Hi! I'm a Monster Train vet and fanatic who's looking to share knowledge accumulated over hundreds of hours of runs both triumphant and nail-biting. The guide is targeted at new & established players of the game looking to expand on their knowledge and understanding of how to utilize the various MT2 clans. If you're already an expert, this won't have much for you!

Other guides of this type are available here:
Pyreborne Clan Strategy Guide
Banished Clan Strategy Guide
Luna Coven Clan Strategy Guide
Underlegion Clan Strategy Guide
Lazarus League Clan Strategy Guide
Hellhorned Clan Strategy Guide
Awoken Clan Strategy Guide
Stygian Guard Clan Strategy Guide
Melting Remnant Clan Strategy Guide

These clans guide will not inherently make assumptions of Covenant levels when describing strategies, but because we play at Covenant 10 and fight the Titans regularly, some biases will work its way into this guide, as certain strategies that are "fine" at low levels may not work as well later on, and some Card/Strategies overcome steeper challenges at higher difficulties than others. Anywho, enjoy as we discuss the happy builders & hungry shadows that make up the Umbra!

Key reminder for card rarities: (C) = Common, (U) = Uncommon, (R) = Rare

Overview: Those beautiful gems from underground have a non-human cost in this world, and fortunately it’s from your proud little Morsel buddies, who are happy to confer your team with stats & buffs while building up the Ember & Size of your train. MT1’s swingiest clan is back, now heavily benefiting from both the Deployment phase, and a 2-size increase from the Heaven’s Light boss artifact. Umbra functions by utilizing 0-cost Morsel units that will help boost the stats of your allies, potentially Bop the enemies, and/or take a hit for you! Their units get extra benefit from the Morsels, even though their Eaten effects apply to units from any clan. Umbra has a variety of support effects as well, helping support your run with Capacity increases and Ember-generating tricks. Like Underlegion, this clan can often dominate the early stages of the game, while needing some TLC to stay as powerful late in a run.

Offensive strategies: Umbra’s offensive builds are mixed through a pretty wide variety of effects. Attack boosts come freely with Morsels, with other effects like Rage and even Multistrike found in their Spell cards. Their unique tome can grant Trample to a unit, though this effect is more common in MT2 than it was in MT1. Umbra has a pretty decent variety of offensive spells, though they tend to mostly either be very weak or very strong, without much middle ground! Multiple units & a Champion grow stronger with every Morsel eaten, and one Uncommon unit also blasts all enemies with damage every time it eats. Two of their Morsel units, Magma & Excavator also have some Attack on them, which can help pick off backline enemies and double-tap their Reanimate stacks away. Finally, the Exiled Champion Primordium is extremely unique in the fact that it has the ability to confer its own stats and/or buffs to allies, giving the player opportunities to build up offense (and defense) to units of any clan.

Defensive strategies: Umbra has a pretty strong defensive presence through its variety of stat-boosting effects, and its frequent access to Damage Shield and Lifesteal effects. Many of Umbra’s own units tend to have higher Health stats than average, and these will be frequently boosted by Morsel units. The escalation in enemy stats over MT1 has made both of these effects more useful; damage shields in particular can eat even the nastiest hits in the game to help avoid otherwise scary hits from Corruption, Melee Weakness, and enemy Sweepers. The plentiful nature of Morsels gives a lot of potential to soak up damage at times as well, particularly Antumbra & Jeweler Morsels which have 9 & 6 Health to block even multiple hits at times. Finally, the Exiled Champion Primordium is extremely unique in the fact that it has the ability to confer its own stats and/or buffs to allies, giving the player opportunities to build up defense (and offense) to units of any clan.

Stat-influencing strategies: Though they’re almost exclusively limited to Morsels, these Morsels are everywhere in this clan’s deck & artifacts, and they all confer stat boosts to the unit that eats them. Some Umbra units even gain bonus stats on top of the existing boost the Morsel would have given! The introduction of their unique Equipment (R) Glutton’s Maw has also given other units the ability to sacrifice other units for a big stat boost. As a reminder, stat boosts carry over when a unit is defeated, so Endless can be pretty potent when playing with this clan!

Support strategies: Multiple Spells, Rooms, and even Artifacts in this clan help with Ember generation and increasing the Capacity of the floors of your train. Umbra has multiple spells that can gain you Ember on top of damage as well, giving some options for playing a bigger hand of cards. Though Card Draw effects aren’t common here, an Artifact can do so, and their unique spell (R) Retch can re-draw consumed Morsels. Speaking of Morsels, these have the ability to provide both Damage Shields & Lifesteal effects to other units, and one path of the Exiled Champion Primordium can even pass on any buffs to an ally repeatedly!

Sweep/Backliner Strategies: Umbra can do a bit of mining in the back of the train, but mostly they tend to chip away at the frontline. This is Umbra’s biggest weakness, as they lack any traditional Sweep units, some of their strongest offensive spells target enemies randomly, and the few remaining Spells that target specific enemies are of very-low potency. Their most potent/traditional Sweep effect comes from (U) Shadoweater, who blasts enemies with damage with every Morsel/Gorge… quite strong, but limited to only that unit, and difficult to trigger before battle since Quick cannot influence that. The Trample effects found on Penumbra or their Tome spell can significantly help to clear out exposed backliners, but you may need to seek help from your other clan for dealing with these problems.

(U) Engine Upgrade has been turned into a Room, having the same effect as it did as a Spell. This is both a buff & a nerf. On the “buff” side of the equation, it has 0 Ember cost, and MT2’s ability to add Deployable to this room would give you 1 Ember per turn the rest of the battle for no up-front investment. On the “nerf” side of things, this takes up a Room slot that could be used for other effects, and it can’t be repeatedly played in the same Room the way it did in MT1.






(U) Crucible Extension has been turned into a Room, and has had its potency increased significantly to 4 Space! However, again this is both a buff & a nerf. On the “buff” side of the equation, 4 Space is a big boost, and you can always replace this Room with a different Room after you’ve filled up the floor. On the “nerf” side, 2 Ember is still a high-cost investment for a Room (particularly if you feel you need it Deployable), and replacing it is yet more Ember investment in a game that’s added a variety of new ways to increase Capacity or move units between floors more-readily.



(U) Alloyed Construct now begins with 2 Fuel. The more rapid escalation of enemy waves in this game necessitated it being combat-ready on turn 1! Also nice since it covers him for both turns if paired solely with a (U) Morselmaker during Deployment.

