloodlust Lucid Ignited Highland Initiative Overmatch

400.5Who a clause affects

1. 400.5aA clause names a scope: the primary target, enemies adjacent to the target, all enemies, a Focus-weighted set of enemies, self, all allies, adjacent allies, or a Focus-weighted set of allies.
2. 400.5b"To allies" includes the acting unit only when the clause says so. Otherwise the acting unit is excluded.
3. 400.5cA scope that names a count fills it with Focus-weighted picks and never picks the same unit twice.
4. 400.5dA scope filtered by a required status filters before selection, so a count of 2 is filled with two qualifying units if two exist.
5. 400.5eAllied scopes exclude Tools and Hubs. Effects that reach Tools use explicit adjacency instead.
6. 400.5fA clause never affects a dead, Entrapped, Dormant, or untargetable unit unless it explicitly opts into doing so.

See also Tool Hub Flank

400.6Passives and triggers

A "Passive:" line resolves on an event rather than on an activation. These are the events a card can listen to.

1. 400.6aCombat events: taking damage, an ally taking damage, an ally being damaged by an ally, gaining a Shield, a Shield being damaged, a Shield being broken.
2. 400.6bDeath events: this unit dying, an enemy dying, any other unit dying (Macabre), an enemy being Culled, this unit reviving, an ally reviving.
3. 400.6cActivation events: an ally activating, this unit Cascading, an ally Cascading, a Penny activating.
4. 400.6dStatus events: this unit or an ally being Stunned, this unit being Frozen, this unit being Entrapped, a unit returning from Entrap, this unit becoming Ignited, an ally or any unit gaining Kindled, an ally gaining Feral, an ally gaining Consecrate, an ally or this unit gaining Hallow, an ally being healed by Feast, an ally emptying its Haywire.
5. 400.6eMovement events: this unit being Displaced (Acclimate), a pair of enemies being Displaced (Threat).
6. 400.6fGiant events: an allied Tool consuming Durability, an allied Tool losing its last Durability.
7. 400.6gScrip events: this unit gaining Insurance, an ally gaining Insurance, Insurance preventing damage, an enemy paying Interest, Interest being applied, a Penny losing Insurance, a Penny minting Stock natively, a Repossess resolving.
8. 400.6hThe two Insurance-gain events fire on every positive grant, not only the first, and both are dispatched from the same grant. Because a reaction may itself grant Insurance, the chain is cut off past four levels of nesting; each level up to that bound still resolves its own listeners in full.
9. 400.6iCost events: a Bloodletting cost being paid, optionally restricted to the unit that paid it.
10. 400.6jA trigger's effects resolve directly. They do not create a new activation, do not consume charge, and do not fire activation-start or activation-followup steps.
11. 400.6kA trigger may be scoped to a subject — for example only firing for adjacent allies — in which case the event must involve a unit inside that scope.
12. 400.6lA trigger on this unit reviving may additionally name the cause it answers, Phylactery or Everlasting, and is refused on the other. A trigger on an ally reviving never names a cause: it answers both. See 500.9.
13. 400.6mA listener hears the event unless it is dead. Being Stunned, charging, or Entrapped does not stop a trigger from resolving.
14. 400.6nAn Entrapped listener resolves its trigger, then loses whichever of its clauses point back at itself, because it fails the recipient gate in 400.5. Clauses pointed at other units are unaffected.

See also Macabre Cull Acclimate Threat Supercharge Poach Entrap

400.7When a printed line resolvespage

Use this to place any printed line into the activation sequence in 300.3.

1. 400.7aWithin a lane, clauses resolve in the order they are printed. Armor setup — Crush and Smash — is the only exception.
2. 400.7bA card that prints Maim and then Cull applies the Maim first, and the Cull tests against the increased pool. A card that prints them the other way round would test first — no printed card does.
3. 400.7cA clause in the post-damage lane still resolves when the hit dealt 0 damage or the target was already dead. Only clauses that explicitly require a hit are skipped.
4. 400.7dBonus damage accumulated by activation-lane clauses is added to the base hit, so it is mitigated once, by the same Armor and Shield, as a single instance.

See also Crush Maim Cull Lucid Initiative

400.8Answering a question about a cardpage

A repeatable method. Work the printed lines, not the card's reputation.

1. 400.8-1Split the printed ability into lines. Mark each line as a keyword, a rider, a conditional rider, or a Passive.
2. 400.8-2Place each line into a lane using 400.7. Note in particular that Maim and Cull always land after the hit, and Crush always lands before it.
3. 400.8-3For each line in question, resolve its amount using 400.2, then apply any "per" multiplier using 400.3 — sampling the count at the point in the sequence where that line resolves.
4. 400.8-4Check each condition at that same point using 400.4. A condition that was true at the start of the activation may be false by the time the clause resolves.
5. 400.8-5Apply the recipient gates in 400.5 and 700.3. A dead, Entrapped, Dormant, or untargetable recipient receives nothing.
6. 400.8-6Apply the keyword's own rules from chapter 800, and any immunity from 700.4.
7. 400.8-7Push the result through the damage or recovery pipeline in 500.1 or 500.3, in that order — Armor, Insurance, Shield, Vitality for damage; capacity then Maim for recovery.

1. 400.8aThe most common wrong answer comes from sampling a count too early. Counts are always read at the point the clause resolves.
2. 400.8bThe second most common comes from forgetting that a unit killed by this activation is gone before every post-damage clause resolves.
3. 400.8cThe third comes from assuming a zero count still produces the minimum amount. It does not.

See also Burn Maim Cull

500.1One damage instancepage

Every damage instance — a hit, a Burn tick, a Venom tick, a Tremor half, an AoE share, a boss Reflect — resolves through this pipeline. A Vitality cost is not a damage instance and skips all of it; see 500.8.

1. 500.1-1If the recipient is a Tool or a Hub, the damage is discarded.
2. 500.1-2If the recipient is Dormant, the damage is discarded unless the source explicitly allows it.
3. 500.1-3If the recipient is already dead, or the amount is 0 or less, nothing happens.
4. 500.1-4A damage-ignore charge, if the recipient has one, is spent and the instance is discarded.
5. 500.1-5Armor's percentage reduction is applied, unless the instance ignores Armor.
6. 500.1-6Armor's flat reduction is applied, unless the instance ignores Armor.
7. 500.1-7A post-Armor incoming-damage cap, if the recipient's card prints one, truncates what is left to that ceiling. Everything above the cap is simply gone; it is not moved to Shield.
8. 500.1-8Subrogated Insurance points absorb up to 25 each from what is left, and the source loses Vitality equal to what they absorbed.
9. 500.1-9Plain Insurance points absorb up to 25 each from whatever the Subrogated points did not.
10. 500.1-10Shield absorbs what remains, up to the Shield pool. A source whose card prints a Shield damage multiplier drains the Shield by that multiple, so the same remaining damage is paid off with fewer points of the attacker's budget.
11. 500.1-11An ally redirect cap, if one is active, moves part of the remaining damage to the redirector.
12. 500.1-12If the remainder would be lethal, a defy-death rune may reduce it.
13. 500.1-13Vitality is reduced. The unit dies if Vitality reaches 0.

1. 500.1aInsurance sits between the incoming-damage cap and Shield, so Armor is applied first and the points are spent on what Armor left. Each point absorbs up to 25 of that remainder, a point is spent whole even against a smaller instance, and one instance may spend several points. Anything the available points cannot cover carries on into Shield and then Vitality.
2. 500.1bDamage Insurance absorbs is credited to nobody. It scores the attacker nothing and produces no Feast, while the defender counts it as damage reduced.
3. 500.1cAn instance Insurance swallows outright still fires Thorns and Riposte, because neither reads the damage value. Nothing else in the on-damage-taken fanout fires, because no Vitality was lost. See 500.6. Two lanes are the exception: a boss Reflect starts no damage reactions at all, and an instance with no actor behind it — an overtime tick — has nobody to answer.
4. 500.1dBurn and Venom set the ignore-Armor flag, so neither the percentage nor the flat reduction applies to them. They are still met by Insurance and absorbed by Shield.
5. 500.1eShield is consumed before Vitality within the same instance. An instance fully absorbed by Shield deals no Vitality damage and therefore produces no Feast.
6. 500.1fA lethal-damage redirect, if one is active, moves the entire hit to the interceptor before mitigation, and suppresses any ordinary redirect for that hit.
7. 500.1gDamage moved to a redirect receiver lands as that unit's own instance and meets its own Armor, Insurance, and Shield. Every consequence of that spend follows on the receiver: the absorb cue, the insured-stat resync, the Insurance-prevented channel, its Shield triggers, and its own on-damage-taken fanout.
8. 500.1hBurn and Venom ticks are adjusted before they enter this pipeline, in this order: Prismbreak amplifies the tick by 50%, rounded up; rune tick reduction is subtracted; then Forge Core tick reduction is subtracted. A tick reduced to 0 that way never enters the pipeline at all, so it spends no Insurance point and breaks no Shield.
9. 500.1iA damage-over-time tick reaches a Dormant recipient. Dormancy stops new effects, not the ticks already running.
10. 500.1jRetaliation — Thorns, Riposte, Retort, and Subrogated Insurance — never enters this pipeline at all. It is a Vitality cost, covered in 500.6 and 500.8. The boss Reflect rune is the exception: it comes back as a real damage instance and runs this pipeline, though it enters below the Armor steps. See 500.7.

500.2Armor

1. 500.2aArmor gives a percentage reduction of sqrt(Armor) / (sqrt(Armor) + 20).
2. 500.2bArmor also gives a flat reduction of 1 damage for every 5 Armor, applied after the percentage reduction.
3. 500.2cThe percentage reduction rounds against the defender: the surviving damage is rounded up.
4. 500.2dNegative Armor produces negative percentage reduction — that is, damage amplification. Negative Armor gives no flat reduction, and no flat amplification either.
5. 500.2eCrush and Repossess can drive Armor negative. Piercing Roar and Crippling Scream affect Power and Speed, not Armor.
6. 500.2fBecause the flat reduction is applied per instance, splitting damage into more instances — as Tremor and AoE do — loses more of it to high flat Armor.

500.3Recovery

1. 500.3aRecovery means restoring Vitality or gaining Shield. Both use the same ledger.
2. 500.3bForge Core bonuses are added to the requested amount first.
3. 500.3cThe amount is then capped by what the target can actually receive — missing Vitality, for a heal.
4. 500.3dMaim is applied last: each point prevents 2 of the eligible amount and is then consumed. Consumption is ceil(prevented / 2).
5. 500.3eBecause Maim is applied to the eligible amount, healing a target that is already at full Vitality consumes no Maim.
6. 500.3fExalt increases Shield, Hallow, Consecrate, and Fleeting buffs received, before Maim.
7. 500.3gRecovery is refused entirely against a dead, Entrapped, or Dormant unit, and against Tools and Hubs. Tool repair is the exception and bypasses this gate.

500.4Death

1. 500.4aA unit dies when its Vitality reaches 0, or when it is destroyed outright by Cull. A self-destruct is neither a hit nor an execution: the unit spends its whole remaining Vitality as a cost, so nothing prevents it. See 500.8.
2. 500.4bOn death the unit's living-effect state is captured for the effects that read it, its combat state is cleared, and the death is announced.
3. 500.4cDeath fires Macabre for every other unit on the board, on either side.
4. 500.4dA Phylactery unit holding a Vessel spends it and revives on the spot, once the death above has fully resolved. An Everlasting unit revives 10 seconds later. Either way the unit is genuinely dead in between, and 500.9 covers what comes back.
5. 500.4eA death and everything it fires — Macabre, deathrattles, an immediate Vessel revival, and that revival's own listeners — is one Vessel Point batch.

See also Macabre Cull Everlasting Phylactery

500.5Damage attribution

1. 500.5aDamage is credited to the unit that dealt it, including damage from a Burn or Venom the unit applied.
2. 500.5bWhen several units applied the same Burn or Venom, a tick is divided between them in proportion to what each applied.
3. 500.5cFeast uses only the Vitality portion of a tick, scaled from the same shares, so absorbed damage never feeds it.
4. 500.5dA self-destruct keeps kill credit for its source even though the source is already dead when the blast resolves.

500.6Retaliationpage

Thorns, Riposte, Retort, and Subrogated Insurance all say the same thing in different words: the enemy that damaged you loses Vitality. They are one mechanic, and it is not damage. The boss Reflect rune reads like them but is not one of them — it answers with real damage.

1. 500.6aRetaliation is a Vitality cost, not a damage instance. It skips the whole pipeline in 500.1 — Armor, the incoming-damage cap, Insurance, Shield, damage-ignore charges, and ally redirects never touch it. The rules every Vitality cost shares are in 500.8.
2. 500.6bBecause it is not a damage instance, it starts no damage reactions. Retaliation never answers retaliation, and it fires no on-damage-taken trigger on the unit paying it.
3. 500.6cIt is still Vitality lost, so anything keyed to losing Vitality rather than to a damage instance does respond. The runes that reset on Vitality damage — Adrenaline, Momentum, and Bolster — lose their accumulated bonus, and Vitality-threshold rune effects re-evaluate.
4. 500.6dA defy-death rune still saves the unit paying it. Retaliation that empties Vitality kills through the ordinary death route, with deathrattles, Macabre, and kill credit intact.
5. 500.6eRetaliation is refused against a unit that is not a legal combat target: a dead unit, an Entrapped unit, or a Dormant one.
6. 500.6fThe retaliating unit is credited with the Vitality it took. Against a normal unit that Vitality also feeds its own Feast; against a boss it scores as damage dealt but feeds no Feast.
7. 500.6gRetaliation into a boss can cross a Phasebreak threshold, but it never advances the boss's Stagger meter. Stagger counts direct damage only.
8. 500.6hA unit never retaliates against itself or against an ally. Both Thorns and Riposte check sides before they fire.

See also Insurance Shield Feast Relentless

500.7What retaliates

1. 500.7aThorns is a rune and Riposte is a resonance, but they answer the same event: any hostile damage event against the unit carrying them, direct hits and Burn and Venom ticks alike.
2. 500.7bThorns always fires, for the rune's flat per-tier amount. Riposte fires on a 50% roll, made fresh for each event and each attacker, for an amount equal to your resonance level.
3. 500.7cNeither reads the size of the hit. That is why an instance Insurance absorbs outright still triggers both — the hit happened, and what they deal never depended on what it was worth.
4. 500.7dA hit that reaches no Vitality any other way does silence them. Armor reducing an instance to nothing, or Shield swallowing it whole, leaves no damage event for either to answer.
5. 500.7eBoth fire once per damaging source per event, so a tick attributed to several enemies retaliates against each of them.
6. 500.7fRetort is the ability-authored form, a passive line reading "Damaging enemies lose N vitality". Unlike Thorns and Riposte it is gated on damage that actually landed, so an instance Insurance or Shield fully absorbs does not fire it.
7. 500.7gSubrogated Insurance retaliates for exactly what its own points absorbed, not for the whole instance. Plain Insurance points retaliate for nothing.
8. 500.7hThe boss Reflect rune is the odd one out. It deals 5% of the damage the attacker actually put on the boss straight back at it, rounded down but never below 1 — as damage, not as a Vitality cost.
9. 500.7iBeing damage changes the receiving end. Reflect reads the hit after the boss's own Armor, Shield, and Insurance, so a hit the boss fully absorbs reflects nothing; and what comes back is met by the attacker's own Insurance and then its Shield, spending those points with every consequence that carries.
10. 500.7jThe attacker's Armor is the one layer a Reflect skips. The boss is handing back damage it has already absorbed through, not swinging again, so neither the percentage nor the flat Armor reduction applies.
11. 500.7kReflect starts no damage reactions. It is already the answer to a hit, so it fires no on-damage-taken fanout on the attacker and cannot set off that attacker's own Thorns or Riposte back at the boss — one hit never bounces a third time.
12. 500.7lReflect is not one of the boss's activations, so it never applies Shatter.

