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Frequently Asked Questions

Definitions
  • What does it mean for a ruling to "be under examination"?
    The ruling is preliminary and might be changed later.
    Sometimes there's only one good example of an uncommon interaction, so it's hard to extrapolate how that sort of interaction ought to work in general. What seems right in the moment for that particular case might turn out to be a poor fit when the design space is explored further. (For a simple example of this, consider the game Stage caused by the early-placed Stage III card against The Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia Level 2+.) Changing the ruling later comes with the cost of players having to re-learn the interaction when the ruling changes, with many not even realizing that it ever changed.
    Nevertheless, not having a ruling leaves the question unanswered for years while waiting for more examples to arise. A ruling tagged "Rulings Under Examination" gives players a workable answer in the short term, but signals to players that they should be prepared for the possibility they'll eventually get a different answer.
    Once such a ruling has been changed, it gets tagged as one of the few Changed rulings.
    Tags: Rulings Under Examination
  • When does destroying a Town or City cause Fear?
    Always, regardless of how it's destroyed: directly via a Power that says to destroy one, from damage done by a Power, from damage done by Dahan counterattacking, due to a Spirit's special rules, from a Fear or Event card, etc. [p. 18]
    Fear from destruction is independent of any explicit Fear the Power does – e.g., Lightning's "Shatter Homesteads" reads "1 Fear. Destroy 1 Town." usually generates 2 Fear: 1 explicitly, and 1 for destroying a Town.
    Note that when you remove or replace a Town or City, it does NOT cause any automatic Fear. Removing Invaders happens most frequently via Fear Cards, and usually represents the Invaders fleeing, which doesn't make them any more afraid. Replacing an Invader represents some sort of transformation or change; if it's a scary change, the effect will explicitly specify how much Fear to do.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Destroy, Fear, Dahan, Ravage, 51 more...
  • When counting how many Invaders are in a land, are you counting pieces? Or do Towns count as 2 and Cities as 3?
    You're counting pieces.
    "Invader" in the Glossary is defined as "A City, Town, or Explorer", so a land with three Towns and a City has four Invaders in it.
    (A few effects instead key off of "N Health worth of Invaders", and in those cases Towns and Cities generally count for 2 and 3, respectively.)
    Similarly if checking if Dahan "outnumber" Invaders, you are counting physical pieces.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Invaders, Health, Town, City, 11 more...
  • When you "Remove 3 Health worth of Invaders," can you Remove 3 damaged Towns?
    No, the Health of an Invader doesn't change when it takes Damage. Damaged Towns still count for 2 Health each.
    A few effects (e.g., Kingdom of England Level 5, or some Event/Fear cards) modify Health, which does affect how many Invaders you can Remove. But Damage does not reduce Health. (Health is simply the total amount of Damage it takes to destroy something.)
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Damage, Health, Seek Safety, Belief Takes Root, 16 more...
  • What does it mean when a Power's effects or Target Land shows (Terrain A)(Terrain B)? A or B? A next to B?
    It means "Terrain A OR Terrain B." (Back page, Targeting section.)
    The division between them is supposed to be a sort of slash, but that's not especially clear.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Targeting, Terrain, Iconography, Uncanny Melting, 35 more...
  • How can you determine the type of a Power Card?
    The most obvious signs are on the back of the Power Card:
    • Major Powers have a "Major Power" banner across the top and feature the Major Power icon on a blue background.
    • Minor Powers have a "Minor Power" banner across the top and feature the Minor Power icon on a brown background.
    • Unique Powers feature art of the Spirit they belong to, possibly with an "Aspect" banner near the bottom of the art if the Unique Power is granted by an Aspect.
    Additionally, the front sides of Power Cards have two identifying features: a watermark in the top right corner and a thin colored border within the black outer border of the card.
    • Major Powers have a Major Power icon watermark and a light blue inner border.
    • Minor Powers have a Minor Power icon watermark and a light brown inner border.
    • Unique Powers have no watermark and no inner border.
    The cost of a Power Card can also help somewhat: as of the release of Nature Incarnate, all Power Cards that cost 4+ Energy are Major Powers. Cost cannot be used to identify less expensive Power Cards — Power Cards that cost 2-3 Energy are either Major Powers or Unique Powers, and Power Cards that cost 0-1 Energy are either Minor Powers or Unique Powers.
    A card's type is intrinsic to the card; it doesn't change if you get the card in an unusual way. However, when a Power Card is in play face-down, it doesn't count as having any card type.
    Tags: Intensify Aspect (Shifting Memory of Ages), Immense Aspect (Lightning's Swift Strike), Wind Aspect (Lightning's Swift Strike), Tell the Old Stories, 1 more...
Effect Rules
Elements and Elemental Thresholds
Fear and Fear Cards
  • Are the effects of Fear Cards mandatory?