Unlike all the other MT1 clans, Umbra is the only one that hasn’t had their Champion paths reworked. Time will tell if Penumbra’s Architect path remains unscathed in the future X)

(R) Glutton’s Maw is a new Equipment card adds the Ability: Chomp, Cooldown 1 to sacrifice a friendly unit, gain +15/+15 stats, and trigger both Eaten & Gorge if relevant. I’ll discuss some potential strategies with this later in the guide, but there are two important aspects to understand about this. 1) It allows even units in the back of the floor to Gorge!.. very big ramifications when a Sweeper/Damage Dealer in back can gain stats & buffs from Morsels. and 2) It allows you to potentially trigger Gorge/Eaten efects on your turn without the use of Spells like (U) Feast & (R) Shroud Spike, or with the unit (R) Morsel-Made.

Eaten: Found on each and every one of the Morsel units, Eaten means that the unit will self-sacrifice itself to the front-most friendly unit on the floor on Resolve, as long as they’re not themselves an “Eaten” unit (i.e. other Morsels or the Exiled Champion Primordium). What this means is your Morsels will dutifully wait on the train each turn on a floor and Attack like a normal unit, but will immediately sacrifice themselves for the greater good during the Resolve phase as long as there’s any non-Eaten unit on the floor with them.

The Eaten effect confers stat bonuses & effects (if relevant) to the unit that “ate” them. Your front-most friendly unit gain the stats & effects listed on the Eaten effect of the card, regardless if the Morsel has had its stats changed or been afflicted with buffs/debuffs in that time. This is an important distinction, because if you’ve used Baron Grael’s It Hungers path, he would gain the current Attack of the unit instead. Here, even if for some reason you make a Rubble Morsel have 50 Health & Attack, it will still only transfer +3/+3 to your front-most unit.

The tl;dr version? If Morsels are on a floor with a non-Morsel or non-Primordium friendly unit, they’ll disappear forever(ish) and grant their Eaten effects to your front-most unit. Phew! We’ll discuss strategies more in the “Morsels!” section later on.

Finally, some important points that are unique to Eaten & the Melting Remnant clan’s effects: a unit that has been Eaten is not defeated… it will not show back up in your hand if you attempt to Reform it. However, a Morsel can still be defeated before being Eaten, and if it is, it would then become available with a Reform effect. All Eaten units go into a separate stored “pool” of Eaten units in battle, and these are currently only ever accessible through the Spell card (R) Retch. Melting Remnant rooms/spells/artifacts allow you to potentially make a Morsel/Primordium endless, and as long as it’s not a Cardless Morsel, an Eaten unit it will return to your hand afterward. This is a potentially risky strategy if you do too much of this though, as it can clog your card draws, but is fantastic if utilized with Primordium instead.

Gorge: A pretty simple trigger effect once you’ve wrapped your head around Eaten =) While any unit in the game can Eat the Morsels and get their Eaten effects, a unit with a Gorge trigger gains an additional bonus each time it Eats. This means some Umbra units with Gorge triggers are “better” at eating Morsels, as they’ll gain special benefits for it. As an analogy, consider how Fel’s Just Cause cards can give Valor and Advance any unit, but various Banished units would get extra benefit from Shifting as well. Gorge triggers per Eaten effect, so you can get multiple triggers on the same turn by feeding a unit a bunch of Morsels on their floor.


Inert/Fuel: Exclusive effects to (U) Alloyed Construct. Inert simply means it will not Attack unless it has at least 1 stack of Fuel. Fuel is a buff that’s solely used to keep it Attacking and degrades each turn, re-upped through its exclusive Gorge trigger. Fuel has no other purpose. Because it’s a buff, that does allow it to be Propagated if utilized alongside the Underlegion clan.

Emberdrain: Monster Train 1 veterans are quite familiar with this onerous debuff, but Monster Train 2 has removed it as a debuff applied by enemies or the train, so it’s now entirely unique to the Umbra clan! At the start of a turn, every stack of Emberdrain will reduce your available Ember by 1. Ember can’t go negative (yay?), so at worst this will drain you to zero. This is meant to be a “cost” to be paid for some of Umbra’s Spell cards. Emberdrain fortunately does degrade over time and Umbra as a clan has multiple ways to increase Ember gain to help offset the impact of this effect.

Merchant of Steel: Shieldstone: Damage Shield 3. Don’t sleep on this effect! This is one of my favorite unique clan upgrades for a few reasons. For one, there are a ton of support/backline units in the game that aren’t particularly good Attackers or Defenders, but may be vulnerable to Sweep units or Corruption. For these units, this is a great, cheap upgrade that can keep them in the fight a lot longer than usual. Second, if you’re utilizing Blockers/Endless units, 3 Damage Shields is a great way for them to take more hits before going down. And Third, if you intend to face the Titans, the Titan Savagery’s Trample effects are completely nullified if he strikes a unit with Damage Shields. On a unit with Dualism, this even increases to 6 Damage Shields, which is excellent!

Umbra Banner thoughts:
There’s an interesting issue at hand when it comes to grabbing an Umbra banner. Two of the Uncommon Umbra banner units help you generate or multiply Morsels… very useful if you’re looking to expand the use of Morsels and trigger lots of Eaten/Gorge/stat-boost effects for other units. However, all four of the other Uncommon Umbra banner units have Gorge triggers, meaning they’re at their best when consuming Morsels instead! Add in the Rare units and you have two more Gorge units as well.

So the dilemma here is tricky at times, as both Morsel-generating units are quite useful, but these two make up less than 1/3 of the options available, and a nearly 2/3 of the options want to eat Morsels instead. A prime example of this dilemma is Glutton Penumbra, whose performance is strongly tied to the amount of Morsels he eats, and thus loves if you pull (U) Morselmaker or (U) Morselmaster. However, if the Umbra Banner offers only (U) Alloyed Construct and (U) Shadoweater, Penumbra would now have to “compete” over access to Morsels with these units in order for them to perform properly. That means this banner is a small chance of a major improvement to his performance, or a larger chance that it would cannibalize it instead.

On the positive side of things, two of the Gorge units, the (U) Crucible Warden & (U) Crucible Collector have very good base stats for 1-cost 2-space units, easily outperforming Shield & Spear Stewards even without substantial Gorging. More Umbra Banner units have high stats that are favorable for tanking as well, making an Umbra Banner a very reasonable choice if you’re looking for a tank unit. And if your deck has already gotten a high amount of Morsel cards, several of these banner units have very high performance when used in conjunction with these Morsels.


Keep that in mind as we discuss Umbra Banner Units!