500.8Vitality costspage

An ability paying its own price in Vitality — a Bloodletting cost, an Interest payment, a self-destruct, and the retaliation family in 500.6. A cost is a statement, not a hit, and almost nothing on the defensive side gets to answer it.

1. 500.8aA Vitality cost skips the whole pipeline in 500.1. Armor, the incoming-damage cap, Insurance, Shield, and damage-ignore charges never see it, and none of them are spent by it. A payer holding a single point of Shield cannot pay a cost for free.
2. 500.8bThe payment is clamped to the Vitality the payer actually has. A cost larger than that takes everything and kills the payer; it never carries a debt forward.
3. 500.8cBecause it is not a damage instance, a cost starts no damage reactions. It fires no on-damage-taken fanout, no Thorns, no Riposte, and no Shield-damaged or Shield-broken trigger.
4. 500.8dIt is still Vitality lost, so anything keyed to losing Vitality does respond. The runes that reset on Vitality damage — Adrenaline, Momentum, and Bolster — lose their accumulated bonus, and Vitality-threshold rune effects re-evaluate.
5. 500.8eA cost moves nothing on a unit that discards combat interactions, so a Tool or a Hub pays nothing at all. Dead and Entrapped units are refused as payers outright.
6. 500.8fWhether a defy-death rune answers a lethal cost is decided per cost. Retaliation and Bloodletting opt in, and the unit spends its once-per-life charge either way. Interest and self-destruct do not: they pay through.
7. 500.8gInterest is the one cost that also debits the payer's maximum Vitality by the amount paid, for the rest of the battle.
8. 500.8hA self-destruct spends the unit's entire remaining Vitality as a cost, so nothing talks it out of dying: no damage-ignore charge, no defy-death rune, and no Insurance point burned on the way. Its Shield is scrapped with it rather than damaged, so no Shield trigger fires. Everlasting still revives it on schedule, because that is a revival rather than a prevention.
9. 500.8iListeners read the Vitality that actually left the payer, not the price printed on the card. A Bloodletting payment clamped by a low payer pays out its own listeners for that smaller amount.
10. 500.8jA death caused by a cost is an ordinary death. Macabre fires, deathrattles resolve, and the activation that charged the cost continues.

See also Bloodletting Interest Shield Insurance Everlasting

500.9Revivalpage

Two things bring a dead unit back: an Everlasting timer, and a Phylactery Vessel. They differ in what pays for them, when they land, and where the unit stands afterwards. Everything past that is one shared procedure, and this is it.

1. 500.9aEverlasting revives 10 seconds after the death, if combat is still running. It searches the dying unit's own board half for a free slot, and retries on later ticks while none is open — a revival can be delayed indefinitely by a full board.
2. 500.9bPhylactery spends a stored Vessel the moment the death has finished resolving, and returns the unit to the cell it died in. It runs no timer, searches for nothing, and cannot fail for want of a slot.
3. 500.9cBoth causes hand off to the same body from here. A revived unit returns at full Vitality, with its battle-start numbers rebuilt: resonance passives and persistent Scrip grants are reapplied, and every status, timed effect, and combat stat change from the previous life is gone.
4. 500.9dCharge restarts from empty. A revival never hands back the activation the unit was charging when it died.
5. 500.9eOnce-per-life rune effects are re-armed, so a defy-death rune can save the same unit again in its next life.
6. 500.9fA revived unit is a new target incarnation: Rabid excludes it for one activation, and new-target rune effects can fire for it again.
7. 500.9gEverlasting is re-resolved from the unit's own ability plus any grant that was made for the whole battle, so a battle-long grant survives the revival and can revive the unit again.
8. 500.9hRevival dispatches two trigger channels — one the revived unit hears about itself, one its living allies hear — and both carry the cause.
9. 500.9iOnly the self channel filters on that cause. A line on the revived unit's own card that names Phylactery is refused on an Everlasting revival and the reverse, so a runtime Everlasting grant on a Phylactery bearer never crosses the two.
10. 500.9jThe allied channel is generic. A card that listens for an ally reviving answers every revival on its side — Phylactery or Everlasting, and whether or not the revived ally carries Phylactery at all.
11. 500.9kA revival listener may aim at the revived ally, or at the unit that killed it. Both causes carry the killer: Phylactery resolves at the death and still has it in hand, and Everlasting holds the killer's identity for the 10 seconds the unit is down. Either way, if the killer is gone or is no longer a legal target, the clause falls back to the listener's own Focus roll rather than fizzling.
12. 500.9lThe Reliquary rune hands its revived bearer Speed until that unit's next activation, which clears it. Reapplying it does not add; the larger amount stands. An ordinary Speed buff written on a revival listener is not this effect and lasts as long as any other buff.
13. 500.9mA revival and every passive it triggers pool into one Vessel Point batch, which is what stops a chain of revival listeners from paying for the revival after it.

See also Everlasting Phylactery Rabid Dread Freeze

600.1Legal targets

1. 600.1aA unit can be selected only if it is alive, not Entrapped, not Dormant, and not an untargetable object.
2. 600.1bTools and Hubs are untargetable objects. They never soak a projectile, a splash, or a chain hop.
3. 600.1cA dead boss cannot be selected even before its removal is processed.
4. 600.1dSome effects may pierce Entrap, and some may explicitly allow a dead target. Both are opt-in per effect.

600.2Focus weighting

1. 600.2aFocus-weighted selection rolls against the total effective Focus of the candidate pool.
2. 600.2bEffective Focus is the unit's Focus, floored at 1. There is no threshold and no bonus step: the weight rises smoothly with the stat.
3. 600.2cA candidate's share of the roll is its effective Focus divided by the pool's total, so twice the Focus is twice as often picked.
4. 600.2dThe floor means a unit at 0 Focus is still a legal pick, just the rarest one in the pool.
5. 600.2eA multi-pick selection makes one Focus-weighted roll per pick and never picks the same unit twice.

600.3The primary target

1. 600.3aThe primary target is chosen once per activation and cached for the whole activation.
2. 600.3bRabid removes the previous target from the pool, unless that would empty it.
3. 600.3cA Feral misfire replaces the cached target after selection, so the entire activation redirects.
4. 600.3dEffects that fan out from the primary target — adjacent enemies, splinter targets — are resolved against the cached target, not re-selected.

600.4Scopes

1. 600.4aEffects declare a scope: the primary target, all enemies, Focus-weighted enemies, enemies adjacent to the target, self, all allies, adjacent allies, or Focus-weighted allies.
2. 600.4bA scope that names a count fills it with Focus-weighted picks from the eligible pool, never picking the same unit twice.
3. 600.4cA scope filtered by a required status — for example Maimed enemies — filters before selection, so the count is filled from qualifying units only.
4. 600.4dAllied scopes use the ally-eligibility gate, which excludes Tools and Hubs. Effects that target Tools use their own explicit adjacency instead.

700.1Status shapes

1. 700.1aA timed status is on or off, with a timer: Stun, Freeze, Blind, Prismbreak, Entrap.
2. 700.1bA stacking status is a count: Burn, Venom, Maim, Haywire, Feral, Interest, Insurance.
3. 700.1cHallow is an instance status: each application is its own entry and several run side by side. Roost uses the same machinery but collapses to exactly one entry, so a second Roost raises the existing per-tick amount instead of adding a parallel heal.
4. 700.1dCrush and Smash are not statuses. They are timed stat and tier reductions with a matching on-card indicator.
5. 700.1eDread is tracked as its own stack family rather than as a status, but it counts as a negative status for cards that read one.

700.2Reapplication

1. 700.2aStun replaces its remaining duration. A shorter Stun over a longer one shortens it.
2. 700.2bFreeze adds a flat 4 seconds. Blind adds a flat 2 seconds. Prismbreak adds a flat 3 seconds.
3. 700.2cStacking statuses add to their count, subject to their cap.
4. 700.2dSmash adds duration but never a second tier reduction.
5. 700.2eCrush applications are independent timed reductions, each lasting its own 2 seconds.

700.3Application gates

1. 700.3aA status is refused if the recipient is Dormant, dead, or an untargetable object, unless it is a clear-status effect.
2. 700.3bA status is refused if the recipient is Entrapped, unless it is Entrap itself or the effect explicitly allows application through Entrap.
3. 700.3cA status is refused if the recipient has Relentless and the status is one Relentless blocks.
4. 700.3dMaim and Smash ignore status immunity, so the Relentless gate does not stop either of them.
5. 700.3eA boss break mechanic may apply a negative status through immunity.

700.4What Relentless blockspage

Relentless is the game's immunity keyword. "Status immunity" on a card means Relentless, so a line that reads "Ignores status immunity" resolves through this table. This is the complete list.

1. 700.4aRelentless blocks the application, not the effect that is already present. A unit that gains Relentless while Burning keeps its Burn.
2. 700.4bRelentless also does not remove an existing Crush; it only refuses new ones.

700.5Clearing

1. 700.5aA clear effect names one status family and removes it. Clear effects are the only category that resolves against a Dormant unit.
2. 700.5bClearing a stacking status may remove a specific number of stacks rather than all of them — Haywire's own resolution removes exactly one.
3. 700.5cDeath clears combat statuses. Relentless suppression is the deliberate exception and survives death and revival.

800.1Acclimatepage

Trigger

1. 800.1aAcclimate fires when this unit is Displaced.
2. 800.1bBoth members of a displaced pair resolve Acclimate before Threat, one after the other. The order between the two is fixed but is not board reading order.
3. 800.1cA unit that died during the swap does not resolve Acclimate.

See also Displace Threat

800.2AoEpage

Action

1. 800.2aAoE divides the listed damage across all enemies by Focus weight.
2. 800.2bEach target first receives 1 point when the total covers the number of targets, then a proportional share of the remainder. Any rounding remainder goes to the first target in the list.
3. 800.2cThe split weighs each target's own Focus. The floor of 1 that selection rolls use does not apply here, so a target at 0 Focus receives only that first point.
4. 800.2dWhen total Focus is zero or negative every target receives an equal share.
5. 800.2eEach resulting share is a separate damage instance: Armor, Insurance, Shield, and damage reactions all resolve per target.

See also Tremor Piercing Roar Insurance

800.3Blindpage

Control

1. 800.3aBlind reduces effective Power by 50%, to a minimum of 1, for 3 seconds.
2. 800.3bThe reduction is applied to effective Power at read time, after Lucid's Power doubling, so a Lucid unit's doubled Power is halved rather than the base value.
3. 800.3cReapplying Blind adds a flat 2 seconds.
4. 800.3dBlind timers pause while the unit is Prismbroken.
5. 800.3eA boss is never Blinded. Its Power is read as the printed value less enemy drain, doubled after that if the boss is Lucid.
6. 800.3fRelentless blocks Blind.

See also Prismbreak Lucid Fury

800.4Bloodlettingpage

Action

1. 800.4aBloodletting is a cost paid before the activation's damage is computed.
2. 800.4bThe payer is the first eligible unit on the caster's side of the battlefield in board reading order — left to right across each row, then top to bottom. That is often not the caster.
3. 800.4cDead units, Entrapped units, the boss, and units on the other half of the battlefield are skipped. A boss casting a Bloodletting ability pays its own cost.
4. 800.4dTools and Hubs are not skipped. They sit in the candidate list like any other unit — but they discard every combat interaction, so they cannot pay, and a payment that moves no Vitality fails the ability outright. Putting a Tool or a Hub first in reading order therefore switches your Bloodletting cards off rather than making them free.
5. 800.4eThe full cost is paid by one unit; it is never split.
6. 800.4fThe payment is a Vitality cost, not a damage instance. Armor, Insurance, Shield, and damage-ignore charges never meet it and none of them are spent by it, so a payer holding a single point of Shield still pays the listed Vitality in full. See 500.8.
7. 800.4gThe cost is clamped to the Vitality the payer actually has. A payer with less than the printed cost pays everything it has and dies, and the cards that read the cost paid see that smaller amount rather than the printed price.
8. 800.4hA defy-death rune still answers a lethal payment, and the payer spends its once-per-life charge either way.
9. 800.4iThe payment does not fire on-damage-taken, on-Shield-damaged, or on-Shield-broken triggers. It fires only the Bloodletting-paid channel, and only when the payer actually lost Vitality.
10. 800.4jThe payment can be lethal. If it kills the payer, the death resolves normally — including Macabre — and the activation continues.
11. 800.4kIf no eligible payer exists, the activation is aborted before damage, though its immediate rune effects still resolve.
12. 800.4lA Bloodletting reduction rune lowers the cost before a payer is chosen. Cards that read the cost paid see that reduced amount, and can cap it.
13. 800.4mA reduction that takes the cost to 0 skips the whole step: nobody pays, and the Bloodletting-paid channel does not fire.

See also Macabre Shield Insurance Markup

800.5Bloodlustpage

Condition

1. 800.5aBloodlust is active while at least one living, targetable enemy is below 50% of its maximum Vitality.
2. 800.5bTools, Hubs, and other untargetable objects are never counted.
3. 800.5cThe check is sampled before the current hit resolves, so an enemy dropped below the threshold by this activation only enables Bloodlust from the next activation onward.

See also Lucid Ignited Highland

800.6Bracedpage

Giant

1. 800.6aAt battle start the unit gains the listed Armor for each adjacent Tool.
2. 800.6bAdjacency is by shared footprint edge; dead Tools do not count.
3. 800.6cThe grant is a one-time battle-start armor bonus. Losing a Tool later does not remove the Armor already gained.

See also Tool Brute Durability

800.7Brutepage

Giant

1. 800.7aWhile adjacent to 5 or more living allied Tools, this unit loses 33% Power.
2. 800.7bOnly distinct, living, allied Tools sharing a footprint edge count.
3. 800.7cBrute is a live check: destroying a Tool below the threshold restores the Power immediately.

See also Tool Durability Braced

800.8Burnpage

Status

1. 800.8aBurn is a single stack value, not a set of instances. Reapplying Burn adds to the number.
2. 800.8bEvery 0.5s the unit takes damage equal to its current Burn, then the Burn is reduced by 50% of its current value, rounded down but never by less than 1. A Burn always reaches 0.
3. 800.8cBurn ignores Armor completely — both the percentage reduction and the flat reduction — but is still absorbed by Shield.
4. 800.8dAfter the decay, a surviving Burn has a 5% chance to copy its post-decay amount onto one other enemy of whoever applied it. It copies rather than moves, so the parent keeps its own Burn.
5. 800.8eSpread picks by distance first, not by adjacency. The whole side is ranked by footprint Manhattan distance from the burning unit, and only the units tied at the nearest distance may be rolled. A cardinal neighbour therefore always wins outright, but an isolated Burn still reaches the next unit out instead of dying where it stands.
6. 800.8fAmong those tied-nearest candidates, one Focus-weighted roll picks the single recipient. Proximity decides who may be rolled; Focus decides which of the tied units catches. That is what lets an adjacent low-Focus unit beat a distant high-Focus one.
7. 800.8gThe recipient receives the spreading amount on top of whatever Burn it already has. The ally status redirect is deliberately skipped, so a redirector cannot hand its own spread back to itself.
8. 800.8hBurn authored from the source's Power ("Burn {burn_power}") applies 75% of effective Power, minimum 1. Flat authored amounts are unaffected.
9. 800.8iPrismbreak raises Burn tick damage by 50%, rounded up.
10. 800.8jRelentless blocks Burn.

