Dire Metamorphosis

Frequently Asked Questions

Effect Rules

• If a Power both adds Badlands and deals Damage, does the Damage benefit from the new Badlands?
  It depends on whether the Damage is dealt before or after adding Badlands. If the Badlands Token arrives first, it increases the subsequent Damage; if the Damage happens first, the Badlands Token arrives too late to matter.

  Some examples:

  • Badlands arrive too late: "Desiccating Winds," "Dire Metamorphosis," "Unquenchable Flames" threshold, "Scarred and Stony Land," "Bombard with Boulders and Stinging Seeds" main effect, "Walls of Rock and Thorn" threshold, "Melt Earth Into Quicksand," "Spill Bitterness Into the Earth" main effect, *Surging Lahar."
  • Badlands present for Damage: "Bombard with Boulders and Stinging Seeds" threshold, "Settle Into Hunting-Grounds" threshold, "Forests of Living Obsidian," "The Wounded Wild Turns on Its Assailants," "Utter a Curse of Dread and Bone" main effect and threshold, "Spill Bitterness Into the Earth" threshold, "Transform to a Murderous Darkness."
    Tags: Badlands, Damage, Ordering, Desiccating Winds, 14 more...

General Play

• 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...