Alloyed Construct: Hopefully your first instinct when seeing these stats is that this is way better than the average Uncommon unit, and that’s almost true! Mr. Roboto has extremely good starting stats, but is also “Inert”, and only Attacks on its turn if he has at least 1 Fuel, a unique buff exclusive to it. If Alloyed runs out of Fuel stacks, it will instead just sit there taking damage until it’s defeated, leaving that beautiful 25x2 Attack stat to go to waste.. particularly heartbreaking if you’re hoping to keep pummeling a boss during Relentless. It regains Fuel with its Gorge trigger, so as long as it’s “fueled” with Morsels or Primordium, it will function as normal. There’s a lot of ways to get Alloyed eating in this clan, so that’s typically less of a problem than the fact that it typically must be in the front of the floor to do so, forcing you to decide on building it out with an eye toward Tanking or Damage-Dealing effects.

Upgrades/Pairings: Fuel is the first concern for making use of this hunk of metal, so it needs Morsel support however it can get them. The next problem to solve is how to upgrade it, as 25 Health will not last long as a frontline unit as the game progresses, as it will presumably will be taking the brunt of enemy attacks. To rectify that you might go with Titanite, Largestone, or Heartstone, and hope to eat (U) Morsel Excavators to have it heal up with Lifesteal. Conversely, if building up its offense, you may want a Strengthstone, Largestone, Speedstone, or even another Multistrike to have it pile on the damage. Since Fuel is a buff, Dualism technically can double its Fuel gains, but that’s a fairly weak effect unless paired with other status-buff effects. Oddly, Endless is plausible here instead, as it would carry over its stats gained from Morsels and regain 2 Fuel when resummoned.

Seeking out Equipment cards to help it survive and/or hit hard with its Multistrike is a great idea all around; Umbra’s (R) Glutton’s Maw gives Alloyed the option to gain Fuel even when not on the frontline, giving the potential of exclusively using it for damage… though this will limit his Fuel gain to 1 a turn (typically) and thus make it weak during Relentless phases. A high-maintenance bot, this one!

Crucible Collector: Okay thankfully, this is much less complex than Alloyed. This crystalline drool-factory of a unit has very nice 30/35 stats for a unit of its size & cost, and additionally gains 1 Lifesteal when Gorging. Though that 30 Attack stat feels like it might call for use as an offensive powerhouse, its true strength relies in its tanking prowess… as long as it eats a single Morsel, its high Attack will allow it to consistently heal itself every turn when Attacking, self-sustaining itself on the frontline while it gains stat boosts from the Morsels. This makes Crucible Collector an extremely good tank during Relentless phases, because if it’s built up enough Lifesteal stacks and a boss can’t destroy it in a single turn, it might just be able to heal itself back to full over and over again!

Upgrades/Pairings: My favorite two upgrades here are a) Largestone, which substantially increase its health to 85 and gives it a base 45 Attack to help heal that off with Lifesteal. And b) Titanite, which will help its long-term survivability as enemy waves get more punishing later in the game. Standard upgrades like Heartstone & Strengthstone are fine, and you technically can do a Speedstone if you’d prefer it to be Quick and instantly healing itself instead of waiting for a wave of enemy attacks. Multistrike sounds nice given the 30 base attack, but note that each strike will use up a stack of Lifesteal, which isn’t ideal for sustaining it during Relentless. Dualism would result in it gaining 2 Lifesteal per Gorge, but that’s not too impressive unless you’ve found another way to ensure it continually survives long enough to keep.. you know, stealing life!

Crucible Warden: Oh phew, its drool is less viscous. This is another flavor of the same unit archetype we just saw with Crucible Collector, with slightly lower stats and a Gorge trigger that gains it Damage Shields instead. This is a fairly substantial change in the use of these two units, as Damage Shields are more effective at stopping big hits and ticks of Corruption, but is notably weaker when fighting big waves of multi-striking enemies. Weirdly enough, it’s a better unit to receive Multistrike than Crucible Collector, since it won’t “spend” its buff when Attacking, and may gain a lot of Attack boosts when eating Morsels. Interestingly, it becomes more useful of an effect later in the game as well, as Damage Shields block any hit regardless of the potency, which is a lot more meaningful if Seraph the Dominant puts 150 Corruption on him, or Titan Savagery has his Trample Attacks completely nullified by these Shields.

Upgrades/Pairings: I didn’t suggest Dualism for Crucible Collector, but Damage Shields work best when they’re plentiful, so it’s a much better upgrade here. Further, you could combine this with Umbra’s Shieldstone upgrade to give it a starting 6 Damage Shields alongside the 2 gained during Gorge! You may not always be able to sustain a brick wall of Damage Shields, so standard tank upgrades like Titanite, Largestone, and Heartstone can work here too. Multistrike is an oddly plausible upgrade here as well too, since you could feed it lots of Attack-gain Morsels/Primordium and turn it into both Damage Shields and Multi-striking offense!

Morselmaster: The cheaper and slightly-higher-maintenance version of our shady Morsel-generating allies, any Morsel summoned or played on Morselmaster’s floor is immediately duplicated, as long as you haven’t hit the 7-unit limit on the floor. If you have a steady supply of Morsels available, this can be very powerful as it allows you to save the “best” Morsels for use in his floor, either to get the most out of their stat boosts, or to duplicate potentially life-saving effects like Lifesteal and Damage Shields. Its stats aren’t much to speak of, and requires you to source Morsels elsewhere, but that’s a fairly small price to pay for a unit that freely duplicates your Morsels!

Upgrades/Pairings: Amusingly enough, Morselmaster duplicates even cardless Morsels, meaning it can be paired with Morselmaker to instantly generate 4 new Morsels on Resolve… overkill? Maybe, but fun! Upgrades from the Merchant of Steel aren’t particularly important here, so feel free to throw spare Shieldstones, Strengthstones, or Heartstones on it. The Clanless (U) Iron Tongue can be lovely to give it a Sweep effect and set its Attack to 30. Mostly you’re looking to pair this creature with Gorge units, but do note that the ability to duplicate Morsels gives two other potential uses… 1) putting out Attacking Morsels like (U) Magma Morsel or (U) Morsel Excavator can get you a tiny bit of backline offense useful for picking off exposed enemies and/or clearing Reanimate stacks (and hey, both are strong enough to defeat all levels of a Collector!). and 2) placing Health morsels like (U) Antumbra Morsel or (U) Morsel Jeweler in the front of your floor to soak up multiple damage hits as blockers.

