Summary of Action rules

This page is so folks can quickly reference "what's an action?" without needing to squint at a PDF of the Jagged Earth rulebook (which pins down some systems / nomenclature that was fuzzy in earlier products).

Actions

An action is a group of game effects that go together and are done as a unit before moving on to something else - for instance:
  • One use of a Power;
  • A Ravage, Build, or Explore in a single land;
  • A single Growth effect (nearly always "one icon");
  • Everything one Fear Card does (†);
  • Everything a Main Event does (†);
  • Everything a Token Event does (†);
  • Everything a Dahan Event does (†);
  • The effect of the Blighted Island card (†);
  • An Adversary's Escalation effect (†);
(†) = With one important and frequent exception: “Each board” / “Each land” / “Each player” / “Each Spirit” instructions cause one action per qualifying board / land / player / Spirit. So if a Fear card says, "Each player removes 1 Town/Explorer from an inland land", every player removing stuff is a separate action.
This replaces the somewhat imprecise “effect” terminology of the core game. It is not intended to change how anything from the core game or Branch & Claw works, though it has a minor impact on how Vengeance of the Dead works, which can no longer trigger itself.
Most things that care about the scope of a single action are in Jagged Earth, but with the core game it's relevant for Victory/Defeat (checked after each action), and there are a handful of triggered actions.

Triggered Actions

A small number of game effects in the core game / Branch & Claw are triggered actions: they happen after any other action that causes certain conditions to be met. From Jagged Earth onwards, these use the phrasing, "After X, do Y" or "The next time that X, do Y"; this means “After each Action that does X at least once, do Y exactly once”. Material printed earlier frequently doesn't use this exact wording.
Items which are triggered actions, along with how those triggers would be specified now:
  • Vengeance of the Dead ("After each action that destroys Town/City/Dahan...")
  • Portents of Disaster ("The next time an Invader is destroyed...")
  • Ocean's Hungry Grasp's Oceans In Play special rule. (After Invaders/Dahan are moved to these Oceans, Drown them.")
  • Thunderspeaker's Sworn to Victory special rule. ("After a Ravage action destroys Dahan...)
  • Heart of the Wildfire's Blazing Presence special rule. (After you add or move Presence post-Setup...")
  • Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds' Forbidden Ground special rule. ("After you create a Sacred Site...")
(For the most up-to-date list, see this Errata / Clarification.)
Triggered actions are associated with whatever set them up, so if Bringer of Dreams & Nightmares uses Vengeance of the Dead, its Special Rule will apply when it triggers.
Triggers can go off more than once in a turn, but to avoid infinite loops, triggered actions cannot trigger themselves either directly or indirectly (via actions they themselves trigger).
If a Power sets up a trigger, it only lasts for the current turn, like all Power effects that don't change physical pieces.
A non-triggered action can be referred to as a basic action or initial action. (The JE rulebook says "base action".)

Repeats

Powers instructing “Repeat this Power” mean “After resolving this Power and all other actions triggered by it, Repeat it.” This creates another Triggered action.
Other ways to Repeat, with instructions like “you may Repeat one Power Card this turn,” create a new basic Action. It may be used any time the Power it’s Repeating could normally be used.

Modifiers

Some game effects modify actions, changing how they work - for instance, Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares' special rule To Dream a Thousand Deaths replaces Damage with Fear/Pushing, and Heart of the Wildfire's unique power card Flame's Fury boosts damage. From Jagged Earth onwards, these use the phrasing "When X then Y" or "When X then instead Y", but material printed earlier frequently doesn't.
Skipping Invader Actions (like A Year of Perfect Stillness) is also a form of modification - shorthand for "When Invaders would act in target land, instead they don't".
Modifiers are not actions. They change what actions do.

What about "Invader Actions"?