    Yes, the effects of Fear Cards are not under the control of the Spirits, and players only get to break ties between equally-effective ways of resolving the card.
    That being said, some effects give the players a bit more control:
    • If a choice is explicitly granted to the a player (e.g., "Each player chooses a different land"), then they may choose any valid land, even one where the Fear Card won't do anything.
    • If an effect is explicitly optional (e.g., "Each player may ..."), then a player may choose to do nothing.
    • In an effect lets a player choose a number (e.g., "Push up to 2 Explorers," "remove up to 3 Health worth of Invaders"), then they may choose 0 (effectively doing nothing) unless there's an explicit minimum.
      Tags: Fear Cards
General Play
  • When instructed to count multiple piece types separated by slashes (e.g., "the fewest Towns/Cities"), do players choose which piece type to count?
    No. Count all pieces that are at least one of the types on the list. So in the example, if there are 2 Towns and 1 City in the land, the total for that land is 3 Towns/Cities. In the unlikely case that a piece is on the list multiple ways, it only gets counted once.
    Tags: Counts As, Swallowed by the Wilderness (Lure of the Deep Wilderness), Lure of the Deep Wilderness, Beset by Many Troubles, 28 more...
  • When using a Power, can you ignore parts of its effect that you don't want to use (e.g., not adding Blight), or use a weaker version of them (e.g., Pushing only 1 Town with a "Push 2 Towns" instruction)?
    No, if you're using a Power at all, you must use all of it, and you must resolve the effects at the amount printed.
    That being said, players still have a lot of discretion for using Powers in ways were some of the effects won't happen or won't happen at full strength:
    • Spirits can target a land where some effects or possibly all of them won't do anything. (e.g., a Power with a "Push 1 Town." instruction doesn't need to target a land with Towns.)
    • If an effect is explicitly optional, it can be ignored. (e.g., "You may instead Remove 1 Blight." doesn't need to remove Blight even if there is Blight in target land.)
    • If given a choice for how many pieces to affect (e.g., "up to 3"), 0 pieces is a valid number unless a minimum amount is specified. (e.g., "Push up to 2 Dahan." can Push 0 or 1 Dahan even if 2 Dahan are present.)
    • If an effect checks how many Elements you have – usually as part of an Elemental Threshold requirement – you may choose to apply fewer Elements so long as you're consistent for the entire Power. (e.g., if you choose to use 8 Fire for a "1 Damage per Fire" effect, you also meet and must use an "If you have 7 Fire" threshold. But you could alternatively use only 6 of those Fire for the Power in order to deal 6 Damage and ignore the 7 Fire threshold.)
    • If a threshold requirement includes an Energy cost, you may choose not to pay it in order to skip that threshold. (e.g., "If you have 3 Fire and pay 2 Energy" does not require you to pay 2 Energy even if you have 2 Energy to spend and are using 3 Fire for the rest of the Power.)
      Tags: Elements, Resolving Powers, Firestorm (Heart of the Wildfire), Heart of the Wildfire, 72 more...
  • How are ties handled when checking for the "most," "least," or "fewest"? How about if there's an all-way tie for 0?
    Players break ties every time there's a check for most, least, or fewest. So, for example, if there are multiple lands that tie for "the land with the most Invaders," the players choose which single land land counts for this specific effect. If they later have to check again for the land with the most Invaders, they are not required to break the tie in the same way.
    Unless an explicit minimum is given, 0 is a valid amount for both "most" and "fewest." So when "Ports Sprawl Outward" (Escalation of The Kingdom of Scotland) checks for "the single board with the most Coastal Towns/Cities," players could break the tie in favor of a board with no Coastal Towns/Cities if none of the other boards have any Coastal Towns/Cities either.
    In the less common case where an effect checks for multiple things ranked in a particular way, keep choosing things until you have the requisite number, breaking ties as needed along the way. So for example, when "Wave of Immigration" (Level 5 of The Habsburg Monarchy Livestock Colony) checks for "the 3 Inland lands with the fewest Blight" on a board where 2 Inland lands have 0 Blight and 3 Inland lands have 1 Blight, the Adversary affects:
    • Both lands with 0 Blight, since one of them is the land with the fewest Blight and one is the land with the second-fewest Blight (though it doesn't matter which is which);
    • One player-chosen land with 1 Blight, since the remaining lands are all equally-valid choices for having the third-fewest Blight.
    That is, it affects 3 total Inland lands, prioritizing lands with fewer Blight, rather than affecting Inland lands that are mutually tied for the fewest Blight (max. 3 lands). In the rare case that you don't even have enough items to rank (in this case, having fewer than 3 Inland lands), affect all qualifying lands.