See also Venom Prismbreak Shield Relentless Kindled

800.9Cascadepage

Trigger

1. 800.9aAfter an activation completes, Cascade has a 33% chance to trigger the same ability again.
2. 800.9bThe chance is rolled fresh for every link in the chain and can be raised by runes, up to a hard ceiling of 95%.
3. 800.9cA chain stops after 7 re-triggers, and the depth resets whenever a roll fails.
4. 800.9dAn Entrapped unit cannot Cascade, and its chain depth resets.
5. 800.9eA dead unit cannot Cascade. No keyword grants an exception to this.
6. 800.9fA successful Cascade fires both the on-self-Cascade and on-ally-Cascade trigger channels.

See also Shock Everlasting Initiative

800.10Consecratepage

Stat

1. 800.10aEach Consecrate stack gives +1 Power to each adjacent ally.
2. 800.10bThe bonus is an adjacency-derived aura, so it follows the board: moving, dying, or being Displaced updates it immediately.
3. 800.10cExalt increases Consecrate received.
4. 800.10dConsecrate is rejected while the recipient is dead, Entrapped, Dormant, or is a Tool or Hub.

See also Exalt Flank Supercharge

800.11Crippling Screampage

Giant

1. 800.11aCrippling Scream reduces every enemy's Speed by the listed amount.
2. 800.11bIt is a stat reduction, so Relentless blocks it outright on that enemy.

See also Piercing Roar Relentless Freeze

800.12Crushpage

Giant

1. 800.12aCrush reduces the target's Armor by the listed amount for 2 seconds. Every Crush uses the same 2-second window.
2. 800.12bCrush is resolved before damage inside the same activation, so the hit that carries it lands against the reduced Armor. See the ruling on Crush and damage in the same activation.
3. 800.12cThis hoisting applies to Crush aimed at the target, at a scope, or at all enemies, and to Smash aimed at the target or at a scope — a Smash is armor setup too, because its tier reduction takes Armor down with everything else. A Crush restricted to Frozen enemies is deliberately not hoisted, so that an earlier Freeze in the same ability can establish its targets first.
4. 800.12dA Giant Tool that Crushes or Smashes when an adjacent ally activates is also hoisted, at three levels: armor-setup Tools resolve before other Tools, armor-setup packages before other packages, and armor-setup effects before other effects inside a package.
5. 800.12eTwo Crushes are normally two independent reductions, each on its own 2-second timer. A Giant Tool is the exception: its Crush is keyed to that one Tool against that one enemy, so the same Tool re-Crushing the same enemy replaces its own reduction and refreshes the window instead of stacking a second one.
6. 800.12fCrush is a stat reduction, so Relentless blocks it entirely.
7. 800.12gForge Cores that increase Armor reduction add to the amount before it is applied.
8. 800.12hCrush can drive Armor negative, which amplifies incoming damage rather than reducing it.

See also Smash Relentless Tool Repossess Tremor

800.13Cullpage

Action

1. 800.13aCull is a threshold execution, not damage. It succeeds only while the target's Maim points are strictly greater than its current Vitality. Equal values do not qualify.
2. 800.13bOn success the target is destroyed outright: Vitality and Shield are set to 0 and it dies. Armor, Shield, damage reduction, and death-prevention effects do not apply.
3. 800.13cCull ignores status immunity. Relentless is a status defense and is not consulted.
4. 800.13dCull cannot select a dead, Entrapped, Dormant, or untargetable unit, and cannot select an ally.
5. 800.13eA boss is a legal Cull target. The threshold is the same, and a boss that fails it is destroyed outright rather than damaged.
6. 800.13fAuthored Cull is a post-damage effect, so it reads the Vitality the target has after this activation's damage has fully resolved.
7. 800.13gCull does not consume the Maim it checked. A single Maim pool can satisfy several Cull checks in the same activation.
8. 800.13hA successful Cull fires the on-enemy-Culled trigger channel, which is how cards chain further Culls, healing, or damage off it.
9. 800.13iCull effects may target the primary target, the targets adjacent to it, or a Focus-weighted set filtered to Maimed enemies, depending on the card.

See also Maim Relentless Macabre Everlasting Phylactery

800.14Displacepage

Action

1. 800.14aDisplace exchanges two units' positions. Displace Ally exchanges this unit with a viable adjacent ally; Displace Enemy exchanges the target with a viable adjacent enemy.
2. 800.14bEach occurrence selects again and may select the same partner, so a repeated Displace can swap a pair back and forth.
3. 800.14cA Large Giant only exchanges with another Large Giant; a Huge Giant only with another Huge Giant.
4. 800.14dAcclimate resolves first, for both members of the pair. Threat resolves afterwards for the pair as a whole.
5. 800.14eThreat is allowed to resolve even if an Acclimate killed one of the displaced units, because the pair event already happened.
6. 800.14fKeyword auras and adjacency-derived state are recomputed immediately after a Displace.

See also Acclimate Threat Flank Large Huge

800.15Dividendpage

Scrip

1. 800.15aDividend is a match-long resource that never decays.
2. 800.15bIt is gained from Settle and authored abilities, and is read by ability text to scale "per Dividend" effects.
3. 800.15cDividend automatically pays the positive cost of every shop purchase and reroll before Gold. Gold pays only the remainder.
4. 800.15dEvery Dividend spent on a shop action adds exactly 1 Profit. Selling cards does not spend Dividend, though authored Penny-sale abilities may add Dividend.
5. 800.15eDividend is not Stock and does not reset after battle.

See also Settle Penny Hub Profit Stock

800.16Dormantpage

Structure

1. 800.16aA Dormant unit cannot act, be targeted, be affected, contribute passive effects, or contest combat until its wake condition is met.
2. 800.16bExisting timed effects, damage over time, and heal over time continue to run while Dormant.
3. 800.16cDormant suppresses the unit's own auras as well as incoming effects; Entrap does not.
4. 800.16dCharge progress is preserved across the Dormant window; it resumes rather than restarting.
5. 800.16eClear-status effects are the one category that still resolves on a Dormant unit.
6. 800.16fA card that prints a wake condition enters Dormant at the start of every battle. The condition is either an elapsed span of combat time or a count of qualifying events caused by that unit or by its owner's side; a condition may count an amount instead of occurrences.
7. 800.16gProgress stops at the printed requirement, and waking lasts the rest of that battle — the unit does not become Dormant again.
8. 800.16hEffects printed as happening when the unit awakens resolve at that moment. An awakening that transforms the unit selects among cards that match the printed filter at the unit's tier, capped by the printed tier, and any accompanying gain applies to the transformed unit.
9. 800.16iAn ability can also make a unit Dormant temporarily. That Dormant carries no wake condition and simply ends when its duration expires.

See also Entrap Quest Stun

800.17Dreadpage

Stat

1. 800.17aEach Dread stack gives -1 Power, -0.5 Speed, and -1 Armor.
2. 800.17bDread has no timer and lasts the battle unless it is removed, typically by Harvest.
3. 800.17cRelentless blocks Dread entirely: no stacks are applied and none of the stat loss lands.
4. 800.17dDread is refused against dead, Dormant, and untargetable units, and against an Entrapped unit unless the effect explicitly pierces Entrap.
5. 800.17eDread counts as a negative status for cards that read "has a negative status", even though it is tracked as its own stack family rather than as a status.

See also Harvest Relentless Macabre

800.18Durabilitypage

Giant

1. 800.18aDurability is a card stat, not a keyword. A Tool that wears out prints it with its own icon where a combat unit prints its five combat stats, and it no longer appears as a line of ability text.
2. 800.18bNot every Tool has Durability. A Tool with no Durability ladder is permanent and prints no card stat at all.
3. 800.18cDurability is a Tool's Vitality. A Tool loses 1 Durability each time one of its packages resolves, and is destroyed at 0.
4. 800.18dA charge is spent only when the package actually resolves. A package gated by an Overmatch comparison that fails spends nothing.
5. 800.18eRepair effects restore Durability directly and can revive a Tool that has already been worn to 0.
6. 800.18fDestruction is deferred to the end of the activating ally's package pass when a repair could still land in the same activation.

See also Tool Brute Braced Overmatch

800.19Entrappage

Control

1. 800.19aFor 3 seconds an Entrapped unit's activation is paused and it cannot be targeted or affected by abilities.
2. 800.19bExisting timed effects, damage over time, and heal over time continue to run.
3. 800.19cEntrap ignores status immunity. It is treated as a removal effect rather than a debuff, so Relentless never refuses it.
4. 800.19dWhile Entrapped, a unit rejects every incoming status, buff, shield, heal, and Displace unless the effect explicitly allows application through Entrap.
5. 800.19eA unit's card may declare a per-tier Entrap duration ladder, which overrides the applied duration.
6. 800.19fThe pause covers the whole step that ends it, so no charge progress is lost on release. Returning from Entrap fires its own trigger channel.
7. 800.19gEntrap does not silence the unit's Passive lines. An Entrapped unit still hears trigger events and still resolves them; only the clauses aimed back at the Entrapped unit itself are refused.

See also Dormant Stun Relentless Macabre

800.20Everlastingpage

Death

1. 800.20a10 seconds after dying, an Everlasting unit revives at full Vitality, provided combat is still running.
2. 800.20bThe countdown only advances while the unit is dead; it is cleared if combat ends first.
3. 800.20cA revived unit is a new target incarnation, so Rabid still excludes it for one activation and new-target rune effects can fire for it again.
4. 800.20dEverlasting can be innate or granted for the battle.
5. 800.20eCull kills through Everlasting like any other death: the unit still dies and still revives on schedule.
6. 800.20fEverlasting and Phylactery are separate charges and a unit can carry both. The Vessel resolves at the death itself, so it goes first; the Everlasting timer only ever runs on a death that stays dead.
7. 800.20gThe shared revival procedure is in 500.9.

See also Phylactery Macabre Cull Rabid

800.21Exaltpage

Stat

1. 800.21aExalt increases Fleeting stat buffs, Shield, Hallow, and Consecrate received by this unit.
2. 800.21bThe increase applies to the amount received, before Maim is applied to Shield or Hallow, so an Exalted unit still loses the Maim-prevented portion.
3. 800.21cExalt does not affect ordinary heals, Roost, or non-Fleeting stat buffs.

See also Fleeting Shield Hallow Consecrate Maim

800.22Feastpage

Healing

1. 800.22aFeast heals the source for 35% of the Vitality damage it actually dealt, minimum 1 when any Vitality damage landed.
2. 800.22bDamage absorbed by Armor, Insurance, or Shield produces no Feast, because no Vitality was lost.
3. 800.22cRetaliation does feed Feast. A unit that takes Vitality off an enemy through Thorns, Riposte, or Retort heals from it exactly as if it had dealt that damage. Retaliation into a boss is the exception: it scores as damage dealt but feeds no Feast.
4. 800.22dThe heal is capped by the source's missing Vitality before Maim is applied, so a source at full Vitality restores nothing and consumes no Maim.
5. 800.22eMaim on the source reduces the restoration and is consumed by it.
6. 800.22fCards that convert Feast into bonus damage use the Vitality actually restored, so a full-Vitality Feast adds nothing and cannot recursively generate more Feast.
7. 800.22gFeast also resolves off Burn and Venom ticks attributed to the source, split proportionally between multiple appliers.

See also Maim Shield Burn Venom

800.23Feralpage

Targeting

1. 800.23aFeral is a stack count, capped at 10. Each stack adds a 10% chance that this activation targets a random unit — ally or enemy — instead of a normal enemy target.
2. 800.23bThe misfire roll happens once, before targeting is finalized, so the whole activation redirects rather than a single clause.
3. 800.23cMisfire candidates are all targetable units except the Feral unit itself, and except allies that are immune to ally damage.
4. 800.23dThe misfire pick is Focus-weighted and respects Rabid.
5. 800.23eA misfire against an ally is real damage and can kill.
6. 800.23fRelentless blocks Feral stacks from being applied.

See also Rabid Bloodlust Relentless

800.24Flankpage

Geometry

1. 800.24aFlank means the adjacent left and right allies that share an edge with this unit.
2. 800.24bFlank is strictly horizontal. Allies above or below are adjacent but are not Flank.
3. 800.24cAdjacency is by shared footprint edge, so a 3x3 or 4x4 Giant flanks everything along its whole side.

See also Consecrate Supercharge Large Huge

800.25Fleetingpage

Stat

1. 800.25aA Fleeting buff loses 20% of its original amount every second until it is gone.
2. 800.25bDecay is measured against the amount the buff started with, not its current value, so a Fleeting buff expires in five seconds regardless of size.
3. 800.25cExalt increases the amount of a Fleeting buff received.

See also Exalt Consecrate Overclock

800.26Franchisepage

Scrip

1. 800.26aA Franchise Hub fires a copy of each cardinally adjacent allied Hub's Markup effect. Its own Markup is not copied, and non-adjacent Hubs are untouched.
2. 800.26bThe adjacent Hubs are copied in board reading order, inside the Franchise Hub's own Markup beat.
3. 800.26cEvery copy uses the Franchise Hub's tier, not the tier of the Hub whose effect is being copied.

See also Markup Hub

800.27Freezepage

Control

1. 800.27aFreeze halves the rate at which the unit's charge fills for 4 seconds. It does not stop activation, unlike Stun.
2. 800.27bReapplying Freeze adds a flat 4 seconds to the remaining duration.
3. 800.27cFreeze timers pause while the unit is Prismbroken.
4. 800.27dShock spends itself removing up to 3 seconds of Freeze from a Frozen target instead of forcing an activation.
5. 800.27eShatter checks for Freeze and removes it as part of its own effect.
6. 800.27fRelentless blocks Freeze.

See also Shock Shatter Prismbreak Stun

800.28Furypage

Stat

1. 800.28aFury adds 1 bonus Power per 2 of the unit's current Focus, rounded down. An odd point of Focus adds nothing on its own.
2. 800.28bThe bonus is a combat-only layer read from displayed Focus, so it applies during a battle and not in the shop.
3. 800.28cIt is recomputed whenever Focus changes, so Focus gained during a battle raises Power immediately.
4. 800.28dFury can be innate or granted by a keyword aura; a granted Fury is recomputed from the board each refresh.

See also Ignited Blind Lucid

800.29Hallowpage

Healing

1. 800.29aHallow heals twice per second for its current amount, then the amount decays by 50-75% (a seeded roll).
2. 800.29bA Hallow of 1 heals once and then expires.
3. 800.29cEach Hallow application is its own instance; several can run at once.
4. 800.29dThe decay roll is made once per recipient per tick and applies uniformly to every instance due that tick.
5. 800.29eA rune can give the recipient a chance to preserve a tick's Hallow instead of decaying it. When that roll lands, the tick heals and the amount carries over undiminished.
6. 800.29fExalt increases Hallow received. Maim reduces each tick and is consumed by it.
7. 800.29gRelentless does not block Hallow.

See also Roost Exalt Maim

800.30Harvestpage

Action

1. 800.30aHarvest removes up to the listed number of Dread stacks from allies that have Dread, including the Harvesting unit when the card says so, then applies that many Dread stacks to enemies.
2. 800.30bDonors are picked one stack at a time by Focus-weighted roll, and leave the pool once they are empty.
3. 800.30cRecipients are picked one stack at a time by Focus-weighted roll, so a single enemy can receive several stacks.
4. 800.30dRelentless enemies are removed from the recipient pool before any selection, so Harvest never wastes stacks on them.
5. 800.30eIf no Dread was removed, nothing is applied.