What were previously just called “Invader Actions” have several different parts. Using Ravage as an example, there's:
  • Ravage Step: the part of the Invader Phase where you resolve all Ravage Cards (possibly zero).
  • Ravage Card: one Invader Card under “Ravage”. Resolving a Ravage Card causes one Ravage action in each land that matches the card and has at least one Invader. (You decide order if it matters. Which lands will/won’t have Ravage actions is established now, before any of those Ravage actions actually happen.)
  • Ravage Action: a Ravage in a single land. (The whole thing, including Dahan fighting back.)
Similarly, a Build Card causes a Build Action in every land that matches the card and has at least one Invader, and an Explore Card causes an Explore Action in every land that matches the card and is adjacent to a source of Invaders.
The Invaders may do things on the board as a result of Event Cards, Fear Cards, Adversary rules, etc, but unless these cause an Explore, Build, or Ravage, these are not "Invader Actions". (So are not prevented by things like A Year of Perfect Stillness or Paralyzing Fright.)
Pre-Jagged Earth materials obviously don't use this terminology. You can see New Nomenclature Roundup for what the formal wording of older Event cards would be, though none are meant to work any differently.

Other details

Nested Actions

A very few situations cause basic actions in the middle of other actions, These are called nested actions. (Eg: Manifest Incarnation (causes a Ravage in the middle of a Power); Blur the Arc of Years (causes a Build and a Ravage in the middle of a Power); Fractured Days Split the Sky's first innate (lets a Spirit use a Power in the middle of its Power); any Blighted Island Card which has an immediate effect when flipped; or a Choice Event that includes a line with "each board" or "each spirit" instructions.)
Aside from timing, nested actions work virtually identically to triggered actions: they are not considered "part of" the action that caused them, they can trigger actions separately from the thing that caused them, etc. So if Finder of Paths Unseen uses Manifest Incarnation, they're not "responsible" for pieces destroyed during the Ravage it causes. The original action is paused, you resolve the nested action (and anything it triggers), then resume the original action where you left off.
Importantly, the rule that "triggered actions cannot trigger themselves even indirectly" counts nested actions. Example: After Heart of the Wildfire adds a Presence, its Blazing Presence special rule triggers, doing damage + adding blight. The Blight Card flips, revealing Unnatural Proliferation, which causes a number of nested (immediate) actions adding Invaders, Dahan, and Presence. Heart of the Wildfire adds Presence due to this - but because it was (indirectly) caused by Blazing Presence, Blazing Presence does not trigger again.

Action Tree

The term "action tree" is used in the JE rules, but not formally defined (as used there, it means "a basic action and everything triggered by it, even indirectly"). More formally, an action tree is an initial "basic" action and all of its immediate consequences (nested/triggered actions), even indirect. (A basic action is something that happens due to the structure of the game. Eg: it's the Fast phase, so you use a Fast Power. Or Invaders Ravage in one land matching a Ravage card. Or you've drawn a Fear Card, so you perform the Fear Action(s) from it.)
This is most relevant because you only check Victory/Defeat after an entire action tree - e.g., if a Ravage Action adds the last Blight, but you'd used Vengeance of the Dead on that land, you get to resolve that triggered action to see if it destroys the last Invaders so that you get a Sacrifice Victory rather than a loss.
A deliberately-very-complex example of an action tree: Fractured Days Split the Sky, playing Dahan Insurrection, uses Vengeance of the Dead on a land, then Blur the Arc of Years on that same land. Here's the full action tree for Blur the Arc of Years; each bolded line indicates a separate action:
Initial action: Blur the Arc of Years
  • 1 Town and 3 Dahan are present, so no Blight is removed
  • Nested action: Build - Invaders add 1 City
  • Nested action: Ravage - Invaders destroy 2 Dahan; Dahan counterattack destroys 1 Town
    • Ravage complete; triggers Military Response (Dahan Insurrection): add 1 Explorer to that land
    • Ravage complete; triggers Vengeance of the Dead: 3 Damage, destroying the City
      • Vengeance of the Dead complete; triggers Military Response (Dahan Insurrection): add 1 Town to that land
      • Vengeance of the Dead does not trigger itself, because triggered actions can't trigger themselves, directly or indirectly
  • Add 1 Dahan, then Push 2 Dahan
  • Blur the Arc of Years complete; triggers Constant Raiding (Dahan Insurrection): 2 Damage in the land Dahan moved to, destroying a Town there
    • Constant Raiding complete; triggers Military Response (Dahan Insurrection): add 1 Explorer to that land
  • Blur the Arc of Years complete; if its immediate-Repeat option were paid for it would trigger now (and result in further actions) (but this example assumes it's not paid for, the example's long enough already)