Morselmaker: The more expensive and lower-maintenance of the two Shades, Morselmaker dutifully creates a cardless Antumbra Morsel & Magma Morsel in front of itself each turn, ostensibly granting your front unit a boost of +9/+9 stats each round on top of the two free Gorges. If left exposed, fortunately the Antumbra Morsel with its base Health of 9 is always placed in front, which is helpful if some weak enemies are looking to cut through. Like Underlegion’s (U) Cluster Colonel, there’s no way to improve the performance of its effect, so it’s most important to simply pair it with allies that will benefit from the Morsels, and potentially duplicate it if you end up with multiple Gorgers!

Upgrades/Pairings: It bears repeating: a (U) Morselmaster duplicates even cardless Morsels of a Morselmaker, meaning it can be paired together to instantly generate 4 new Morsels on Resolve… overkill? Maybe, but fun! Upgrades from the Merchant of Steel aren’t particularly important here, so feel free to throw spare Shieldstones, Strengthstones, or Heartstones on it. The Clanless (U) Iron Tongue can be lovely to give it a Sweep effect and set its Attack to 30. Mostly you’re looking to pair this creature with Gorge units for easy turn-over-turn benefits. There’s one other niche potential benefit here if you obtain the Winged Technology Artifact, Morselmaker’s Morsels will be summoned with Damage Shields, allowing you the unusual ability to have it create two Blocker units in front of it to soak up multiple attacks… odd, but it can be helpful at times.

Shadoweater: A pretty solid boost in its performance from MT1, Shadoweater is still a big beast with its 3 Space and 2 Ember cost, but is also the closest thing Umbra has to a Sweeper, doing AoE damage and healing itself with every Gorge Trigger. The 20 damage dealt by each Gorge is a important and high threshold, enough to clear several backline threats throughout the game, with two Gorges even being enough to defeat threats like Chosen Supplicants, or simply double-tap the Reanimate effects off enemies in the backline. Its 50 Health and healing on Gorge gives it a lot of staying power in battle as well, often setting up situations where Shadoweater is placed alone on the bottom floor exclusively with Morsel-generating effects to clear out backliners while the next floors work on the remaining threats. Then during Relentless, it may have gained enough Attack to put up a decent fight too! A strong, important ally for Umbra, albeit one that’s very dependent on Morsels to perform.

Upgrades/Pairings: Titanite is my favorite upgrade here, significantly reducing its incoming damage and making its 10 Health restored on Gorges more substantial. Its 3 size can go either direction for upgrades: either use a Smidgestone to shrink it down to 1, or just say “screw it” and give it a Largestone for a massive 100 Health stat. Damage & Heals are not buffs, so it gets no benefit from Dualism. Endless is a plausible upgrade here since it will bring its increased stats back with it, but with its 2 Ember cost and large size, that may not be helpful. Heartstones are a safe option as well. Equipment can be a real gift here as well, the (R) Glutton’s Maw gives Shadoweater a 20-damage equivalent of ‘Quick-Sweep’ during your turn, and clanless options like (U) Meat Shield can keep even more Healing going for it long term. Finally, beware the obnoxious Deafening Herald enemies (typically with Seraph the Entropic) who will Silence both the damage & heal effects of its Gorging.

Rare (R) Banner Units:
Morsel-Made: When Morsels rise up and become Legion, you get the Mighty Morsel-Made! Breaking the usual rules of Eaten, Morsel-Made instantly vacuums up any Morsel placed on its floor, immediately gaining the Eaten boosts on top of its additional +4/+4 boosts. There are numerous impacts to this change in mechanics that we’ll discuss shortly, but the result is you get a unit that can grow in stats very quickly, and one that has the ability to survive very long-term as its stats grow and you strategically give it Lifesteal effects.

The Hunger effect gives it multiple unique properties compared to other Gorge units: a) it doesn’t require as much Space on the floor, as it’ll immediately gobble up your Morsels to make room even if you have hand full of them. Even Morsels created by a (U) Morselmaker will instantly be Eaten. b) it gains the effects of Eaten immediately, giving it the ability to potentially eat a crucial Lifesteal or Damage Shield without waiting a turn. Additionally, any (C) Rubble Morsels placed down instantly earn you Ember! c) it can devour Primordium faster than any other unit in the game – a Morsel placed on the floor while Primordium is down will result in Morsel-Made Gorging on both! d) its effect works even if it’s not at the front of a floor, so it’s not required to be your vanguard (even though maybe it should, given its Health gains?) and e) cards like (R) Shroud Mitosis, (R) Shroud Spike, or (U) Feast typically will not work here unless it’s silenced or moved between floors, as it won’t allow Morsels to exist long enough to utilize those spells.

Upgrades/Pairings: If you’re able to feed this beast a lot, a few upgrades immediately come to mind: a) Multistrike, to take advantage of its ever-growing Attack stats. b) Titanite, to allow it to take a ridiculous amount of punishment and easily heal it off with Lifesteal. c) Largestone, giving it a big starting boost to stats (and its extra space cost matters little since Morsels don't take up space on its floor). and d) Endless, bringing all it's newly Gorged stat-increases back after defeat. (U) Morselmaster is the best ally possible here, doubling each Morsel placed down before Morsel-Made Gorges on it, giving massive stat boosts (to wit: a single (R) Morsel Miner placed with this combo would immediately give it +26/+26 to its stats!). Speedstone & Heartstone are reasonable options if you can’t grab the others. As long as you can produce Morsels consistently, this behemoth will easily hold the line and give some serious meatshield + offense, often easily handling Relentless boss phases.

Overgorger: 0 Attack?! Well, we’d better do something to fix that. Honestly I’m a bit surprised this wasn’t buffed to +3 Attack from MT1, but anyway… Overgorger asks you to permanently invest in his Attack stat similar to units like (R) Steelsinger, (R) Reforming Ooze, or (R) Bounty Stalker. Every Gorge trigger gives it a permanent +2 Attack on top of the usual benefits gifted from Eaten. Whether this unit is worth it or not will depend strongly on the amount of Gorge triggers you can get it, and whether or not you pull it early enough in your run to invest in it. Umbra has a very strong early-game presence, so if obtained early, you can afford to simply use it as a tank and give it every Morsel imaginable to turn it into an offensive powerhouse late-game. If not, this is inferior to (U) Shadoweater and even (U) Alloyed Construct for their combos of offense & tanking.

