900 Interaction Rulings — Gridforged Rules

900.1Cull and Maim in the same activation page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.

Worked example

Executioner Crab, tier 3, activates against a target with 120 Vitality, 0 Armor, no Shield, and 90 Maim.
Base damage of 40 resolves first, leaving the target at 80 Vitality.
The post-damage Maim rider adds 27 (9 x tier), taking the pool to 117.
Cull then compares 117 Maim against 80 Vitality. 117 > 80, so the target is destroyed.
Had Cull been checked before the Maim rider, 90 against 80 would also have succeeded — but against a 200-Vitality target only the post-rider comparison succeeds.

900.2Crush and damage in the same activation page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
900.2fRelentless blocks Crush, so against a Relentless target the hoisting happens but nothing is reduced.

900.3Crush from an adjacent ally's Tool page

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.

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.
900.3bWithin that pass the ordering is hoisted three times over, so a Crush or a Smash cannot be buried behind an unrelated effect:
900.3cTools whose ability contains an immediate activation Crush or Smash are moved ahead of all other Tools.
900.3dWithin a Tool, packages containing an activation Crush or Smash are moved ahead of its other packages.
900.3eWithin a package, Crush and Smash effects are moved ahead of the package's other effects.
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.
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.

Rules 300.3 The activation sequence 800 Keyword Abilities

900.4A "per" clause whose count is zero page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
900.4eA clause scaled by the unit's rune-effect count behaves the same way: no rune effects means no effect.

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.

900.5aCounts are never snapshotted at the start of an activation. Each counted clause samples the board when it resolves.
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.
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.
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.
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.

900.6When a condition is checked page

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.

900.6aEvery conditional clause evaluates its condition at the point it resolves, against current state. A false condition skips the clause entirely.
900.6bThat means an activation-lane rider and a post-damage rider on the same card can disagree, because the hit happened in between.
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.
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.
900.6eA condition that fails does not consume a "once" charge, so the clause can still land on a later activation.

Rules 400.4 Conditions and gates

900.7Bonus damage and the base hit page

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.

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.
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.
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.
900.7dClauses that damage other units — all enemies, adjacent enemies, a Focus-weighted set — are separate instances and are mitigated separately.
900.7eEach bonus-damage clause sees the running total accumulated so far, so a clause that scales off current damage reads the boosted value.

900.8Passive lines and activation lines page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
900.8eThe one activation-shaped exception is Shock, which really does force a full activation on its target.
900.8fA Passive that reacts to the unit's own activation still resolves in the activation-followup step, not inside the activation itself.

Rules 400.6 Passives and triggers 300.3 The activation sequence

900.9Maim against a Relentless target page

Question: Can a Relentless unit be Maimed?
Answer: Yes. Maim ignores status immunity.

900.9aThe status-application gate checks Relentless against a table of blocked statuses, then makes an explicit exception for Maim.
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.
900.9cMaim still respects the other application gates. It is refused against a dead, Entrapped, or Dormant unit, and against Tools and Hubs.
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.

900.10Relentless against stat reductions page

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.

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.
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.
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.
900.10dRepossess is blocked on the losing half. The target keeps its Armor and the Repossessing unit gains nothing.
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.
900.10fRelentless does not remove a reduction that is already running. A unit that gains Relentless while Crushed stays Crushed until the window expires.

Rules 700.4 What Relentless blocks

900.11Shield against Burn and Venom page

Question: Burn and Venom ignore Armor. Do they also ignore Shield?
Answer: No. Shield absorbs them in full.

900.11aIgnoring Armor and ignoring Shield are separate flags in the mitigation pipeline. Burn and Venom set the first and not the second.
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.
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.
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 instance page

Question: How much of a hit does one Insurance point stop?
Answer: Up to 10 by default, plus the unit's Underwriting bonus. The point is spent whether or not the hit was worth that much.

900.12aInsurance is a pool of points measured in damage. Each point covers up to 10 of a single instance by default, and Underwriting adds its listed amount to every point's capacity. The pool empties into that instance until it is covered or the points run out.
900.12bWithout Underwriting, a 60-damage hit into 3 points spends all 3, absorbs 30, and lets 30 through to Shield and then Vitality. The same hit into 2 points absorbs 20 and lets 40 through.
900.12cThe whole-point rule is what makes small instances expensive. A 3-damage Venom tick still costs a full point, so 7 of that point's coverage is thrown away.
900.12dSplitting 30 damage into two 15-damage hits spends four points instead of the three a single hit would use, because each damage instance rounds its point cost separately. Against a board of insured units, AoE likewise spends points independently on every target.
900.12eInsurance is spent after Armor and the incoming-damage cap, so Armor is applied first and the points cover only what Armor left.
900.12fSubrogated points spend before plain points, and retaliate for exactly what they absorbed — a Vitality loss on the source, not a damage instance.
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.