See also Dread Relentless Macabre

800.31Haywirepage

Control

1. 800.31aHaywire is a stack count, capped at 5.
2. 800.31bAfter the unit's next activation completes, one Haywire stack is removed and the unit is Stunned for 3 seconds. The stack is removed first and unconditionally, so a unit that is immune to the Stun still burns the stack.
3. 800.31cOnly Haywire that existed when the activation began may resolve. A Supercharge passive that applies fresh Haywire during the same activation cannot fire it until the next one.
4. 800.31dA Shock-forced activation triggers Haywire normally, using the stack count captured before the forced activation.
5. 800.31eEmptying the last Haywire stack fires on-Haywire-emptied triggers.
6. 800.31fRelentless blocks Haywire.

See also Shock Stun Supercharge Overclock

800.32Highlandpage

Condition

1. 800.32aHighland is active while every non-Tool unit you started combat with has a unique name and has not been combined.
2. 800.32bThe roster is captured when combat begins and is fixed for the battle. Losing a unit mid-combat does not switch Highland off, and neither does a unit spawned during combat.
3. 800.32cA unit whose current tier differs from its native tier fails the check for the whole roster. Combining is the usual cause, but so is a live Smash: while one of your units is Smashed, Highland is off for everyone, and it comes back when the Smash expires.
4. 800.32dUniqueness is by card, not by printed word. Two copies of the same card anywhere in the starting roster fail the check even at different tiers. No two distinct cards share a name, so "unique name" and "unique card" mean the same thing in practice.
5. 800.32eHubs and Pennies count toward the roster. Only Tools are exempt.

See also Bloodlust Lucid

800.33Hubpage

Scrip

1. 800.33aA Hub is an untargetable Scrip building. It never activates and never charges.
2. 800.33bIt cannot be targeted, damaged, healed, shielded, or given a status, and it never holds a round open.
3. 800.33cHubs remain visible to adjacency and effect fan-outs, so cards that count neighbors still see them.
4. 800.33dEvery Hub strengthens allied Pennies at battle start on top of whatever its ability text says, granting Vitality, Power, Speed, and Armor scaled to the Hub's tier.
5. 800.33eSeveral Hubs stack with diminishing returns. They apply in descending tier order at 100%, then 50%, then 25%, then 10% of their bonuses, each rounded up. Ties in tier are broken by stable unit id, so a mixed-tier board is deterministic and independent of placement order.
6. 800.33fDuring match rounds 1 and 2 only, the strongest Hub adds a scarcity supplement when it is supporting one or two allied Pennies. The supplement is 5% per missing Penny below three, multiplied by the number of early rounds remaining including the current one: 20% in round 1 with one Penny, 10% in round 1 with two or in round 2 with one, and 5% in round 2 with two.
7. 800.33gThe supplement applies only to the strongest Hub — never to the 50%, 25%, or 10% Hubs — and lapses entirely from round 3 on, or as soon as three allied Pennies are on the board.
8. 800.33hUnlike the stacking percentages, which round up, the scarcity supplement rounds to the nearest whole point. Rounding a 5% kicker up would turn every fractional stat into a full point and make the smallest round-2 case far larger than authored.
9. 800.33iA Hub prints Settle rather than combat stats. Settle is a card stat with its own icon, not a keyword.
10. 800.33jSelling a Hub grants its normal Gold sell value. It never inherently spends Dividend or grants Profit.

See also Penny Dividend Profit Markup Settle Franchise Tool

800.34Hugepage

Giant

1. 800.34aA Huge Giant occupies a 4x4 footprint.
2. 800.34bIt only exchanges positions with another Huge Giant.

See also Large Displace Flank

800.35Ignitedpage

Condition

1. 800.35aIgnited is active while the unit has 3 or more Kindled stacks.
2. 800.35bIgnited is a live check, so losing Kindled turns it off immediately.
3. 800.35cSome cards project a keyword aura while Ignited — for example granting Fury to adjacent allies. Auras are recomputed from the board on every refresh, so overlapping sources never stack and movement or death removes a stale grant.

See also Kindled Fury Burn

800.36Initiativepage

Trigger

1. 800.36aInitiative effects resolve on the unit's first activation each battle.
2. 800.36bInitiative is its own first-activation gate and is tracked per unit per ability; it does not consume the separate nth-activation counter that other cards use.
3. 800.36cAn adjacent ally that grants Initiative repeats causes the Initiative effects to resolve again, once per granted repeat, immediately after the first resolution.
4. 800.36dEach repeat rolls its own random outcomes, so repeated Focus-weighted picks can select different units.
5. 800.36eAn effect can also push an ally's Initiative effects to fire early; those resolve on the ally, with the ally's own target and stats.

See also Macabre Cascade Quest

800.37Insurancepage

Mitigation

1. 800.37aInsurance is a pool of points, and each point prevents up to 25 damage from one incoming damage instance. A point is spent whole even against a smaller instance, so a 3-damage Venom tick costs a full point.
2. 800.37bOne instance can spend several points: a 60-damage hit into 3 points spends all 3, absorbs 60, and leaves nothing behind. A 60-damage hit into 2 points absorbs 50 and lets 10 through to Shield and then Vitality.
3. 800.37cInsurance is measured after Armor and the incoming-damage cap, and before Shield. Armor is applied first, so points are spent on the reduced amount.
4. 800.37dDamage a point absorbs is prevented outright. It reaches no Shield and no Vitality, it produces no Feast, and it scores the attacker nothing.
5. 800.37eAn instance Insurance swallows outright still triggers Thorns and Riposte, which do not read the damage value. Nothing else in the on-damage-taken fanout fires. Both stay silent when there is no hostile actor to answer — an overtime tick — and when the instance is itself a retaliation, as a boss Reflect is.
6. 800.37fSubrogated points are spent before plain points, and they retaliate for exactly what they absorbed — a Vitality loss on the source, not a damage instance.
7. 800.37gRelentless does not block Insurance; it is not a negative status.
8. 800.37hTwo different Scrip patterns read Insurance and they behave differently. "When this gains Insurance" and "When an ally gains Insurance" are one-shot triggers that fire on each positive grant and keep whatever they gave. "While this has Insurance" is a reversible stat layer instead: it is applied once no matter how many points arrive, never stacks on repeated grants, and is removed the moment the last point is spent.

See also Shield Burn Venom Interest Feast

800.38Interestpage

Scrip

1. 800.38aInterest is a stacking enemy debuff with no timer. The whole debt is paid on the debtor's own next activation, at the activation-start step — after its target has been selected, before anything else resolves.
2. 800.38bThe payment is not chosen by the card that applied it. Each stack of debt rolls independently and takes 1 Vitality, 1 Power, 1 Speed, or 1 Armor, at even odds. A 12-stack debt is therefore a mixed bill, not a single stat's worth.
3. 800.38cThe Vitality portion is a cost, not a damage instance. It bypasses Armor, Shield, Insurance, damage-ignore charges, and lethal-hit prevention, and it lowers the debtor's maximum Vitality by the same amount for the rest of the battle.
4. 800.38dA payment can kill the debtor. The activation it interrupted still continues.
5. 800.38eA Relentless debtor pays nothing, but the debt is cleared all the same — the stacks are zeroed first, then the payment is refused.
6. 800.38fRelentless also blocks Interest from being applied in the first place.
7. 800.38gThe Interest-paid channel fires after the bill resolves, carrying the debt amount, and fires even when the payment was lethal.

See also Penny Hub Relentless Insurance

800.39Kindledpage

Stat

1. 800.39aEach Kindled stack gives +2 Power and +1.5 Speed. The total Speed contribution rounds up, so an odd stack count still yields a whole point.
2. 800.39bKindled has no stack cap.
3. 800.39c3 or more Kindled makes the unit Ignited.

See also Ignited Burn Overclock

800.40Largepage

Giant

1. 800.40aA Large Giant occupies a 3x3 footprint.
2. 800.40bIt only exchanges positions with another Large Giant.
3. 800.40cAdjacency is measured by shared footprint edge, so a Large Giant is adjacent to every unit along each of its sides.

See also Huge Displace Flank

800.41Lucidpage

Condition

1. 800.41aA Lucid bonus resolves only while the unit is at exactly full Vitality.
2. 800.41bLucid effects resolve after the ability's ordinary activation effects, and their bonus damage joins the same hit.
3. 800.41cA card that doubles Power while Lucid applies the doubling to effective Power before Blind's reduction.
4. 800.41dA unit that has taken any Vitality damage is not Lucid, even if it is Shielded.
5. 800.41eA boss carrying Lucid doubles its Power on the same terms. Enemy Power drain is subtracted first, so Piercing Roar still bites into a Lucid phase.

See also Blind Bloodlust Fury Piercing Roar

800.42Macabrepage

Trigger

1. 800.42aMacabre fires when any other unit dies, on either side.
2. 800.42bIt does not fire for the Macabre unit's own death.
3. 800.42cA Cull, a Bloodletting payment, a self-destruct, and ordinary lethal damage all count as deaths.
4. 800.42dAn Entrapped unit still hears the death and still fires its Macabre line. Entrap gates what a unit receives, not what it listens to.
5. 800.42eA Macabre clause aimed at the unit itself — a self power or Speed gain, a self heal, granting itself Everlasting — produces nothing while that unit is Entrapped.
6. 800.42fA Macabre clause aimed elsewhere still lands, filtered per recipient in the usual way. Adjacent-ally buffs reach every adjacent ally that is not itself Entrapped, and board-wide clauses reach every enemy that passes the recipient gate.
7. 800.42gA dead Macabre unit fires nothing further. Every Macabre clause is refused once its own unit is dead.

See also Cull Everlasting Bloodletting Entrap

800.43Maimpage

Status

1. 800.43aMaim is a point pool that lasts the whole battle. It has no timer and never decays on its own.
2. 800.43bEach Maim point prevents 2 points of Vitality restoration or Shield gain, and is then consumed. Points are consumed only for recovery the target could actually have received, so healing a unit that is already at full Vitality spends no Maim.
3. 800.43cConsumption is ceil(prevented / 2), so a 1-point overflow still spends a whole point.
4. 800.43dMaim ignores status immunity. Relentless does not stop it.
5. 800.43eMaim still requires a legal recipient: it is refused against a dead, Entrapped, or Dormant unit, and against Tools and Hubs.
6. 800.43fMaim is what makes Cull work. Cull succeeds only while the target's Maim points exceed its current Vitality.
7. 800.43gMaim reduces Feast, Roost, Hallow, and every other source of Vitality restoration, including a heal delivered by an ally.

See also Cull Relentless Feast Roost Hallow Shield

800.44Markuppage

Scrip

1. 800.44aAt battle start each Markup resolves exactly once, in board reading order: left to right across each row, then top to bottom. Every other battle-start effect resolves in that same pass.
2. 800.44bThis is the same reading order Bloodletting uses to choose its payer.

See also Franchise Hub Bloodletting

800.45Overclockpage

Stat

1. 800.45aEach Overclock stack gives +2 Power, +1 Armor, and +4 Speed.
2. 800.45bThe blowout is rolled once at the close of the stack holder's own activation, after every effect that activation authored has already read the stacks. Gaining stacks never rolls, so a unit can be loaded up between its own activations without risk.
3. 800.45cThe chance is 5% per stack still held at that moment, capped at 100%, which it reaches at 20 stacks. Overclock has no stack cap of its own, so past 20 stacks the holder's next activation is a certain blowout.
4. 800.45dA blowout Stuns the unit for 2 seconds and clears every Overclock stack, losing all of the accumulated stats.
5. 800.45eBlowout is separate from Haywire; a unit can carry both.

See also Haywire Kindled Supercharge Stun

800.46Overmatchpage

Giant

1. 800.46aOvermatch gates an effect on a stat comparison: this unit — or, for a Tool, the ally that triggered it — must have more of the named stat than the compared enemy.
2. 800.46bTies do not trigger. The comparison is strictly greater than.
3. 800.46cA Tool package whose Overmatch comparison fails does not spend Durability.

See also Tool Durability Tremor

800.47Pennypage

Scrip

1. 800.47aA Penny is a real, targetable, size-1 Scrip combat unit that occupies a single cell.
2. 800.47bIt deals damage and, on each activation, has a 25% chance to mint 1 Stock for its owner. That roll is made at the activation-start step, before the attack resolves, alongside the Penny-activated trigger channel.
3. 800.47cPennies are ordinary units for targeting, damage, statuses, and death.
4. 800.47dSelling a Penny grants its normal Gold sell value. It never inherently spends Dividend or grants Profit, but authored abilities may react to the sale by adding Dividend.

See also Hub Stock Dividend Profit Markup Poach

800.48Phasebreakpage

Encounter

1. 800.48aAt each authored Vitality threshold the boss switches to the next authored loadout: a new ability, and new Power, Armor, Speed, and Focus.
2. 800.48bA phase change never heals the boss and never resets Stagger progress. The boss's charge progress is preserved as a fraction and re-timed against the new phase's Speed, so a phase change never hands the boss a free activation and never wipes a nearly-full charge.
3. 800.48cBuffs and debuffs on Focus carry across as a delta from the old base, so a Focus swing that was already on the boss survives the new phase's base Focus.
4. 800.48dA phase may also change the boss's encounter tribe, which changes what tribe-gated effects see.
5. 800.48eThresholds are one-way. A boss that is healed back above a threshold does not revert.
6. 800.48fOne damage instance can cross several thresholds at once. Each crossed phase is applied in order, so a large hit can move a boss through two phases in a single step and only the last one is left standing.
7. 800.48gThe new phase's Power is resolved after its ability is installed, so a Fury the incoming phase carries is already counted in the first Power the new phase reads.

See also Stagger Fury

800.49Phylacterypage

Death

1. 800.49aPhylactery is a stored revival charge. It does nothing while the unit is alive, and a Phylactery unit that dies holding no Vessel dies for good.
2. 800.49bThe starting Vessel is granted when the unit is built for the battle rather than by a battle-start effect, so it cannot be pre-empted or denied.
3. 800.49cVessel Points are earned by the side, not by the unit that applied the status. Every successful Dread stack and every uniquely Frozen unit inside one batch pools into a single raw total for the applying side.
4. 800.49dThat pooled total converts once, through the two rate bands, and the result is awarded in full — not divided — to every living Phylactery unit on that side.
5. 800.49eOne activation and its whole trigger tree is one batch. So is one death and everything it fires, one revival and its listeners, and the battle-start pass. A nested activation joins the batch already open instead of starting a discounted one.
6. 800.49fConverting once per batch is the rate limit. A board-wide application touching five units is worth exactly the same capped award as a focused one touching a single unit, and a revival's own listeners can never finance the revival after it.
7. 800.49gReapplying Freeze to a unit already counted this batch adds nothing. Dread is counted by stacks applied, so a larger application is worth more raw — up to the band ceiling.
8. 800.49hA unit already holding the maximum Vessels ignores incoming points entirely, and its progress toward the next Vessel is held one point short of forming another.
9. 800.49iThe Vessel is spent only after the death has fully resolved, so deathrattles, Macabre, and kill credit all see a real death first.
10. 800.49jThe revival is immediate and synchronous. It runs no timer and leaves no pending state, so a Vessel can never hold a round open.
11. 800.49kThe one death a Vessel is never spent against is the simulator's terminal timeout sweep. That death exists to end the battle.
12. 800.49lA Vessel revival returns the unit to the cell it died in, so it needs no free slot and cannot fail for want of one. What a revival restores is in 500.9.