Upgrades/Pairings: Multistrike is highly desired here so its ever-growing Attack will get multiple strikes. Its onerous 3 size makes Smidgestone a pretty reasonable option, particularly if your deck has a flood of Morsels to feed it on a floor. 35 Health is good enough for the early game, but you’ll need to decide prior to the late-game if you intend to keep it in front or not… Largestone or Titanite could help give it some staying power if you go this route, though the 4-size from a Largestone may make it tough to feed it without using the Morselmaster/maker allies. Since its boosts are permanent, look for Rare cards like (R) Shroud Mitosis or (R) Shroud Spike to get it as many Gorge triggers as possible! If you want to pivot it to being a backline Attacker, the new (R) Glutton’s Maw equipment is incredible since it will allow it to Gorge from the back too!

Shadowsiege: Ahh!! O_O You thought Steelsinger/Demon Fiend/Consumer of Crowns were big and expensive? Meet the meme, the legend, the fairly-ridiculous-all-told behemoth that is Shadowsiege! So, there’s not a ton to say about this beast really… it has by far the highest stats of any Banner unit in the game, is so massive that it won’t even fit in a default Train size, and costs so much Ember that it will typically be unplayable. Great stats though! And hey, count yourself lucky if you had the Herzal’s Horde Pyre Heart when this shows up.

Upgrades/Pairings: Smidgestone is a wonderful gift for this creature, as is Multistrike to get that 200 Attack punched into multiple faces. Speedstone is perfectly welcome as an option as well. Honestly that’s basically it, it doesn’t really need other stats or effects from the Merchant of Steel, it needs to be played on the train at all! Umbra has a lot of Ember-generating effects, but only one card that reduces the cost of an ally drawn, in (U) Prism Retrieval. The best cards to support this within Umbra are by freezing cards like (C) Perils of Production, or (R) Kindle. This unit is kind of a joke, but there are ways to get it out and enjoy its stupid-strong stats with clanless artifacts like Sketches of Salvation, other clan’s cards like (R) Channelsong and (R) Scrap for Parts, and combos that save or generate Ember.

Every clan has some version of these non-Banner card units, but for the Umbra there’s only a single non-Morsel unit here that you can add to your deck, and it even breaks the usual sizing rule of Support units by taking up 2 Space! We’ll discuss it up front before getting to the Morsels.

Ember Forge (U): Very unusual for a support unit, both in its 2 size, and its 20 Health! If you can make space for this helpful little collection of hard-working forgers, you get 2 more Ember to work with each turn. Neat! This can easily be given Health upgrades for tanking purposes, or Endless to keep it coming back once defeated. Reminder that it can’t be deployed without the Departure Manifest artifact though, so don’t expect to be loaded with Ember every turn!







Not much else to say here – it’s helpful if you have space on the train, and an Ember-hungry deck. And the 20 Health isn’t a bad bonus. Smidgestone probably isn’t necessary, but a Shieldstone is pretty nice to stop it from dying from incidental damage, and Endless + Shieldstone is a solid combo long-term… helpful if you need to block a floor from Titan Savagery! However, Ember’s gifted at the start of the turn only if it’s alive; you lose its Ember effect when it’s defeated, making the intentional defeat of it also kind of a dubious strategy.

Because Morsels aren’t ever actually in your deck between battles, I’m classifying them in their own section rather than saying they’re a Support unit. The Eaten section covered a lot of details about them, but let’s talk a few more details about these adorable helpers and the strategies around their use.

(C) Rubble Morsel: The only Common Morsel, gifting a gentle balance of +3/+3 to stats and an Ember for your troubles! Typically it will be Eaten on Resolve and gift you Ember for the following turn. Importantly, every spell card & effect beyond your starter cards of (C) Shadesplitter & (C) Plink will only produce Uncommon & Rare Morsels, so you’ll see these little guys less and less if you take strong Morsel-generating cards throughout the run. The lone exceptions to this rule are two Umbra Artifacts: Abandoned Antumbra, and Shadelamp.

Now, that’s not a bad thing since the other Morsels grant stronger effects & stats, but Ember gains can still be very helpful, so you might be surprised to find yourself with less Ember as the run progresses simply because you’re not pulling Rubble Morsels much anymore.


(U) Magma Morsel: A strong little fella with a hot rock in hand, a Magma Morsel’s 9 Attack is more damage than a Shield Steward, and equal to Baron Grael’s Erratic Assistants even! Gifting +9 Attack on Eaten is also quite nice… compare this to a similar effect like Awoken’s Razorsharp Growth that costs 1 Ember to give +12 Attack and -2 Health. Thus these are quite useful, both for the occasional bit of backline damage support, and to grow the offense whatever unit gets to Eat ‘em. Because it Attacks, be careful of enemies with Spikes, as they’ll strike themselves to a Spiky-end before getting a chance to be Eaten. To Valhalla instead of the stomach, I suppose.





(U) Antumbra Morsel: The heartiest Morsel in town, with both 9 Health on itself and the ability to grant +9 Health on Eaten. 9 Health is an impressive value for a tiny little guy like this, surpassing the Health of most other non-Banner units in the game, which gives it the potential to help block multiple hits for you against weaker enemy waves. Gifting +9 Health is quite solid, as the game has very few Spell cards that increase Health directly.








(U) Morsel Jeweler: Carrying more precious cargo than an Antumbra Morsel, Jeweler has a bit less Health and gifts less Health with +6 on Eaten. However, the Damage Shield transferred over may more than make up for that reduction in Health, since it blocks hits regardless of how fierce they are. Its 6 Health still allows it the potential of blocking a few hits against weaker enemy waves as well if needed. Otherwise, as the game’s enemy waves & bosses increase in intensity, a timely Damage Shield can be a lifesaver, particularly to help avoid otherwise-deadly strikes with Melee Weakness, or taking the damage of huge Corruption stacks.





(U) Morsel Excavator: With a sharp-but-not-scorching stone in hand, Excavators are the second type of Morsel that can do some backline damage support by Attacking. Though their Attack boost of +6 is lower than a Magma’s, the precious gift of Lifesteal can be enough to completely turn the tide of survivability for your meatshield-style tanks, and particularly for champions like Penumbra that will easily Heal to full on Strike. Particularly if your clan combo is lacking in Heals or Defense, you’ll often be begging for this fella to show up! Because it Attacks, be careful of enemies with Spikes, as they’ll strike themselves to a Spiky-end before getting a chance to be Eaten. To Valhalla instead of the stomach, I suppose.




(R) Morsel Miner: Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of their success in the mines, a Morsel Miner has the same stats of a lowly Rubble Morsel, but comes bearing a beautiful gem worth 3x the amount of stats. +9/+9 stats is quite a lot to get out of a single effect, so these are great when they show up, and particularly fantastic when duplicated by a (U) Morselmaster. Because these are the only Morsel classified as Rare, these cannot show up from the use of Shadesplitter or Plink.