    Tags: Stage II escalation, Kingdom of Scotland, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Sweden, 22 more...
  • Is there an ordering or priority for action modifications? It seems weird that you can get a benefit from something being destroyed even if you save it from destruction.
    Yes:
    The practical upshot of this is mostly "you can't both prevent something from happening and do extra stuff because it's happening" – e.g., if Volcano Looming High's Presence would be destroyed, but it's saved somehow, you don't get to deal damage.
    If a modifier cancels just part of something, modifiers to that part don't apply. Eg: "Entrap the Forces of Corruption" doesn't stop Blight from being added, but it does stop it from cascading, so another modifier which changed how cascades worked wouldn't apply.
    As before, if you have multiple modifiers with no clear order, you get to pick which happens first. For instance: you play "Infestation of Venomous Spiders" with threshold on a land with Dahan about to Ravage. A Fear Card says "Invaders do not Ravage in lands with Dahan". When that Ravage would happen, there are two different "skip this Ravage" modifiers. You get to decide which one to do first, so can choose it to be the Venomous Spiders. This wouldn't be true if the entire Ravage Card got skipped, or if it were changed to match different lands – those happen before you ever reach the individual Ravage Action – but as of Jagged Earth, the only Fear cards that work this way are "Explorers Are Reluctant" and "Immigration Slows", levels 2 and 3.
    This is an addition to published rules – the intent is that it will be included in the rulebook of a future expansion.
    Tags: Action Modifiers, Skipping Actions, Pour Time Sideways (Fractured Days Split the Sky), Entrap the Forces of Corruption, 26 more...
  • Are the Coastal lands on one board adjacent to the Ocean on adjacent boards? (It looks like Land 3 can almost touch the Ocean.)
    Not in general, since they don't share an edge or a corner.
    There are two exceptions:
    • When using the back side of the modular island boards, the Northeast Ocean does extended onto the East board and share an edge with land #1 on that board, so those two locations are adjacent if both the Northeast and East boards are being used. (The adjacency was neither intended nor printed on the playmat, so feel free to ignore it if using the playmat.)
    • If the topology of the island is changed, e.g., by "Weave Together the Fabric of Place" or the Deeps Aspect, then follow the new topology, not the printed topology.
      (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Range, Thematic map, Weave Together the Fabric of Place, Open the Ways (Finder of Paths Unseen), 2 more...
  • Do powers have to be resolved in order, or can you choose to do the effects in the order that's most convenient for you?
    Powers must be resolved in order from top to bottom. If a Power has thresholds, resolve all thresholds you hit, in the order they are listed (skipping over the ones you don't hit).
    There are a small number of exceptions:
    If a Power changes its own Speed, Range, or Targeting, those changes (and corresponding thresholds / costs) are checked when relevant during targeting, not during normal Power resolution. Examples:
    • "You may pay 1 Energy to make this Power Fast." ("Dry Wood Explodes in Smoldering Splinters")
    • "Increase this Power's Range to Range 1." ("Sap the Strength of Multitudes")
    • "This Power can target lands with Blight." ("Inspire the Release of Stolen Lands") – but note that the rest of this threshold effect still resolves at the end, like normal.
    (By the time you're resolving the rest of the Power text, it'd be too late for these modifiers to do anything!)
    If a threshold modifies how an earlier part of the Power resolves, that modifier applies at the sensible time. Examples:
    • "Do not destroy any Dahan." ("The Jungle Hungers")
    • "Damage from this Power may be dealt into adjacent lands." ("Vengeance of the Dead")
    Technically, every use of "Instead..." in an innate power works this way; it's pretty simple for human minds to understand the intent, but the formal specification is messier. Note that a "+" in a threshold effect (like "+2 Damage" in "Walls of Rock and Thorn") is not a modifier, but rather a new Damage instruction – this is occasionally relevant for timing purposes.
    If a Power specifies that something happens later, do it at that time (remembering that these ongoing effects expire when Time Passes unless specified otherwise). Examples:
    • "Once this turn, target Spirit may ..." ("Powerstorm")
    • "After the next time Invaders are destroying in target land: ..." ("Blood Draws Predators")
    • "At end of turn, ..." ("Gift of Constancy")
    "Repeat this Power" as a threshold also falls into this category, since it's short for "After resolving this Power and all Actions triggered by it, Repeat it."
    If a Power explicitly specifies to resolve part of a threshold earlier in power resolution, follow that order. Examples:
    • "+3 Fear, before the Terror Level check." ("Twisted Flowers Murmur Ultimatums")
    • "Before Pushing, Explorers and Towns/Cities do Damage to each other." ("Dissolve the Bonds of Kinship")
    • "First, Gather up to 3 Dahan." ("Wrap in Winds of Sunlight")
    Also related: A Power that is 100% internal modifiers doesn't do anything, so can't be targeted/used for things like "Scream Disease Into the Wind."