900.14Maim against healing effects page

Question: Which forms of healing does Maim reduce?
Answer: All of them, plus Shield gain. It does not reduce damage.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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 target page

Question: Does Shock force a Frozen unit to activate?
Answer: No. Against a Frozen target Shock removes Freeze instead, and does nothing else.

900.15aThe Freeze branch is checked before the activation branch, so this is not a choice — a Frozen target always takes the Freeze removal.
900.15bUp to 3 seconds of Freeze are removed. If that empties the timer, Freeze is cleared outright.
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.
900.15dShock also does nothing to an untargetable unit or one with no ability.

900.16Shock, Haywire, and Cascade chains page

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.

900.16aA forced activation resolves the entire ability — targeting, effects, damage, triggers, and the Cascade roll — exactly as a natural activation would.
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.
900.16cHaywire does fire, using the stack count captured before the forced activation began.
900.16dThe same unit cannot be Shocked twice inside one Shock resolution, and nested forced activations stop at a depth of 10.
900.16eCascade has its own separate cap of 7 re-triggers, and the depth resets on any failed roll.
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.

Rules 300.2 Charge and Speed 300.3 The activation sequence

900.17Haywire applied during the activation it would punish page

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.

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.
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.
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.
900.17dHaywire resolves before adjacent Supercharge passives in the followup order, which is why the capture is needed at all.

900.18Entrap compared with Dormant page

Question: Both make a unit untouchable. What is different?
Answer: Dormant also switches off the unit's own passives. Entrap does not.

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.
900.18bDormant blocks all of that and additionally suppresses everything the unit projects, and the unit does not contest the combat.
900.18cBoth preserve charge progress and both let existing timed effects, damage over time, and heal over time continue running.
900.18dRelentless does not block Entrap, because Entrap is classified as a removal effect rather than a debuff.
900.18eClear-status effects still resolve against a Dormant unit; nothing else does.
900.18fA card may declare a per-tier Entrap duration ladder, which overrides the applied duration on that unit.

Rules 700.3 Application gates

900.19Macabre while the Macabre unit is Entrapped page

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.

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.
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.
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.
900.19dThose recipients are gated individually, so an Entrapped ally beside the Macabre unit still receives nothing, and an Entrapped enemy is still skipped.
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.
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.

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

900.20Bloodletting choosing its payer page

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.

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.
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.
900.20cThe whole cost is paid by one unit. It is never split.
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.
900.20eThe payment can be lethal. The payer dies, Macabre fires for everyone else, and the activation continues to its damage step regardless.
900.20fIf no eligible payer exists at all, the activation is aborted before damage — though its immediate rune effects still resolve.
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.

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

900.21Feral misfire and Rabid memory page

Question: If Feral makes a unit hit an ally, what does Rabid remember?
Answer: The ally. Rabid records whichever unit was actually attacked.

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.
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.
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.
900.21dFeral is capped at 10 stacks, so a fully stacked unit misfires on every activation.
900.21eRelentless blocks Feral from being applied, so a Relentless unit never misfires.

900.22Displace, Acclimate, and Threat ordering page

Question: In what order do the triggers around a swap resolve?
Answer: Acclimate first, for both units, then Threat once for the pair.

900.22aThe two displaced units each resolve Acclimate in turn, in a fixed order that is not board reading order.
900.22bThreat resolves after both, once for the pair rather than once per unit.
900.22cThreat still fires when an Acclimate killed one of the displaced units, because the pair event already occurred and is not retracted.
900.22dKeyword auras and adjacency-derived state are refreshed immediately before the triggers, so an Acclimate reads the post-swap board.
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.
900.22fA Large Giant only swaps with another Large, and a Huge only with another Huge.

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.23Runic and resonance level page

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.

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

900.24Partial rune projection and Runic page

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.

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.
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.
900.24cRunic overrides the partial-coverage reduction for board runes, so either one-row or two-row coverage applies at full potency.
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.

900.26Thorns and Riposte against a fully absorbed hit page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

900.27What one Vessel Point batch is worth page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Rules 500.4 Death 500.9 Revival

900.28Everlasting and Phylactery on the same board page

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.

900.28aBoth are revivals, and both hand off to the same procedure in 500.9. What separates them is the price and the timing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Rules 500.4 Death 500.9 Revival

900.29Tremor against Armor and Insurance page

Question: Why does Tremor underperform into Armor?
Answer: Because it is two damage instances, and the flat Armor reduction is applied to each one.

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.
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.
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.
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.
900.29eShield is consumed twice as well, which can break a Shield with the first half and let the second half reach Vitality.

Worked example

A Tremor listing 55 damage into a target with 40 Armor and no Shield.
Percentage reduction from 40 Armor is sqrt(40) / (sqrt(40) + 20) = about 24%.
First hit: 28 becomes 22 after the percentage step, then 14 after the flat 8.
Second hit: 27 becomes 21, then 13.
Total 27 Vitality damage. The same 55 as one instance would have dealt 34.