Stat gains are a key method for overcoming the game’s gradual escalation in enemy threats, and like Underlegion before them, you may find that Umbra has a particularly strong early-game presence simply by feeding stats over to other units. Pulling Magma & Excavator Morsels can also be fantastic for picking off backline enemies & Collectors in ways that other clans may struggle with at the start. Pulling Antumbra & Jewelers can get you some on-demand blocking for wounded allies that can really save the day as well. However, there’s no way to ever increase the value or intensity of effects granted from these Morsels… even the highly-desired Fossilized Fangs artifact would only grant more stats to Glutton Penumbra & two of Umbra’s Rare units.

So this is your reminder to understand that things like Morsels, while very strong early game, will need extra work to keep up with late-game threats. A couple gains of +9 Attack/Health might be enough to sail through early fights, but this will barely put a dent in later enemies. In the endgame, a Damage Shield or Lifesteal effect may be the only thing separating you from victory & defeat instead! As the game progresses, consider if you’ll be able to consistently increase the frequency and quantity of Morsels generated, and if the allies you’re feeding them to will gain enough benefit from their effects.

Finally, don’t forget there’s many other potential benefits of having tiny on-demand units to swarm your floors with! Every Morsel in a (U) Fight Club will Attack enemies for you. Morsels summoned into a Lazarus League (U) Reanimation Chamber will have extra Health & Attack to block or strike enemies with. Every Morsel added to a Luna Coven’s (U) Planetarium or on a floor with (C) Moon Pixie will increase the Conduit values of the floor. Placing Morsels will trigger Rally for your Underlegion allies or Royalty Shardtail Queen. Letting their puny Health values get defeated can trigger Harvest for your Melting Remnant allies, or a Morsel with an important effect can be made Endless in the (U) Memorial for the Melted Room. There’s a lot of fun to be had with these hardworking sootlings!

Starting card:
Shadesplitter: One guaranteed Morsel, no more, no less. Extremely helpful if you get the Vola’s Tuning Fork artifact to make these free, otherwise these are just a gentle bit of help to get you going. A guarantee of at least +3 to one stat and a Gorge trigger, a chance of pulling an Attacking Morsel… that kind of thing. Though it can get you a crucial Lifesteal or Damage Shield effect, you’re a lot more likely to get it from cards that generate 2-3 Morsels intead. Interestingly, this makes it worse than Primordium’s Plink at the start of the game, but typically better late-game when Plink stops being strong enough to reliably generate Morsels.

Architect:
Strategies: Currently one of my top picks in my fantasy league team of “Champions that should get a boost in stats” or “Boy that Shardsoul looks tempting in comparison” (get it? It's not very good!), Architect Penumbra is about as simple as they come. Put him down, and he increases the size of the floor!... you know, if you ignore the fact that he takes up 3 of those Spaces himself. His Attack is mediocre and his Health is bad in this path, so the only real benefit here is simply to make a “big floor” for you to utilize. The benefits of this are a lot more pronounced if either a) you give him (or an ally) a Deployable (U) Exile’s Diadem to reclaim the space you lost by placing him, or b) utilize Ascend/Descend effects to reclaim the rest of the space to utilize. There’s some fun “gigantic floor” strategies you can make with him combined with either Melting Remnant’s Endless/Reform effects, or Hellhorned’s repeated Summon trigger effects. Otherwise, that’s it – it blows my mind that they haven’t increased his level III Attack value over MT1 o_O Take that, 20% of an Avowed Gladiator's Health. Or give him Sweep or something - I'd rather give him the (U) Iron Tongue so he hits backline enemies even if it reduces his Attack in the process.


Monstrous:
Strategies: Okay now we’re talking. Penumbra gets huge stats here, with the small caveat of him taking up 4 Space and becoming larger with each Tier. You’ll need to take a Heaven’s Light boss artifact or combine this with some space-generating effects to play him in the train at level III, but hopefully his gigantic stats & Trample make him worth the effort! This version of Penumbra is easily my favorite at this point, helping him do massive cleanup damage of enemies on higher floors, and with big Health effects that make him very survivable, particularly with this clan’s preponderance of Lifesteal effects. Fantastic if you can get him additional Attack/Rage/Multistrike effects, and a delightfully powerful Champion if utilizing the Pyre of Savagery Pyre Heart. You know… just make sure you have some space to fit him in!


Glutton:
Strategies: While the other paths of Penumbra could easily feed his Shadesplitter Morsels to other allies, here he’s the desired choice, as he gets bonus stats on Gorge alongside the standard values gifted from Eaten. Though his Health is not very high on this path, he has Lifesteal 2 by default so he can heal off some early damage as he Gorges his Health upward; you may need to tuck him up a floor or two to give him time to establish better Health stats. Paired with enough Morsels to gorge on, this Penumbra has the highest stat ceiling of any path, and can easily become nigh-immortal at level III once he’s gotten a few meals in his belly. While the other paths would work with any allies, this path specifically loves to have a (U) Morselmaker or (U) Morselmaster to keep the food coming. In later battles, his Attack can become enormous, so consider if you can supplement it with an effect that gives Trample or Multistrike, both of which are available in this clan with (R) Umbra Stone and (R) Furnace Tap. Finally, make sure you’re growing the capacity of the train so there’s plenty of room to place down all the Morsels he needs to eat!

Flex potential: If you’ve started Architect but ended up with tons of Morsel effects and no Gorgers, pivoting to Glutton may be beneficial to have him become the vanguard/Gorger of the floor on top of his space-increase effects. If you’ve started with Glutton and are loaded with Morsels to ramp him up, the flex to Monstrous may be worth it, as the Trample effect alone may be worth the extra space he takes up. Personally I tend to always take Monstrous to III rather than flexing, as that boost in stats is just too high to pass up in favor of a tiny bit of space or Gorge bonuses.

Starting card: Plink A strong card early in the game, able to occasionally generate two Morsels compared to Shadesplitter, and can really do wonders for picking off early-game backline threats. Because it can take magic power upgrades, a +20 Consume effect is the highest damage you can get out of any Champion’s starter cards at a base level. However, unless your run has effects like Conduit or Pyregel to influence the magic power of this card, this will become increasingly useless as the run progresses and enemies have higher health values. A good choice for purging or adding Consume effects to it later on.