See also Everlasting Dread Freeze Macabre

800.50Piercing Roarpage

Giant

1. 800.50aPiercing Roar reduces every enemy's Power by the listed amount.
2. 800.50bIt is a stat reduction, so Relentless blocks it outright on that enemy.
3. 800.50cAgainst a boss it applies as Power drain rather than a Power delta, and only when the effect is explicitly authored to drain boss Power.

See also Crippling Scream Relentless Blind

800.51Poachpage

Scrip

1. 800.51aPoach fires whenever any allied non-Scrip combat unit activates, regardless of board position.
2. 800.51bUnlike Supercharge, Poach has no adjacency requirement.
3. 800.51cScrip units activating do not trigger Poach.

See also Supercharge Penny Hub

800.52Prismbreakpage

Status

1. 800.52aFor 3 seconds the target's Burn and Venom ticks deal 50% more damage, rounded up. The amplification is applied before rune and Forge Core tick reduction.
2. 800.52bWhile Prismbreak is active, Blind and Freeze timers do not advance. Their remaining duration is preserved, not extended.
3. 800.52cPrismbreak itself is a timed status. Reapplying it adds 3 seconds.
4. 800.52dRelentless blocks Prismbreak.

See also Burn Venom Blind Freeze

800.53Profitpage

Scrip

1. 800.53aProfit is a match-long resource that never decays and has no cap of its own.
2. 800.53bEvery Dividend actually spent on a shop purchase or reroll adds exactly 1 Profit. Spending Gold and selling cards do not add Profit.
3. 800.53cAbilities may read Profit to scale their effects. Reading Profit does not spend or reduce it.

See also Penny Hub Dividend Markup

800.54Questpage

Structure

1. 800.54aA Quest progresses independently for each owned copy of the card, and only when its owner causes the listed events.
2. 800.54bQuest progress and the completed reward stay attached to that specific unit; selling the unit loses them.
3. 800.54cQuest progress persists across rounds for the rest of the match.

See also Dormant Initiative

800.55Rabidpage

Targeting

1. 800.55aRabid removes the unit's previous activation target from the candidate pool.
2. 800.55bThe exclusion is dropped whole when it would empty the pool, so a Rabid unit facing a single survivor still attacks it.
3. 800.55cThe memory stores the unit that was actually attacked, including an ally hit by a Feral misfire.
4. 800.55dThe memory is keyed by unit identity, so a revived unit stays excluded for one activation.
5. 800.55eRabid can be innate to the card or granted during combat.

See also Feral Cull Bloodlust

800.56Relentlesspage

Mitigation

1. 800.56aRelentless blocks the application of every negative status effect, stat reductions included. Maim and Smash ignore it.
2. 800.56bBlocked statuses: Stun, Freeze, Blind, Prismbreak, Burn, Venom, Haywire, Feral, Interest, and Dread.
3. 800.56cNot blocked: Maim, Smash, Entrap, Insurance, Bloodlust, Roost, and Hallow. Maim and Smash ignore status immunity outright; Entrap is a removal effect rather than a debuff, and is deliberately exempt.
4. 800.56dBlocked stat reductions include Crush (Armor), Piercing Roar (Power), Crippling Scream (Speed), Repossess (Armor), and any other negative Armor, Power, Speed, or boss Power-drain delta. Smash is the one reduction that is not blocked.
5. 800.56eCull ignores status immunity entirely. Relentless is a status defense, not a targeting or lethality gate.
6. 800.56fHarvest cannot select a Relentless unit as a recipient for its transferred Dread; those units are removed from the candidate pool before selection.
7. 800.56gRelentless can be innate to the unit, granted permanently for the battle, or granted for a duration. An effect may also suppress Relentless for the whole battle; while suppressed the unit is treated as not having it, and a later grant is refused rather than queued.
8. 800.56hSuppression survives death and revival. Innate Relentless returns after the battle, because suppression never rewrites the card.

See also Maim Cull Crush Smash Dread Harvest Entrap

800.57Repossesspage

Scrip

1. 800.57aThe target loses the listed Armor, even below zero, and this unit gains the same amount for the rest of the battle.
2. 800.57bNegative Armor amplifies incoming damage rather than reducing it, so Repossess can push a target into taking extra damage.
3. 800.57cRelentless blocks the loss half of Repossess, because it is a stat reduction. No Armor is taken and none is gained.

See also Crush Relentless

800.58Resonancepage

Rune

1. 800.58aYou have at most one equipped resonance. It is granted by a boss signature reward and applies to every eligible allied unit; Tools do not receive it.
2. 800.58bClaiming a new resonance replaces the equipped one. A resonance can never be unequipped or sold.
3. 800.58cResonance level = sum of your player-acquirable board rune tiers + 1, with a floor of 1 and no upper cap.
4. 800.58dEach active Grohm adds 22 levels in combat. Each active Rune Resonator with its Quest completed adds 4 more; an inactive, dead, or Dormant source contributes nothing.
5. 800.58eEffect size scales with resonance level — for example Overpower grants level x 3 Power, and Brace Step grants level x 3 Armor and level x 3 Speed for the first 20 seconds of a battle.

See also Runic Tool Quest

800.59Roostpage

Healing

1. 800.59aRoost heals once per second for the total Roost the unit has gained. It lasts the entire battle and never expires on its own.
2. 800.59bAll Roost gains are additive into one running total rather than separate instances.
3. 800.59cA unit that brings its own Roost prints it as a battle-start passive, so that gain lands before the first activation of the battle.
4. 800.59dThe per-tick heal is the summed base amounts plus every additive bonus, then any percentage bonus on top, then a clamp into the range 1 to 20. The cap is applied last, so stacking past 20 is wasted.
5. 800.59eRoost heals through the normal recovery path, so Maim reduces each tick and is consumed by it.
6. 800.59fRelentless does not block Roost; it is not a negative status.

See also Hallow Maim Feast

800.60Runicpage

Rune

1. 800.60aRunic is a projection modifier only. Units never equip runes or resonances.
2. 800.60bA projected board rune applies to a Runic unit at full potency even when it covers only one row or column of the unit's footprint.
3. 800.60cRunic does not change rune placement, forging, tribe requirements, or resonance-level contribution.

See also Resonance Tool

800.61Settlepage

Scrip

1. 800.61aSettle is a card stat, not a keyword. A Hub prints it with its own icon where a combat unit prints Vitality, Power, Speed, Armor, and Focus, and it no longer appears as a line of ability text.
2. 800.61bThe printed number is the Hub's tier ladder. Board-derived bonuses are added on top at Settle time and are not part of the printed value.
3. 800.61cAt battle end each allied Hub converts up to its listed Settle amount of the shared Stock pool into an equal amount of Dividend, 1:1.
4. 800.61dHubs settle in a fixed order and each draws from whatever Stock remains, so once the pool is dry later Hubs convert nothing. Stock is never borrowed or driven negative.
5. 800.61eBoard-derived Settle bonuses — such as a bonus per allied Hub — are resolved at Settle time against the final board.
6. 800.61fHubs cannot die, so Settle is unconditional.

See also Stock Dividend Hub Penny Profit

800.62Shatterpage

Action

1. 800.62aShatter checks the target for Freeze. If Freeze is present it is removed and the card's specified effect resolves.
2. 800.62bThe exact Freeze duration that was removed is captured and made available to the effect, so a card can scale its payoff off how much Freeze it consumed.
3. 800.62cA duration-scaled Shatter payoff floors only after multiplying. A positive fractional total below 1 resolves to 0 rather than being rounded up to a free point.

See also Freeze Prismbreak

800.63Shieldpage

Mitigation

1. 800.63aShield is a pool of points that sits in front of Vitality. Armor is applied first, then Shield absorbs what is left, then any remainder reduces Vitality.
2. 800.63bShield absorbs Burn and Venom ticks even though those ticks ignore Armor. A tick that is fully absorbed deals no Vitality damage and therefore produces no Feast.
3. 800.63cShield is gained through recovery, so Maim reduces it. Each Maim point prevents 2 Shield and is then consumed.
4. 800.63dExalt increases Shield received.
5. 800.63eShield gain is rejected outright while the recipient is dead, Entrapped, Dormant, or is a Tool or Hub.
6. 800.63fBreaking a Shield to exactly 0 fires on-shield-broken triggers; any absorbed amount fires on-shield-damaged triggers.

See also Maim Burn Venom Exalt Insurance

800.64Shockpage

Action

1. 800.64aIf the target is Frozen, Shock removes up to 3 seconds of Freeze and does nothing else. This is checked first, so Shock never forces an activation on a Frozen unit.
2. 800.64bOtherwise the target activates immediately. Its charge state is captured before the forced activation and restored afterwards, so its normal cycle is unaffected.
3. 800.64cA forced activation resolves the full ability: targeting, effects, damage, triggers, and Cascade.
4. 800.64dA forced activation triggers Haywire using the stack count captured before it started.
5. 800.64eThe same unit cannot be Shocked twice inside one Shock resolution, and nested forced activations stop at a depth of 10.
6. 800.64fShock cannot select an untargetable unit, and does nothing to a unit with no ability.

See also Freeze Haywire Cascade Supercharge

800.65Smashpage

Giant

1. 800.65aSmash reduces the target's tier by 1 for the listed duration, scaling its stats down by the standard per-tier factor.
2. 800.65bReapplying Smash adds its duration to the existing one. It never stacks a second tier reduction.
3. 800.65cCurrent Vitality is preserved as a fraction across the tier change, so a Smashed unit does not gain or lose relative health when the reduction applies or expires.
4. 800.65dSmash ignores status immunity. Relentless blocks every other stat reduction, but it does not stop a Smash.
5. 800.65eAn ordinary activation Smash is hoisted to the front of the activation lane alongside Crush, so the hit that carries it lands against the reduced stats. Both count as armor setup; a Smash simply takes Armor down through its tier reduction rather than directly.
6. 800.65fSmash requires an authored duration; a card with no duration does nothing.
7. 800.65gSmash does nothing to a tier-1 unit. There is no tier below 1 to drop to, so the application is refused outright rather than banked.

See also Crush Relentless Tremor

800.66Staggerpage

Encounter

1. 800.66aStagger is a boss-only meter, and it counts hits rather than damage. Every qualifying hit advances it by exactly 1, whether it took 3 Vitality or 300.
2. 800.66bThe meter's size is authored per boss, so each encounter takes a different number of hits to Stagger. The codex prints it on the boss.
3. 800.66cA hit qualifies when it comes from one of your units and actually removes something — Vitality or Shield. A hit Armor reduces to nothing, or one an Insurance point absorbs outright, advances nothing.
4. 800.66dDamage over time does not fill the meter — only direct hits do. Neither does retaliation, which is a Vitality cost rather than a damage instance.
5. 800.66eA killing blow does not advance the meter. The boss is already dead by the time the hit is scored.
6. 800.66fWhen the meter fills it empties to zero and the boss is Stunned for 2 seconds. The Stun is applied over the boss's immunity to negative statuses, which is the only thing that lets it land at all.
7. 800.66gPhasebreak preserves Stagger progress across a phase change.

See also Phasebreak Stun Insurance Shield

800.67Stockpage

Scrip

1. 800.67aStock is a battle-scoped resource pooled per side, not per unit.
2. 800.67bPenny activations have a 25% chance to mint 1 Stock.
3. 800.67cStock is read by ability text and spent by a Hub's Settle. It resets after each battle.

See also Penny Settle Dividend

800.68Stunpage

Control

1. 800.68aA Stunned unit does not advance its charge and cannot activate. Its charge progress is preserved, not reset.
2. 800.68bDamage over time, heal over time, and timed buffs continue to tick while Stunned.
3. 800.68cReapplying Stun replaces the remaining duration rather than adding to it. A shorter Stun applied over a longer one therefore shortens it.
4. 800.68dRelentless blocks Stun.

See also Freeze Haywire Overclock Stagger

800.69Superchargepage

Trigger

1. 800.69aSupercharge fires when an adjacent ally finishes an activation.
2. 800.69bIt resolves in the activation-followup step, after the activating ally's damage, post-damage effects, Tool packages, and Haywire.
3. 800.69cEach Supercharge unit fires at most once per chain, so two adjacent Supercharge units cannot re-trigger each other forever.
4. 800.69dA Supercharge that applies Haywire to the activating ally cannot fire that Haywire on the same activation; only Haywire present before the activation began may resolve.

See also Haywire Poach Flank Shock

800.70Threatpage

Trigger

1. 800.70aThreat fires when a pair of enemies is Displaced.
2. 800.70bIt fires once for the pair, after both members have resolved Acclimate.
3. 800.70cThreat still fires when one of the displaced units died to an Acclimate, because the pair event already occurred.

See also Displace Acclimate

800.71Toolpage

Giant

1. 800.71aA Tool is untargetable, never activates, and does not count toward resonance level as a rune would.
2. 800.71bTools cannot be damaged, healed, shielded, or given a status by ordinary effects. They are consumed by Durability instead.
3. 800.71cTools react to authored events through effect packages rather than by taking a turn. A package listens to exactly one of five events: battle start, an ally activating, an ally taking damage, an enemy dying, or a Tool losing its last Durability.
4. 800.71dA package that listens to an ally activating also declares which of three passes it runs in: immediately at activation start, after the ally's impact, or after the activation completes. Packages on the other four events resolve when that event fires.
5. 800.71eMost packages require adjacency to the unit the event is about, and a package may also carry a chance roll or an Overmatch stat gate. Adjacency, chance, and the gate are all checked before the package resolves, so a rejected package spends no Durability.

See also Durability Braced Brute Crush Resonance

800.72Tremorpage

Giant

1. 800.72aTremor deals the listed damage to each enemy as two separate hits, split as evenly as possible. On an odd total the first hit takes the extra point — 55 becomes 28 and 27.
2. 800.72bBecause they are two real damage instances, Armor's flat reduction is applied twice, Shield is consumed twice, Insurance is spent against each half separately, and damage reactions fire twice.
3. 800.72cSplitting the damage makes Tremor noticeably weaker into high flat Armor. Against Insurance it cuts both ways: two halves of 20 are covered by one point each, where the same 40 as a single instance would have spent two.

See also AoE Crush Insurance

800.73Venompage

Status

1. 800.73aVenom is a stack count. Every 1.5s the unit takes damage equal to its current stacks, then loses 20-30% of them (a seeded roll), rounded down but never fewer than 1.
2. 800.73bVenom ticks slower than Burn, which fires every 0.5s. A Venom of the same size therefore deals its damage over a longer span and decays more slowly in wall-clock time.
3. 800.73cVenom ignores Armor completely but is still absorbed by Shield.
4. 800.73dPrismbreak raises Venom tick damage by 50%, rounded up.
5. 800.73eRelentless blocks Venom.

See also Burn Prismbreak Shield Relentless

900.1Cull and Maim in the same activationpage

Question

A card reads "Deal damage, Maim N, Cull". Does the Cull see the Maim it just applied?

Answer

Yes. The Maim is applied first and the Cull tests against the increased pool.