900.30How Focus weights a roll page

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.

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.
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.
900.30cThe floor keeps a 0-Focus unit selectable. In a pool where every candidate sits at 0, all of them are equally likely.
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.
900.30eA multi-pick selection cannot pick the same unit twice, so a high-Focus unit usually goes first but never fills two slots.
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.

900.31Initiative and its repeats page

Question: How does an Initiative repeat differ from the original?
Answer: It resolves the same effects again immediately, with fresh random rolls.

900.31aInitiative gates on the unit's first activation each battle, tracked per unit per ability.
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.
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.
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.
900.31eInitiative is its own gate and does not consume the separate nth-activation counter used by other cards.

900.32Lucid and full Vitality page

Question: Does a Shield keep a unit Lucid?
Answer: No. Lucid tests current Vitality against maximum Vitality.

900.32aLucid resolves only while Vitality equals maximum Vitality. A Shielded unit that has taken any Vitality damage is not Lucid.
900.32bConversely, a unit whose Shield absorbed the entire hit is still at full Vitality and remains Lucid.
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.
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.

900.33Burn spreading across a board page

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.

900.33aOn each tick a Burn deals its current amount, then loses 50% of it, rounded down but never less than 1.
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.
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.
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.
900.33eA single unit's Burn is hard-capped at 999 regardless.
900.33fBecause decay truncates, an odd Burn rounds against the defender: a Burn of 3 decays to 2 and can hand out another 2.
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.
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.

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.34Tool Durability and failed packages page

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.

900.34aA Tool loses 1 Durability when one of its packages resolves, and is destroyed at 0.
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.
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.
900.34dRepair effects restore Durability directly and can revive a Tool already worn to 0. Tool repair bypasses the living-only recovery gate.
900.34eLosing a Tool immediately refreshes adjacency-derived keywords such as Brute and Braced-derived counts.

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.35Settle and a shared Stock pool page

Question: Several Hubs each list Settle. Do they all get paid?
Answer: Only while Stock remains. Hubs draw in order from one shared pool.

900.35aStock is pooled per side, not per unit. Every Penny that mints adds to the same pool.
900.35bAt battle end each allied Hub converts up to its listed Settle amount from what remains, 1:1 into Dividend.
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.
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.
900.35eBoard-derived Settle bonuses, such as a bonus per allied Hub, are resolved at Settle time against the final board.
900.35fHubs cannot die, so Settle is unconditional.

See also Settle Stock Hub Penny Dividend

Rules 800 Keyword Abilities

900.36Dividend-first shop payment page

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.

900.36aThe discounted total cost is authoritative. Dividend pays as much of that cost as possible first, and Gold pays only the remainder.
900.36bEach Dividend actually spent adds exactly 1 Profit, so this purchase spends 3 Dividend and 2 Gold and adds 3 Profit.
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 1 page

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.

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.
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.
900.38cSo repeated small grants favour the trigger cards, while simply staying insured favours the while-insured cards.
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.
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.

Rules 400.6 Passives and triggers 800 Keyword Abilities

900.39Overclock blowout risk page

Question: When is the blowout rolled?
Answer: Once at the end of the holder's own activation, at 5% per stack it still holds.

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.
900.39bA blowout Stuns the unit for 2 seconds and clears every stack, losing all of the accumulated Power, Armor, and Speed at once.
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.
900.39dBlowout is independent of Haywire. A unit can carry both, and both can Stun it.
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.

900.40Zero-damage and dead-target activations page

Question: What still happens when the hit does not land?
Answer: Post-damage effects still resolve. The damage step is skipped.

900.40aIf the computed damage is 0 or less, or the target died earlier in the same step, the base hit is skipped.
900.40bPost-damage effects still resolve against that target — including Cull, which will simply fail its threshold test against a dead unit.
900.40cEffects gated on "require hit" are the exception: they check whether a hit actually landed and are skipped.
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.
900.40eIf no living target existed at all when the activation started, the whole attack is skipped but immediate rune effects still resolve.

900.41Adjacency and Giant footprints page

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.

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

Rules 100.4 Adjacency

900.42Overtime and the 120-second cap page

Question: What ends a stalled combat?
Answer: Escalating overtime damage from 60 seconds, and a hard cap at 120.

900.42aFrom 60 seconds onward every combatant takes overtime damage once per second. Tools and Hubs are the only units excluded.
900.42bThe amount grows with the square of the seconds past the threshold: N seconds past 60 deals N x N.
900.42cAt 70 seconds that is 100 per second. At 80 seconds it is 400. Nothing survives long past the threshold.
900.42dThe combat is hard-capped at 120 seconds regardless.
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.