Primordium is unlike any other Champion in the game. It functions almost exactly like a Morsel that can be Eaten repeatedly, up to the value of its Buffet stacks. The two differences it has between a Morsel beyond its size/Deployable status is that a) it is ineligible for Morsel-specific effects like the spell cards (R) Shroud Mitosis and (R) Shroud Spike, and b) it transfers its current stat values to the unit Eating it, not a flat stat value like is seen on the Eaten effect of Morsels. Primordium was strong in MT1, but has become among the strongest Champions in the game now due to the addition of Equipment & Room effects for boosting its stats, as well as the comparative ease of adding Intrinsic/Doublestacked effects to it.

In all versions of Primordium, boosting Primordium’s stats is a great idea, so I won’t repeat that detail specifically. Deployable stat-influencing Equipment, Rooms like (U) Fight Club, Intrinsic stat-gain spells are all useful regardless of which path you go with. The spell card (R) Retch is incredible with it as it will cough it back up after Buffet is spent, ready to be repeatedly Eaten again. Enjoy being stuck in the loop with it!


Superfood:
Strategies: A path with some crazy ramifications, in this version, Primordium passes all status effects onto the unit that eats it alongside its current stats (which include a Health boost to 10). What kind of status effects you’d pass will entirely depend on what your clan combo has access to, but for some examples, consider things like what it would mean to pass these effects onto another unit three times over (I'm assuming Intrinsic upgrades for these):

• Doublestacked (C) Divinity from Banished, passing 20 Valor x 3 for 60 total.
  
• Doublestacked (C) Ritual of Battle from Hellhorned, passing 24 Rage x 3 for 69 total
  
• The results of any Mix/Infusion elixirs from Lazarus League
  
• The Burnout increase & Attack boosts of a Melting Remnant’s (C) Wicklash
  
• Conduit boosts gifted from a (C) Moon Pixie and (U) Planetarium to a Mageblade ally
  
• Repeatedly pass Multistrike effects from cards like (R) Void Armament, (R) Onehorn’s Tome, (R) Furnace Tap etc. (Void Armament does not purge Primordium if it's Eaten, as being Eaten isn't the same as being defeated!)

That’s barely a fraction of the effects available in the game, but hopefully you get the idea. Taking this to levels II and III add no stats or different effects, but start Primordium with 2 and 4 Damage Shields so it can pass up to 6 or 12 to the ally as well. This can be particularly noteworthy if you use a Deployable (U) Glass Cannon on this path, because Primordium will also pass Fragile over to the unit; nice to have the Damage Shields in that case! =) If you don’t feel you need that extra defensive boost from Damage Shields, you can flex out of this path for the extra Attack or Buffet values from the other paths… but Damage Shields are no joke in this game, so it’s not a bad bonus all told.

One final and important caveat though, Primordium in this path transfers all effects, not just buffs. That means if Primordium is inflicted with negative debuffs, it’ll pass them on en masse as well. This does unfortunately have ramifications for all three versions of Seraph Aeternus, as Primordium will also pass over the Melee Weakness stacks, Corruption, and Sap that’s inflicted upon it. Only Melting Remnant has reliable ways to clear these effects, so consider when taking this path how you’ll be dealing with the added debuffs against Seraph! Manipulating Seraph’s movement on the train can potentially stop this, but Umbra has only one Descend card with (U) Cave In and it uh… would bring Primordium with it typically =)

Stalwart Snack:

Strategies: Why eat Primordium three times when you can eat it 12 times?! This path may look weak at first, but there’s two important effects gained from having that much Buffet on it. 1) Morsels never last past one turn of Relentless during boss phases, but Primordium can potentially last numerous turns with this path. A unit like (U) Crucible Collector can continually devour Primordium, re-upping its Lifesteal and last an absurdly long time against a boss. Or (U) Alloyed Construct can keep being Fueled repeatedly even when the Morsels run out. And 2) If you can boost Primordium’s stats with Equipment & Spell cards, passing over its stats many more times for a bigger cumulative effect. To wit, even if you did nothing else but put a Deployable (U) Glass Cannon equipped to Primordium, it would eventually pass on at least 720 Attack & 120 Health to the unit that’s Eating it at level III. Wowzers!

Aggressive Edible:

Strategies: The simplest of its paths, Primordium amps up the Attack values transferred… and that’s it! Here Primordium is gone in three turns, but transferred at least 45>90>180 Attack to another unit before it’s gone. Essentially the main value of this path is simply how low-maintenance it is. You don’t need to Deploy any Equipment or load it with status effects to be useful; it confers a nice bit of offense to presumably a Multistrike/Trample unit to exploit the big boosts in Attack. Overall this has the lowest potential ceiling of effects & stats to pass over to other units, but in comparison, it’s helpful even without requiring Gorge units, Deployed Equipment, Intrinsic spells etc. So a safe option if nothing else.

Flex potential: Flexing any level of Superfood into a path will add the status effect transfer benefit, so this can be great if you started on Aggressive/Stalwart and later came upon some powerful status buffs to transfer over. If you don’t feel the need for Superfood’s level II & III Damage Shields, absolutely flex to Stalwart if offered to keep transferring those buffs! Stalwart is a great path to continue all the way through, as 12 Buffet is a big amount to take advantage, and a flex to Aggressive Edible likely isn’t worth it compared to simply eating Primordium with Equipment instead. Finally, flexing out of Aggressive Edible to Stalwart snack is a viable option. Flexing immediately out would result in 8 Buffets of 15 attack for 120 Attack, flexing after II would mean 5 Buffets of 30 for 150 Attack… those are still pretty reasonable numbers considering extra Buffet stacks means more opportunity to pass on Equipment or Fight Club bonuses that would result in higher returns after all.

(C) Making of a Morsel is the only card or effect that guarantees the Rare Morsel to show up… every other effect adds at least the four Uncommon Morsels to the pool of randomly-chosen options. All told, +9/+9 and a Gorge trigger is a pretty solid return for a single Ember, but this is significantly better if you have a (U) Morselmaster to duplicate the effect. Otherwise, getting multiple morsels out of cards like (C) Antumbra Assault, (U) Grovel, (U) Gem Trove, (C) Packed Morsels etc. would be a better potential return on investment, while giving access to potential Lifesteal/Damage Shields that may be even more important.

(U) Cave In is Umbra’s only card that moves units between floors, and it’s kind of crazy in the fact that it drops everything, friendly and unfriendly alike. The 7 unit limit is important here, as it will drop your front-most units first, to the back of the next floor down until the limit is reached. This has some powerful boss-beating applications by putting a Freezestone on it and dropping Attacking units from one floor down behind your tanks.