1. 900.1aAuthored Maim and authored Cull are both post-damage effects, and post-damage effects resolve in the order the card lists them. Every printed card that carries both lists Maim before Cull, so the Maim lands first.
2. 900.1bBy the time Cull evaluates, the activation's base damage has already been dealt: Armor, Shield, Vitality loss, death, and every damage trigger have fully resolved. Cull therefore reads the target's post-damage Vitality, not the value it had at the start of the activation.
3. 900.1cCull succeeds only while Maim points are strictly greater than current Vitality. Both halves of that comparison have already moved this activation: Vitality is lower because of the hit, and Maim is higher because of the rider.
4. 900.1dCull does not consume the Maim it checked, so a second Cull in the same activation — from a chained on-Culled trigger, for example — tests against the same pool.

See also Cull Maim Relentless

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence 800 Keyword Abilities

900.2Crush and damage in the same activationpage

Question

A card reads "Crush N, deal damage". Does the damage land against the reduced Armor?

Answer

Yes. Ordinary activation Crush — and Smash with it — is hoisted to the front of the activation, before every damage clause and before the base hit.

1. 900.2aActivation effects normally resolve in the order the card lists them. Armor setup is the exception: ordinary Crush and Smash effects are moved to the front, keeping their order relative to each other, and everything else stays in authored order behind them.
2. 900.2bThis is deliberate — armor setup must land before the numbers it is meant to change. It applies whether the card lists the Crush or Smash first or last.
3. 900.2cThe hoisted types are Crush on the target, Crush on a scope, Crush on all enemies, Smash on the target, and Smash on a scope.
4. 900.2dCrush restricted to Frozen enemies is deliberately not hoisted. It stays in authored order so that a Freeze earlier in the same ability can establish which enemies qualify.
5. 900.2eBecause Crush lasts 2 seconds, the reduction also covers post-damage riders and any damage-over-time tick that happens to land inside the window — though Burn and Venom ignore Armor anyway, so it does not help them.
6. 900.2fRelentless blocks Crush, so against a Relentless target the hoisting happens but nothing is reduced.

See also Crush Relentless Freeze Tremor

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence 500.2 Armor

900.3Crush from an adjacent ally's Toolpage

Question

A Giant Tool reads "When an adjacent ally activates, Crush that ally's target". Does the ally's own hit benefit?

Answer

Yes. Tool armor setup on the activation event is hoisted the same way, at three separate levels.

1. 900.3aGiant Tool packages on the "ally activated" event with immediate timing resolve at the start of the ally's activation, before its base damage is even computed.
2. 900.3bWithin that pass the ordering is hoisted three times over, so a Crush or a Smash cannot be buried behind an unrelated effect:
3. 900.3cTools whose ability contains an immediate activation Crush or Smash are moved ahead of all other Tools.
4. 900.3dWithin a Tool, packages containing an activation Crush or Smash are moved ahead of its other packages.
5. 900.3eWithin a package, Crush and Smash effects are moved ahead of the package's other effects.
6. 900.3fThe result is that every armor-setup effect that could apply to this activation applies before any of them spends Durability on something else, and long before the ally's hit resolves.
7. 900.3gThe Tool's own Crush is still subject to the normal rules: Relentless blocks it, and the Tool spends 1 Durability when the package resolves.

See also Crush Tool Durability Overmatch

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence 800 Keyword Abilities

900.4A "per" clause whose count is zeropage

Question

A rider reads "Restore N vitality per Burning enemy" and nothing is Burning. Does it restore the minimum?

Answer

No. A counted clause with a count of 0 resolves to 0 and does nothing.

1. 900.4aOrdinary amounts floor to a minimum of 1, so a rider that resolves to a fraction still does something. Counted amounts deliberately do not.
2. 900.4bThe reason is that a count of 0 is a real, meaningful board state: no enemy is Burning, no ally is Feral, no wounded enemy exists. Flooring it to 1 would fabricate an effect out of nothing.
3. 900.4cThis applies to every "per" clause: per Burning enemy, per Feral stack, per adjacent Tool, per Lucid ally, and the rest of the table in 400.3.
4. 900.4dThe one exception is a duration-scaled clause, which floors after multiplying with a minimum of 0 — so it also resolves to 0, just by a different route.
5. 900.4eA clause scaled by the unit's rune-effect count behaves the same way: no rune effects means no effect.

See also Burn Feral Tool Shatter

Rules 400.3 "Per" clauses and counted values

900.5Does a unit killed this activation still count?page

Question

A post-damage rider counts enemies with some status. The hit just killed the only one. Is it counted?

Answer

No. Every count reads living, targetable units at the moment the clause resolves.

1. 900.5aCounts are never snapshotted at the start of an activation. Each counted clause samples the board when it resolves.
2. 900.5bThe candidate pool for any enemy or ally count is filtered to units that are alive, not Entrapped, not Dormant, and not untargetable. A unit that died to this activation's damage fails the first of those.
3. 900.5cPost-damage riders resolve after the hit, so they see the post-hit board. That is the whole point of the lane — Cull relies on it.
4. 900.5dThe same filter means Tools and Hubs are never included in a unit count, even when they are adjacent and alive. A clause that wants Tools must count adjacent Tools explicitly.
5. 900.5eThe practical consequence is a common trap: a card that applies a status and then scales a payoff off units carrying that status gets nothing when its own hit removes the last carrier.

See also Cull Maim Burn Tool

Rules 400.3 "Per" clauses and counted values 400.7 When a printed line resolves

900.6When a condition is checkedpage

Question

A rider reads "Bloodlust: gain speed". Is Bloodlust checked at the start of the activation or when the rider resolves?

Answer

When the rider resolves. Nothing about a condition is snapshotted earlier.

1. 900.6aEvery conditional clause evaluates its condition at the point it resolves, against current state. A false condition skips the clause entirely.
2. 900.6bThat means an activation-lane rider and a post-damage rider on the same card can disagree, because the hit happened in between.
3. 900.6cBloodlust has a second subtlety of its own: its wounded-enemy sample is taken before the current hit resolves, so an enemy pushed below half by this activation only enables Bloodlust from the next one.
4. 900.6dLucid is the mirror image: it tests current Vitality, so a self-heal earlier in the same activation can switch it back on for a later clause.
5. 900.6eA condition that fails does not consume a "once" charge, so the clause can still land on a later activation.

See also Bloodlust Lucid Ignited Initiative

Rules 400.4 Conditions and gates

900.7Bonus damage and the base hitpage

Question

A card deals base damage and several riders add bonus damage. Is that one hit or several?

Answer

One. All activation-lane bonus damage is added to the base hit and lands as a single instance.

1. 900.7aActivation-lane clauses that produce bonus damage return it to the activation, which accumulates it and adds it to the base damage before the hit is dealt.
2. 900.7bBecause it is one instance, it is mitigated once: one Armor percentage step, one flat Armor step, one pass against Insurance, one Shield absorption.
3. 900.7cThat makes bonus damage far more Armor-efficient than the same total split across several instances, which is exactly why Tremor and AoE underperform into flat Armor.
4. 900.7dClauses that damage other units — all enemies, adjacent enemies, a Focus-weighted set — are separate instances and are mitigated separately.
5. 900.7eEach bonus-damage clause sees the running total accumulated so far, so a clause that scales off current damage reads the boosted value.

See also Tremor AoE Insurance Shield

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence 500.1 One damage instance

900.8Passive lines and activation linespage

Question

Does a "Passive:" line resolve during the unit's activation?

Answer

No. It resolves when its event fires, which may be many times per battle or never.

1. 900.8aA Passive line is a trigger-channel effect. It is not part of the activation lanes and does not wait for the unit's charge.
2. 900.8bTrigger effects resolve directly. They do not create a new activation, so they do not fire activation-start hooks, Supercharge, Haywire, or a Cascade roll.
3. 900.8cA trigger can fire while the unit is charging, while it is Stunned, and while it is Entrapped. The unit's own death line still resolves after it has died; every other channel, Macabre included, stops listening once the unit is dead.
4. 900.8dA trigger may be scoped to a subject, most often adjacent allies, in which case the event must involve a unit inside that scope.
5. 900.8eThe one activation-shaped exception is Shock, which really does force a full activation on its target.
6. 900.8fA Passive that reacts to the unit's own activation still resolves in the activation-followup step, not inside the activation itself.

See also Macabre Supercharge Poach Shock Cascade

Rules 400.6 Passives and triggers 300.3 The activation sequence

900.9Maim against a Relentless targetpage

Question

Can a Relentless unit be Maimed?

Answer

Yes. Maim ignores status immunity.

1. 900.9aThe status-application gate checks Relentless against a table of blocked statuses, then makes an explicit exception for Maim.
2. 900.9bThe consequence is that Relentless does not protect a unit from being set up for a Cull. Maim goes on, and Cull ignores Relentless as well.
3. 900.9cMaim still respects the other application gates. It is refused against a dead, Entrapped, or Dormant unit, and against Tools and Hubs.
4. 900.9dRelentless does still block the healing denial's usual companions — a Relentless unit cannot be Burned or Venomed to force the Maim to matter — but its own healing is reduced by Maim exactly like anyone else's.

See also Maim Relentless Cull

Rules 700.3 Application gates 700.4 What Relentless blocks

900.10Relentless against stat reductionspage

Question

Which of Crush, Smash, Dread, Piercing Roar, Crippling Scream, and Repossess get through Relentless?

Answer

Only Smash. Relentless blocks every other negative stat delta.

1. 900.10aRelentless is checked inside the primitives that change Armor, Power, and Speed, so any effect that routes through them is blocked no matter which keyword printed it.
2. 900.10bCrush is checked explicitly as well, before its timed reduction is registered. Smash is not checked at all — it applies its tier reduction straight through status immunity.
3. 900.10cDread is checked before its stacks are added, so a Relentless unit gains no Dread stacks at all — not stacks without the stat loss.
4. 900.10dRepossess is blocked on the losing half. The target keeps its Armor and the Repossessing unit gains nothing.
5. 900.10eHarvest goes further and removes Relentless enemies from its recipient pool before selection, so its transferred Dread is never wasted on a blocked target.
6. 900.10fRelentless does not remove a reduction that is already running. A unit that gains Relentless while Crushed stays Crushed until the window expires.

See also Relentless Crush Smash Dread Repossess Harvest

Rules 700.4 What Relentless blocks

900.11Shield against Burn and Venompage

Question

Burn and Venom ignore Armor. Do they also ignore Shield?

Answer

No. Shield absorbs them in full.

1. 900.11aIgnoring Armor and ignoring Shield are separate flags in the mitigation pipeline. Burn and Venom set the first and not the second.
2. 900.11bA tick fully absorbed by Shield deals no Vitality damage, so it produces no Feast for whoever applied the status and does not advance effects that read Vitality damage.
3. 900.11cThe tick still counts as a damage instance, so Insurance still meets it — and Insurance is spent before Shield, so an insured unit burns a whole point on a tick it would have shielded anyway.
4. 900.11dForge Core tick reduction and rune tick reduction are applied before the pipeline, so they shrink the tick before Shield sees it.

See also Shield Burn Venom Insurance Feast

Rules 500.1 One damage instance

900.12Insurance against a damage instancepage

Question

How much of a hit does one Insurance point stop?

Answer

Up to 25, and the point is spent whether or not the hit was worth that much.

1. 900.12aInsurance is a pool of points measured in damage. Each point covers up to 25 of a single instance, and the pool empties into that instance until it is covered or the points run out.
2. 900.12bA 60-damage hit into 3 points spends all 3 and is absorbed entirely. The same hit into 2 points absorbs 50 and lets 10 through to Shield and then Vitality.
3. 900.12cThe whole-point rule is what makes small instances expensive. A 3-damage Venom tick still costs a full point, so 22 of that point's coverage is thrown away.
4. 900.12dThat reverses the old read on Tremor. Splitting 40 damage into two 20s now costs one point per half instead of two points for 40 — but every extra instance is another chance to waste coverage, and against a board of insured units AoE still spends a point each.
5. 900.12eInsurance is spent after Armor and the incoming-damage cap, so Armor is applied first and the points cover only what Armor left.
6. 900.12fSubrogated points spend before plain points, and retaliate for exactly what they absorbed — a Vitality loss on the source, not a damage instance.
7. 900.12gDamage a point absorbs leaves almost no trace: no Shield break, no Feast, no Stagger, nothing scored for the attacker. The exception is Thorns and Riposte, which answer the hit rather than its size and fire anyway.

See also Insurance Tremor AoE Shield

Rules 500.1 One damage instance 500.6 Retaliation

900.13Prismbreak with Burn, Venom, Blind, and Freezepage

Question

What exactly does Prismbreak change?

Answer

It raises Burn and Venom tick damage by 50%, and pauses Blind and Freeze timers.

1. 900.13aThe amplification is applied to the tick before rune and Forge Core tick reduction, and it rounds up.
2. 900.13bIt applies only to Burn and Venom. It does not amplify direct damage, and it does not amplify overtime damage.
3. 900.13cThe pause holds the Blind and Freeze timers still while Prismbreak runs. It preserves duration; it does not add any.
4. 900.13dThe practical effect is that a Prismbroken target both takes more damage over time and stays Blinded or Frozen longer, so the two halves of the keyword reinforce each other.
5. 900.13ePrismbreak itself is a timed status and is blocked by Relentless, so none of this applies to a Relentless target.

See also Prismbreak Burn Venom Blind Freeze

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.14Maim against healing effectspage

Question

Which forms of healing does Maim reduce?

Answer

All of them, plus Shield gain. It does not reduce damage.

1. 900.14aMaim sits in the shared recovery ledger, so every path that restores Vitality or grants Shield runs through it: direct heals, ally heals, Feast, each Roost tick, each Hallow tick, and Shield from any source.
2. 900.14bMaim is applied to the eligible amount, after the target's own capacity cap. Healing a unit already at full Vitality restores nothing and consumes no Maim.
3. 900.14cEach point prevents 2 and is then consumed, so Maim is a finite resource that healing burns through. Consumption is ceil(prevented / 2), so a 1-point overflow still spends a whole point.
4. 900.14dThis is why chip healing is a legitimate answer to Maim: many small heals strip the pool as effectively as one large one, and each tick that gets through is a tick the Cull threshold no longer covers.
5. 900.14eFeast is the exception worth noting: because it is capped by missing Vitality first, a healthy Feast unit spends no Maim and gains nothing.

See also Maim Feast Roost Hallow Shield Cull

Rules 500.3 Recovery

900.15Shock against a Frozen targetpage

Question

Does Shock force a Frozen unit to activate?

Answer

No. Against a Frozen target Shock removes Freeze instead, and does nothing else.

1. 900.15aThe Freeze branch is checked before the activation branch, so this is not a choice — a Frozen target always takes the Freeze removal.
2. 900.15bUp to 3 seconds of Freeze are removed. If that empties the timer, Freeze is cleared outright.
3. 900.15cThis means stacking Freeze and Shock on the same board works against you: your Shocks spend themselves thawing your own Freezes rather than forcing activations.
4. 900.15dShock also does nothing to an untargetable unit or one with no ability.

See also Shock Freeze Shatter

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.16Shock, Haywire, and Cascade chainspage

Question

What does a forced activation do to the target's own cycle and stacks?

Answer

It resolves fully, triggers Haywire, and then restores the charge state it started with.

1. 900.16aA forced activation resolves the entire ability — targeting, effects, damage, triggers, and the Cascade roll — exactly as a natural activation would.
2. 900.16bThe target's charge state, queued reactivations, and Cascade depth are captured beforehand and restored afterwards, so a Shock is pure extra value and does not delay the next natural activation.
3. 900.16cHaywire does fire, using the stack count captured before the forced activation began.
4. 900.16dThe same unit cannot be Shocked twice inside one Shock resolution, and nested forced activations stop at a depth of 10.
5. 900.16eCascade has its own separate cap of 7 re-triggers, and the depth resets on any failed roll.
6. 900.16fA Cascade that occurs while a Shock chain is already running is routed through the Shock machinery rather than queueing a quick reactivation, so both caps apply to it.