    Tags: Resolving Powers, Range Boosts, Speed (Fast/Slow), Targeting, 59 more...
  • What's the timing of ongoing effects expiring?
    All "this turn" effects wear off at the same time. For now, assume all normal Time Passes activity (discard, lose elements, clear damage, ongoing effects expire) is simultaneous. Cards like "Gift of Constancy" (which modify discarding Powers) or "Unquenchable Flames" work because they explicitly specify a timing.
    Rules for non-standard things that happen during Time Passes (like Shroud of Silent Mist's "Slow and Silent Death") can be done before or after effects wearing off unless otherwise specified.
    If it ever becomes clear that there really ought to be some sort of internal ordering to Time Passes, we'll call out that ordering in whatever expansion / FAQ it becomes relevant.
    Tags: Time Passes, Timing, Defend, Action Modifiers, 38 more...
  • If you damage an Invader/Dahan and then replace it with another Invader/Dahan, does the new piece enter the game damaged?
    Yes. (Rulebook p. 18) When you replace a piece with another piece, the new piece comes in with whatever Damage the original piece had.
    For example, if you deal 2 Damage to a City and then replace it with a Town, that Town is immediately destroyed.
    If you replace a damaged piece with two or more pieces (as when "Dissolve the Bonds of Kinship" replaces a City with two Explorers), the damage gets divided between the new pieces as you choose (limited by the amount of Health each of the new pieces has). Similarly, if the piece had Strife tokens attached to it, the Strife tokens get divided between the new pieces as you choose.
    Note that if a piece is replaced as part of being saved from destruction (as is done by the Transforming Aspect), then Damage is cleared before the piece is replaced, so there's no Damage to divide. (Strife tokens are still divided normally, if relevant.)
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Damage, Replace, Strife, Crops Wither and Fade (Shadows Flicker Like Flame), 22 more...
  • If you "move" a piece to where it was (Range 0), does it still trigger effects like Wildfire's Blazing Presence?
    Yes, the piece has still formally moved. It never leaves the land, however, so would not trigger, e.g., Shifting Memory's "Observe the Ever-Changing World," because the pieces in the land have not changed.
    Thematically, the piece has moved within the land.
    Note that if you use "add Presence" to instead reposition Presence already on the island (usually because you have run out – sidebar p.14 core rules), that is still considered an "add" rather than a "move".
    The Glossary entry for "move" was written before considering these cases.
    (Discussion elsewhere)  Tags: Repositioning Presence, Move, Blazing Presence (Heart of the Wildfire), Wrap in Wings of Sunlight, 7 more...
  • When an effect happens "on each board," can it be split among multiple lands on that board?
    Yes, unless the effect affects "a land" / "a single land" or is otherwise more specific.
    To illustrate the difference, "On Each Board: Push 2 Dahan from a land with Blight to a land without Blight" ("Forsake the Barren Land") must Push both Dahan from the same land because they must both leave "a land with Blight." In contrast, "On Each Board: Push up to 2 Dahan" ("Hard-Working Settlers") can simultaneously Push Dahan from different lands, since it doesn't set any conditions on which land(s) the Dahan leave.
    Similarly, if such an action has multiple instructions, like "On Each Board: Add 1 Beasts. Remove 1 Disease." ("Life's Balance Tilts"), it can resolve each of its instructions in a different land (in this case, adding a Beasts token in one land and removing a Disease token from a different land).
    Tags: Actions, On Each Board, Distracted by Local Troubles, Seek Company, 10 more...
  • If an effect moves pieces "on each board," "in each land," or for "each Spirit," can the same piece be moved multiple times?
    Yes, assuming that it separately meets the condition to be moved each time. For example, "Beasts Chase Off Homesteaders" ("On Each Board: Push up to 2 Explorers or 1 Town from a land with Beasts tokens.") can Push a Town multiple times, so long as the Town keeps arriving in a land with Beasts tokens that's on a board where "Beasts Chase Off Homesteaders" hasn't resolved yet.
    Note however that while an "each [piece]" Event/Fear/Adversary effect does create one action per land with that piece, each piece of that type only participates in one of those actions. For example, while "Beasts Prowl" ("Each Beasts token generates 1 Fear if Invaders are present, and moves to an adjacent land if not.") can move a Beasts token into a land that already has Beasts tokens, the newly-arrived Beasts token doesn't participate in the "Beasts Prowl" action there – only count the Beasts that were already there before resolving "Beasts Prowl."
    Tags: On Each Board, Actions, War Among the Dahan, Spreading Conflict Prompts Caution, 26 more...
Invader Actions
Power Cards
Range and Targeting
Setup
Spirits and Innate Powers