See also Shock Haywire Cascade Initiative

Rules 300.2 Charge and Speed 300.3 The activation sequence

900.17Haywire applied during the activation it would punishpage

Question

A Supercharge ally applies Haywire while a unit is activating. Does that Haywire fire immediately?

Answer

No. Only Haywire that existed when the activation began may resolve.

1. 900.17aThe Haywire count is captured before the activation starts and compared against the count afterwards. A stack that arrived in between is not eligible.
2. 900.17bThis matters because Supercharge resolves in the activation-followup step, at almost exactly the moment Haywire would otherwise fire. Without the capture, a Supercharge Haywire would Stun its own ally instantly.
3. 900.17cThe unit still must have at least one Haywire stack remaining at resolution time. Removing the last stack fires the on-Haywire-emptied trigger before the Stun is applied.
4. 900.17dHaywire resolves before adjacent Supercharge passives in the followup order, which is why the capture is needed at all.

See also Haywire Supercharge Stun Shock

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence

900.18Entrap compared with Dormantpage

Question

Both make a unit untouchable. What is different?

Answer

Dormant also switches off the unit's own passives. Entrap does not.

1. 900.18aEntrap blocks effects received by the unit and pauses its activation for 3 seconds. Its auras, Consecrate, and other source-side passives keep projecting.
2. 900.18bDormant blocks all of that and additionally suppresses everything the unit projects, and the unit does not contest the combat.
3. 900.18cBoth preserve charge progress and both let existing timed effects, damage over time, and heal over time continue running.
4. 900.18dRelentless does not block Entrap, because Entrap is classified as a removal effect rather than a debuff.
5. 900.18eClear-status effects still resolve against a Dormant unit; nothing else does.
6. 900.18fA card may declare a per-tier Entrap duration ladder, which overrides the applied duration on that unit.

See also Entrap Dormant Relentless Consecrate

Rules 700.3 Application gates

900.19Macabre while the Macabre unit is Entrappedpage

Question

A unit with a Macabre line is Entrapped when something dies. Does the line fire?

Answer

Yes, and then it loses only the parts that point back at the Entrapped unit.

1. 900.19aEntrap gates what a unit receives. It does not stop a unit from hearing an event, so the death is heard and the Macabre line resolves normally.
2. 900.19bEach clause is then checked against its own recipient. A self power gain, a self Speed gain, a self heal, and granting itself Everlasting all name the Entrapped unit as the recipient, so all four produce nothing.
3. 900.19cA clause naming other units keeps working. Adjacent-ally buffs land on each adjacent ally that passes the ally gate, and board-wide clauses — reducing every enemy's Focus, Envenoming every Dreaded enemy — land on each enemy that passes the recipient gate.
4. 900.19dThose recipients are gated individually, so an Entrapped ally beside the Macabre unit still receives nothing, and an Entrapped enemy is still skipped.
5. 900.19eThe other gates apply as always on top of that. A Relentless enemy refuses the Focus reduction as a stat reduction and refuses the Venom as a blocked status, so a board-wide Macabre clause can resolve and still change nothing.
6. 900.19fNone of this survives the unit's own death. A dead unit stops listening to Macabre entirely — but a Phylactery revival puts it back on the board mid-round, and it hears every death after that.

See also Macabre Entrap Everlasting Relentless Dread

Rules 400.5 Who a clause affects 400.6 Passives and triggers 700.3 Application gates

900.20Bloodletting choosing its payerpage

Question

Who pays a Bloodletting cost, and what if it kills them?

Answer

The first eligible unit in board reading order pays all of it, and the death resolves normally.

1. 900.20aCandidates are every living, non-Entrapped, non-boss unit on the caster's half of the battlefield. Tools, Hubs, and Pennies are all in that list. They are sorted into board reading order — left to right across each row, then top to bottom — and the first one pays.
2. 900.20bThat is usually not the caster. Positioning the units you are willing to spend in the top-left of your board is a real decision — and a Tool or a Hub there is the worst case, not the best one. Those objects discard every combat interaction, so they cannot pay, and a payment that moves no Vitality aborts the ability before its damage.
3. 900.20cThe whole cost is paid by one unit. It is never split.
4. 900.20dThe payment is a Vitality cost. Armor, Insurance, Shield, and damage-ignore charges never meet it and none of them are spent by it, so a shielded payer still pays in full. A defy-death rune is the one thing that answers a lethal payment.
5. 900.20eThe payment can be lethal. The payer dies, Macabre fires for everyone else, and the activation continues to its damage step regardless.
6. 900.20fIf no eligible payer exists at all, the activation is aborted before damage — though its immediate rune effects still resolve.
7. 900.20gBloodletting reduction runes lower the cost before a payer is chosen. Cards that read "the cost paid" use the Vitality that actually left the payer — the reduced cost, or the payer's remaining Vitality, whichever is smaller.

See also Bloodletting Macabre Shield Insurance Markup

Rules 100.5 Board reading order 300.3 The activation sequence 500.8 Vitality costs

900.21Feral misfire and Rabid memorypage

Question

If Feral makes a unit hit an ally, what does Rabid remember?

Answer

The ally. Rabid records whichever unit was actually attacked.

1. 900.21aThe Feral roll happens before the target is finalized, so a misfire replaces the cached target for the entire activation — every clause redirects, not just the base hit.
2. 900.21bRabid's memory is written after the misfire, so it stores the ally. On the next activation that ally is excluded from the candidate pool.
3. 900.21cMisfire candidates are every targetable unit except the Feral unit itself and allies immune to ally damage, and the pick is Focus-weighted and Rabid-filtered like any other.
4. 900.21dFeral is capped at 10 stacks, so a fully stacked unit misfires on every activation.
5. 900.21eRelentless blocks Feral from being applied, so a Relentless unit never misfires.

See also Feral Rabid Relentless

Rules 600.3 The primary target

900.22Displace, Acclimate, and Threat orderingpage

Question

In what order do the triggers around a swap resolve?

Answer

Acclimate first, for both units, then Threat once for the pair.

1. 900.22aThe two displaced units each resolve Acclimate in turn, in a fixed order that is not board reading order.
2. 900.22bThreat resolves after both, once for the pair rather than once per unit.
3. 900.22cThreat still fires when an Acclimate killed one of the displaced units, because the pair event already occurred and is not retracted.
4. 900.22dKeyword auras and adjacency-derived state are refreshed immediately before the triggers, so an Acclimate reads the post-swap board.
5. 900.22eDisplace selects a fresh partner on each occurrence, so a repeated Displace can swap the same pair back and forth and fire the triggers each time.
6. 900.22fA Large Giant only swaps with another Large, and a Huge only with another Huge.

See also Displace Acclimate Threat Large Huge

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.23Runic and resonance levelpage

Question

Does a Runic unit change which runes raise my resonance level?

Answer

No. Runic changes projected potency on that unit; resonance level still counts each player-acquirable board rune once by tier.

1. 900.23aUnits never equip runes or resonances, so there is no unit-held source to add to the level.
2. 900.23bA board rune contributes its tier once even when it projects onto several units or reaches a Runic unit at full potency.
3. 900.23cThe one global resonance uses that shared level for every eligible allied unit.

See also Runic Resonance Tool

Rules 1000.3 Resonance level

900.24Partial rune projection and Runicpage

Question

What happens when a rune covers only half of a unit?

Answer

A normal 2x2–4x4 unit gets half potency. A Runic unit gets full potency.

1. 900.24aEach rune occupies two cells on its rune board. For a normal 2x2 through 4x4 recipient, covering one projected row or column is partial and covering both is full.
2. 900.24bThe 50% reduction is applied to that rune's resolved values. Another rune crossing the unit is evaluated separately and may have different coverage.
3. 900.24cRunic overrides the partial-coverage reduction for board runes, so either one-row or two-row coverage applies at full potency.
4. 900.24dSize-1 Scrip units always receive full potency because half coverage is not meaningful for their footprint. Tools are not eligible for projected rune effects.

See also Runic Tool Resonance

Rules 100.3 Runes and projection 1000.1 Rune projection

900.25Celestica and rune sharingpage

Question

How does Celestica share rune effects with adjacent allies?

Answer

Each cardinally adjacent ally receives every placed rune from its owner's rune boards once at full potency, regardless of row or column.

1. 900.25aAdjacency means sharing a footprint edge. Diagonal units are not affected, and a Celestica does not grant this all-rune projection to herself.
2. 900.25bThe recipient gets one full-potency copy of every valid rune placed on its owner's two rune boards. A rune already reaching that ally through its normal row or column is not duplicated.
3. 900.25cThe sharing ignores rune position but does not ignore tribe requirements or other applicability rules.
4. 900.25dThe player's global resonance is not a board rune and is independent of this sharing. Several adjacent Celesticas do not stack additional copies.

See also Runic Tool

Rules 100.4 Adjacency 1000.1 Rune projection

900.26Thorns and Riposte against a fully absorbed hitpage

Question

If Armor, Shield, or Insurance eats the whole hit, does the defender still retaliate?

Answer

Only Insurance leaves the retaliation intact. Armor or Shield swallowing the hit silences it.

1. 900.26aThorns and Riposte answer a damage event, and they deal a fixed amount that never reads what the hit was worth — Thorns the rune's per-tier value, Riposte your resonance level.
2. 900.26bThat is exactly why Insurance cannot silence them. Insurance prevents the damage but the hostile event still happened, so both are dispatched from the absorption itself.
3. 900.26cArmor and Shield are different. The rest of the on-damage-taken fanout is gated on Vitality damage that actually landed, and so are Thorns and Riposte on that path — an instance Armor reduces to nothing, or one Shield absorbs whole, leaves no event for either to answer.
4. 900.26dRetort behaves like the Armor and Shield case even against Insurance: its line is gated on landed damage, so a fully prevented instance does not fire it. So does the boss Reflect rune, which reads the damage the boss actually took.
5. 900.26eWhat Thorns and Riposte send back is a Vitality loss, not damage. The attacker's own Armor, Shield, Insurance, and damage-ignore charges are all irrelevant to it, and it cannot trigger the attacker's own retaliation in turn.
6. 900.26fBoss Reflect is the exception on that point too. It answers with a real damage instance, so the attacker's Armor and Shield do reduce it — and because it is damage, it can set off the attacker's own Thorns and Riposte back at the boss.

See also Insurance Shield Feast

Rules 500.1 One damage instance 500.6 Retaliation 500.7 What retaliates

900.27What one Vessel Point batch is worthpage

Question

How much Freeze and Dread does a Vessel actually cost?

Answer

Ten full batches. One batch is capped at 6 points and a Vessel is 60, no matter how wide the application was.

1. 900.27aScore the batch, not the hit. Every successful Dread stack your side applies is worth 1 raw, and every unit your side Freezes is worth 2 raw — counted once per unit, so reapplying Freeze inside the same batch adds nothing.
2. 900.27bThe batch's raw total then converts once: the first 4 raw at a point each, the next 4 at a point per 2, and everything past 8 raw at nothing. The bands therefore cap a batch at 6 points on their own.
3. 900.27cWork an example. Rime Oracle Freezes 3 enemies and its trigger tree applies 2 Dread: 3 x 2 + 2 = 8 raw, which converts to 4 + 2 = 6 points. A board-wide Freeze catching 5 enemies is 10 raw, which converts to the same 6. Four times the targets, identical award.
4. 900.27dA focused activation that Freezes one enemy is 2 raw and 2 points, which is a third of the wide one rather than a fifth. That gap is the whole design: width is worth something, but not what it costs.
5. 900.27eThe award is not divided. Every living Phylactery unit on the applying side receives the full 6, so a board running three of them banks 18 points of progress from one activation.
6. 900.27fTen maximum batches form one Vessel. In practice a Dread-and-Freeze Undead board is spending its ordinary turns on this, not detouring for it.
7. 900.27gSides matter, not targets. Dread your own card puts on an ally counts for your side exactly like Dread on an enemy, and an enemy Freezing your units feeds their Phylactery units, not yours.
8. 900.27hA unit already holding two Vessels ignores points entirely, and its meter is held one point short of forming a third. Overflow is not stored for later.

See also Phylactery Dread Freeze Everlasting

Rules 500.4 Death 500.9 Revival

900.28Everlasting and Phylactery on the same boardpage

Question

How do the two death keywords differ?

Answer

Everlasting is a timer that always runs. Phylactery is a charge you have to earn, and it lands first.

1. 900.28aBoth are revivals, and both hand off to the same procedure in 500.9. What separates them is the price and the timing.
2. 900.28bEverlasting costs nothing and is never exhausted: 10 seconds after every death, the unit comes back, as long as combat is still running and its board half has a free slot. Ten seconds is a long time in a 120-second round, and the unit does nothing at all while it waits.
3. 900.28cPhylactery is finite. The unit starts holding one Vessel, spends it the instant a death finishes resolving, and is back in its own cell with no gap — but once the Vessels are gone, so is the unit.
4. 900.28dSo on a unit carrying both, the Vessel always resolves first. The Everlasting timer is armed by the death and then cleared by the revival that immediately follows it. Everlasting only ever runs on a death that stays dead — the death after the last Vessel.
5. 900.28eThat makes them complements rather than redundancies. Everlasting is the floor under an Undead board; Vessels are what a Dread-and-Freeze board buys with the statuses it was applying anyway.
6. 900.28fEither revival is a new target incarnation, so Rabid excludes the unit for one activation and new-target rune effects can fire for it again.
7. 900.28gCull destroys either of them like any other unit, and neither prevents the death. A Vessel is spent against a Cull exactly as it is spent against lethal damage, and Everlasting still revives on schedule afterwards.
8. 900.28hOnly a card's own revival line tells the two apart. A self-revive line that names Phylactery hears nothing from an Everlasting revival, even on a unit that has both. A card listening for an ally reviving does not distinguish them and fires on either.

See also Everlasting Phylactery Cull Macabre Rabid

Rules 500.4 Death 500.9 Revival

900.29Tremor against Armor and Insurancepage

Question

Why does Tremor underperform into Armor?

Answer

Because it is two damage instances, and the flat Armor reduction is applied to each one.

1. 900.29aTremor splits its listed damage as evenly as possible into two hits. On an odd total the first hit takes the extra point, so 55 becomes 28 and 27.
2. 900.29bBoth halves are real instances. Armor's percentage reduction is proportional and unaffected, but the flat reduction of 1 per 5 Armor is subtracted twice.
3. 900.29cAgainst 40 Armor that is 8 flat damage lost instead of 4 — a fixed tax that hurts small Tremors far more than large ones.
4. 900.29dThe split also fires damage reactions twice, which is often worth more than the Armor it loses. Against Insurance it now helps rather than hurts: two 20s are each covered by one point, where 40 as a single instance would have spent two.
5. 900.29eShield is consumed twice as well, which can break a Shield with the first half and let the second half reach Vitality.

See also Tremor Insurance Shield AoE

Rules 500.2 Armor

900.30How Focus weights a rollpage

Question

How much more often is a high-Focus unit picked?

Answer

In proportion to its Focus. The weight is the stat itself, floored at 1.

1. 900.30aEffective Focus is the unit's Focus with a floor of 1. Nothing is added at any value, so there is no threshold to cross.
2. 900.30bA candidate's chance is its effective Focus over the pool's total. A unit at 60 Focus beside a unit at 20 is picked three times as often; at 30 against 20 it is picked half again as often.
3. 900.30cThe floor keeps a 0-Focus unit selectable. In a pool where every candidate sits at 0, all of them are equally likely.
4. 900.30dThe same weighting drives primary targeting, Harvest's donors and recipients, and every count-limited scope. AoE's damage split weighs the raw stat instead, without the floor.
5. 900.30eA multi-pick selection cannot pick the same unit twice, so a high-Focus unit usually goes first but never fills two slots.
6. 900.30fFocus is not only a targeting stat. A unit with Fury converts every 2 Focus it has into 1 Power, so raising Focus on that unit raises its damage as well as its share of incoming attacks.

See also AoE Harvest Fury Rabid

Rules 600.2 Focus weighting

900.31Initiative and its repeatspage

Question

How does an Initiative repeat differ from the original?

Answer

It resolves the same effects again immediately, with fresh random rolls.

1. 900.31aInitiative gates on the unit's first activation each battle, tracked per unit per ability.
2. 900.31bAn adjacent ally that grants Initiative repeats causes the Initiative effects to resolve again, once per granted repeat, immediately after the first pass and before the base hit.
3. 900.31cEach repeat rolls its own random outcomes, so repeated Focus-weighted picks can select different units. Repeats are not copies of the first outcome.
4. 900.31dAn effect that pushes an ally's Initiative early resolves on that ally, using the ally's own target and stats, and the ally's accumulated bonus damage is dealt to its own target.
5. 900.31eInitiative is its own gate and does not consume the separate nth-activation counter used by other cards.

See also Initiative Cascade Supercharge

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence

900.32Lucid and full Vitalitypage

Question

Does a Shield keep a unit Lucid?

Answer

No. Lucid tests current Vitality against maximum Vitality.

1. 900.32aLucid resolves only while Vitality equals maximum Vitality. A Shielded unit that has taken any Vitality damage is not Lucid.
2. 900.32bConversely, a unit whose Shield absorbed the entire hit is still at full Vitality and remains Lucid.
3. 900.32cLucid effects resolve after the ability's ordinary activation effects, so a self-heal earlier in the same activation can turn Lucid back on for them.
4. 900.32dA card that doubles Power while Lucid applies the doubling to effective Power, and Blind's 50% reduction is applied afterwards — so a Blinded Lucid unit ends up near its undoubled Power, not below it.

See also Lucid Shield Blind Bloodlust

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence

900.33Burn spreading across a boardpage

Question

Can Burn spread out of control?

Answer

No. Each spread copies the post-decay amount, so every copy is weaker than the Burn that threw it.

1. 900.33aOn each tick a Burn deals its current amount, then loses 50% of it, rounded down but never less than 1.
2. 900.33bIf the Burn survives the decay, it has a 5% chance to copy its post-decay amount onto one other enemy of whoever applied it. It copies rather than moves, so the parent keeps its own Burn.
3. 900.33cThe recipient is not required to be adjacent. The whole side is ranked by footprint Manhattan distance and only the units tied at the nearest distance are eligible, then a single Focus-weighted roll picks one of them. An isolated Burn therefore still reaches the next unit out rather than fizzling.
4. 900.33dA child is always weaker than the parent that threw it, which bounds each lineage. The board as a whole burns out because decay halves a Burn far faster than the 5% chance copies it.
5. 900.33eA single unit's Burn is hard-capped at 999 regardless.
6. 900.33fBecause decay truncates, an odd Burn rounds against the defender: a Burn of 3 decays to 2 and can hand out another 2.
7. 900.33gRelentless blocks a spread that lands on a Relentless unit, but does not remove it from the candidate pool first. A Relentless unit can win the Focus roll and the spread is then refused outright — it is not re-rolled onto someone else. This is the opposite of Harvest, where Relentless units leave the pool before selection.
8. 900.33hA side under a "Burn cannot spread on allies" aura, such as Brushfire Ibex, never spreads at all — the roll is refused before a recipient is looked for.

See also Burn Prismbreak Relentless Shield

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.34Tool Durability and failed packagespage

Question

Does a Tool spend Durability on a package that does nothing?

Answer

Only if the package resolved. An Overmatch comparison that fails costs nothing.

1. 900.34aA Tool loses 1 Durability when one of its packages resolves, and is destroyed at 0.
2. 900.34bA package gated by an Overmatch comparison spends no charge when the comparison fails. Ties count as a failure, because Overmatch is strictly greater than.
3. 900.34cDestruction is deferred to the end of the activating ally's package pass when a repair could still land in the same activation, so a repair and a final charge in the same activation do not race.
4. 900.34dRepair effects restore Durability directly and can revive a Tool already worn to 0. Tool repair bypasses the living-only recovery gate.
5. 900.34eLosing a Tool immediately refreshes adjacency-derived keywords such as Brute and Braced-derived counts.

See also Tool Durability Overmatch Brute Braced

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.35Settle and a shared Stock poolpage

Question

Several Hubs each list Settle. Do they all get paid?

Answer

Only while Stock remains. Hubs draw in order from one shared pool.

1. 900.35aStock is pooled per side, not per unit. Every Penny that mints adds to the same pool.
2. 900.35bAt battle end each allied Hub converts up to its listed Settle amount from what remains, 1:1 into Dividend.
3. 900.35cHubs settle in a fixed order, and each draws from whatever is left. Once the pool is dry, later Hubs convert nothing. Stock is never borrowed or driven negative.
4. 900.35dThis makes total Settle capacity beyond your realistic Stock generation worthless — a second big Settle Hub only helps if your Pennies actually mint that much.
5. 900.35eBoard-derived Settle bonuses, such as a bonus per allied Hub, are resolved at Settle time against the final board.
6. 900.35fHubs cannot die, so Settle is unconditional.

See also Settle Stock Hub Penny Dividend

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.36Dividend-first shop paymentpage

Question

A shop purchase costs 5 and I have 3 Dividend and 4 Gold. What happens?

Answer

Spend 3 Dividend and 2 Gold, then gain 3 Profit.

1. 900.36aThe discounted total cost is authoritative. Dividend pays as much of that cost as possible first, and Gold pays only the remainder.
2. 900.36bEach Dividend actually spent adds exactly 1 Profit, so this purchase spends 3 Dividend and 2 Gold and adds 3 Profit.
3. 900.36cSelling a Penny or Hub is separate: it grants only the card's normal Gold sell value. Explicit abilities can react to a Penny sale by adding Dividend, but a sale never inherently spends Dividend or grants Profit.

See also Dividend Profit Penny Hub Settle

Rules 200.3 What persists 800 Keyword Abilities

900.37Why one Hub is stronger in round 1page

Question

My Hub gave my single Penny more stats in round 1 than it does now. Did something change?

Answer

Yes. The strongest Hub carries an early scarcity supplement in rounds 1 and 2 while it is supporting fewer than three Pennies.

1. 900.37aEvery Hub grants allied Pennies Vitality, Power, Speed, and Armor at battle start, scaled to the Hub's tier. Several Hubs stack at 100%, 50%, 25%, then 10% in descending tier order.
2. 900.37bOn top of that, during match rounds 1 and 2 only, the Hub in the 100% slot adds a supplement of 5% per missing Penny below three, multiplied by the number of early rounds remaining including the current one.
3. 900.37cThat works out to 20% with one Penny in round 1, 10% with two Pennies in round 1 or one Penny in round 2, and 5% with two Pennies in round 2.
4. 900.37dThe supplement exists so an opening board with a Hub and a lone Penny is not dead weight before you have the Pennies to spend the bonus on. It is deliberately temporary.
5. 900.37eIt never applies to the 50%, 25%, or 10% Hubs, and it stops entirely once the round counter reaches 3 or once three allied Pennies are on the board — whichever happens first.
6. 900.37fThe supplement rounds to the nearest whole point rather than up, so the smallest round-2 case stays close to what the card authored.

See also Hub Penny Markup Settle

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.38"When this gains Insurance" against "While this has Insurance"page

Question

Both lines mention Insurance. Do they pay out the same way?

Answer

No. A gain trigger fires on each grant and keeps what it gave. A while-insured line is one reversible layer that vanishes when the charges run out.

1. 900.38a"When this gains Insurance" and "When an ally gains Insurance" are triggers. They fire on every positive grant of charges, not only the first, and whatever they hand out — Armor, Vitality, a Repossess, an Interest — is kept afterwards. Spending the charge does not take it back.
2. 900.38b"While this has Insurance" is a stat layer instead. It is applied once regardless of how many charges the unit holds, does not stack when more Insurance arrives, and is removed as soon as the last charge is spent.
3. 900.38cSo repeated small grants favour the trigger cards, while simply staying insured favours the while-insured cards.
4. 900.38dBoth Insurance-gain channels are dispatched from the same grant, so a unit that listens to its own gain and an ally that listens to ally gains both hear a single grant.
5. 900.38eA reaction may itself grant Insurance. Those chains are cut off past four levels of nesting so mutual grants terminate; every level up to that bound still resolves its listeners in full.

See also Insurance Penny Repossess Interest

Rules 400.6 Passives and triggers 800 Keyword Abilities

900.39Overclock blowout riskpage

Question

When is the blowout rolled?

Answer

Once at the end of the holder's own activation, at 5% per stack it still holds.

1. 900.39aThe roll is taken after every effect that activation authored, so the stacks are read at their full value and then risked. Receiving stacks never rolls — only the holder acting does.
2. 900.39bA blowout Stuns the unit for 2 seconds and clears every stack, losing all of the accumulated Power, Armor, and Speed at once.
3. 900.39cAt 10 stacks the unit is carrying +50 Power, +10 Armor, and +10 Speed against a 50% chance to lose all of it at the end of its next activation.
4. 900.39dBlowout is independent of Haywire. A unit can carry both, and both can Stun it.
5. 900.39eRelentless blocks both Stuns. A self-applied Stun is still a Stun, so a Relentless unit that blows out loses every stack and takes no Stun at all — and a Relentless unit that gained Haywire before it gained Relentless still spends the stack on its next activation without being Stunned.

See also Overclock Haywire Stun Kindled

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.40Zero-damage and dead-target activationspage

Question

What still happens when the hit does not land?

Answer

Post-damage effects still resolve. The damage step is skipped.

1. 900.40aIf the computed damage is 0 or less, or the target died earlier in the same step, the base hit is skipped.
2. 900.40bPost-damage effects still resolve against that target — including Cull, which will simply fail its threshold test against a dead unit.
3. 900.40cEffects gated on "require hit" are the exception: they check whether a hit actually landed and are skipped.
4. 900.40dA card's own self-buff clauses — a Focus gain, an Armor gain, a Shield — still resolve, unless the card gates them on the hit landing.
5. 900.40eIf no living target existed at all when the activation started, the whole attack is skipped but immediate rune effects still resolve.

See also Cull Feast Macabre

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence

900.41Adjacency and Giant footprintspage

Question

How does adjacency work for a 3x3 or 4x4 Giant?

Answer

By shared footprint edge, so a Giant is adjacent to everything along each of its sides.

1. 900.41aTwo units are adjacent when their footprints share an edge. Corner contact does not count.
2. 900.41bA Large Giant occupies 3x3 and a Huge Giant occupies 4x4, so each side of the Giant can border several 2x2 units at once.
3. 900.41cThat makes Giants unusually strong hosts and recipients for adjacency effects: Consecrate, Supercharge, Braced, and Flank all scale with contact area.
4. 900.41dIt also makes Brute easy to trip: 5 living allied Tools sharing an edge is achievable on one side of a Huge Giant.
5. 900.41eFlank is the exception to "more contact is better" — it counts only left and right neighbors, never above or below.

See also Large Huge Flank Braced Brute Consecrate

Rules 100.4 Adjacency

900.42Overtime and the 120-second cappage

Question

What ends a stalled combat?

Answer

Escalating overtime damage from 60 seconds, and a hard cap at 120.

1. 900.42aFrom 60 seconds onward every combatant takes overtime damage once per second. Tools and Hubs are the only units excluded.
2. 900.42bThe amount grows with the square of the seconds past the threshold: N seconds past 60 deals N x N.
3. 900.42cAt 70 seconds that is 100 per second. At 80 seconds it is 400. Nothing survives long past the threshold.
4. 900.42dThe combat is hard-capped at 120 seconds regardless.
5. 900.42eOvertime damage is not amplified by Prismbreak and is not a status. It is plain damage through the normal pipeline, so Armor reduces it and Insurance charges and Shield absorb individual ticks, spending those points with their full consequences. Nothing retaliates against it: the match clock is not an attacker, so Thorns, Riposte, and Subrogated Insurance all stay silent.

See also Insurance Shield Everlasting

Rules 300.5 Overtime

1000.1Rune projection

1. 1000.1aA rune on the row-projecting board, to the right of your grid, projects across its row. A rune on the board below your grid projects across its column.
2. 1000.1bA normal 2x2 through 4x4 unit receives a projected rune at half potency when the rune covers only one of its two projected rows or columns, and at full potency when both are covered.
3. 1000.1cCoverage is evaluated independently for each rune at an intersection. Size-1 Scrip units receive full potency; Tools receive no projected rune effects.
4. 1000.1dRunic units receive projected board runes at full potency through either full or partial coverage. Runic does not create an equipment slot.

1000.2Rune effect lanes

1. 1000.2aRune effects hook into the activation at four points: immediate, on-hit, successful-activation, and post-activation.
2. 1000.2bImmediate rune effects resolve before the base hit; on-hit effects resolve only if the hit landed.
3. 1000.2cEach lane resolves at most once per activation, even when a dedicated resolver handles the ability.
4. 1000.2dThorns sits outside all four. It is a reaction on the unit carrying the rune, fires on every hostile damage event against it — ticks included — and answers as a Vitality loss rather than a rune effect. See 500.6.

1000.3Resonance level

1. 1000.3aYou have at most one equipped resonance, granted by a boss signature reward, and it applies to every eligible allied unit. Tools do not receive it.
2. 1000.3bResonance level is the summed tiers of your player-acquirable board runes, plus 1. The floor is 1 and there is no cap.
3. 1000.3cIn combat, each active Grohm adds 22 levels. Each active Rune Resonator with its Quest completed adds 4 more. A dead, inactive, or Dormant source stops contributing.
4. 1000.3dEffect size scales with that level. An effect whose halves scale apart prints one number each: Blitz gives level x 3 Power and level x 2 Speed, both for the first 20 seconds of a battle.
5. 1000.3eRiposte is the one resonance that answers being hit rather than acting. It is retaliation, not damage — see 500.6.
6. 1000.3fClaiming another resonance replaces the current one. It can never be unequipped or sold.

1000.4Forge Cores

1. 1000.4aMost boss signature rewards are Forge Cores: permanent, match-scoped effects that activate the moment they are claimed.
2. 1000.4bCores stack with Cores earned in earlier rounds, and the ordered list travels with the board into nemesis fights.
3. 1000.4cAn Income Core grants its listed Gold on every later numbered-round advance, before the next Shop 1 opens. Only bosses in rounds 1 through 5 may offer an Income Core; round 10 has no later payout.
4. 1000.4dCore bonuses that increase an amount are added before the receiving rule's own caps and reductions — for example a Vitality-restore Core is added before the max-Vitality cap and before Maim.
5. 1000.4eCore reductions that reduce damage-over-time ticks are applied after Prismbreak's amplification.
6. 1000.4fSome signature rewards are a resonance equip or an immediate reward instead of a Core.