(C) Perils of Production is a rare effect in that it’s an immediate infusion of 3 Ember, enough to help pay for some expensive cards on your turn. You can avoid the Emberdrain punishment of this by simply playing it onto a Morsel that’s going to be eaten, or a blocker that will be destroyed by the enemies before the next round. Because there’s a bit of Rage on the card and it can be played for 0 Ember, you can also potentially give it Holdover (and Doublestack if you really want the Rage), which would continually allow you to regain 3 Ember, even if you’ve been affected by Emberdrain from this card or other effects like the mighty (R) Furnace Tap. However, note that this trick will not work if you’ve taken a Blessing of Dominion from a Celestial Alcove event… the Dominion’s Eye Blight would make the Perils of Production card cost 1 Ember instead, shutting down your Ember-engine.

(C) Mine Collapse can be given a +10 or +20 Consume upgrade to destroy weak backliners and Collectors even when you have no Ember, which is very helpful since it gives you 2 Ember back for your troubles. This is a plausible use of Holdover+10 as well for both damage & Ember gain, particularly if facing Seraph the Entropic where this would be sufficient to destroy Deafening Heralds.

If you don’t have an enemy weak enough to be defeated by (C) Antumbra Assault, you can always use it one of your own Morsels; two is usually better than one! A +10 Upgrade is very good on this card to help it continue to be strong enough to destroy backline enemies later in the game. This can also be particularly useful with (U) Morselmaster – if it’s already filled the floor’s capacity with Morsels, destroy one, and replace with a new one to be duplicated instead!

(U) Cannibalize is a pretty good candidate for the Spellchain effect, since you can always Sacrifice one of the resulting Morsels from the first time you play it.

(U) Engine Upgrade is a decent card to give Deployable to. It costs 0 Ember so it won’t mess with your Deployment costs, you can reduce the size of the room after you’ve already filled it with Deployable units, and have +1 Ember for the rest of the battle.

(U) Ember Cache is a solid card if you have a small deck or plenty of Draws to ensure you’re cycling through it. If however, you’re utilizing multiple Holdover/Endless units, so you may never get through your deck in enough time to take advantage of these.

The Banished & Lazarus League clans have added new ways to add Trample to units, but that doesn’t make (R) Umbra Stone any less important than it has been. The game is full of ways to get units & Champions with gigantic Attack stats, and it can be very obnoxious if that huge Attack is ‘wasted’ on weaker enemies… a fact that’s particular pronounced against Seraph Aeternus the Dominant’s waves of low-Health + Reanimate enemies. Don’t pass this one up if you’re heavily scaling Attack on your units!

(R) Blazing Bolts gets much stronger after two uses, eventually striking 4 random enemies! Its upgraded versions also carry any upgrades you’ve put on it, so feel free to reduce the Ember costs or further increase the damage before you get it to its final form.

Umbra’s spell cards have multiple great options with boss-killing potential, making a Freezestone/Permafrost effect very helpful to wait to use these during Relentless. Effects like the Lifesteal from (C) Immortal Trade, Damage Shields & Rage from (U) Void Binding, and the Multistrike from (R) Furnace Tap can all be clutch effects during a tough boss fight. The fact that they all carry Emberdrain penalties makes it helpful to wait until these are most needed. All of these are quite strong with Doublestack as well to varying degrees.

Although you must still respect the 7 unit limit on a floor, (R) Shroud Mitosis will create an array of new Morsels even if it would overstack the floor. Still, this is a painful card to pull on a turn with no Morsels available, so only take this if you’re positive you’ll usually have a supply of Morsels to quadruplicate.

If a (R) Shroud Spike is used on a (C) Rubble Morsel, you’ll get even more Ember back than you put into playing it! This could plausibly even give you a reason to utilize Spellchain on this card, which is typically a bad idea since X-cost cards drain your Ember to zero.

Damage Shields can be lifesavers on weaker backline allies, so cards like (U) Grovel, (C) Prismal Dust, and particularly (U) Gem Trove can be very important to keep them alive through Sweep & Corruption effects.

(U) Excavation Eruption’s targets are unfortunately random, but it’s a pretty high-damaging spell with a nice Ember bonus that can be made to cost 1 Ember with a -2 Consume upgrade.

(C) Packed Morsels is the cheapest way to get a bunch of good Morsels and as a Common card, it will stop being offered after a few battles. At 0 Ember it’s a great choice for an Eternalstone or Spellchain effect

(U) Feast + Holdover when used with Shadoweater is one of the only things Umbra truly has that comes close to the reliability of a turn-over-turn Quick-Sweep effect (its few targeted Spells are low damage and the high-damage versions have random targets!). However, it needs Morsels to pull this off, and unless you have the lovely Fossilized Fangs artifact, Shadoweater will need numerous Morsels each turn to do enough damage to clear the scarier backline threats. That’s 3 Morsels to clear a Chosen Assassin or completely defeat Deformed Duos, for instance! Further, this doesn’t work if it’s silenced by Deafening Heralds on Seraph the Entropic, so this strategy has some issues.

I read some early impressions about the new (R) Glutton’s Maw Equipment when it was announced and tested by players who felt this Equipment might be under-tuned or too expensive. Worry not, this is a very strong effect, and I’ll try to explain some of the ways you can utilize this to great effect.

• Put it on a backline Attacker/Sweeper! One of the important caveats of Morsel strategies is that the Eater/Gorger of Morsels must typically be in front of the floor, taking damage from enemy waves. Instead, put Glutton’s Maw on your powerful backline offensive units, and let them Chomp Morsels instead. The +15/+15 stats are in addition to the Eaten effect of the Morsel itself, allowing them to also gain cool effects like Damage Shields or Lifesteal if needed as well.
  
• You don’t have to Chomp Morsels exclusively. Sure, you’ll get extra stats from doing so, but Chomping other units gives you some flexibility in other ways. This could be something like destroying an Endless Imp/Shroom after its Summon effect is used. Destroy Underlegion’s Green Recruit to instantly get Rally effects. Chomp an Overworked Assistant/Reanimator Orechi or any other Unstable ally to set off an immediate explosion. Chomp a Melting Remnant’s Tomb unit (or Little Fade) to exploit their Extinguish triggers before battle, or any Melting Remnant ally if you have Reform effects in your hand, triggering Harvest each time. All of these will still give you +15/+15 to your stats on top of giving extra potential functionality!
  
• Have a unit with a Slay trigger (or anything with Pyre of Savagery) use Chomp on an Endless non-Morsel unit, as it will count as “Slaying” your ally in the process.
  
• Spread out the Eaten effects on multiple units. Say, you’re utilizing a (U) Morselmaker and it’s feeding a Tank in front. Have a unit in back with Glutton’s Maw Chomp the Magma Morsel to get a total of +24/+15 stats and leave the Antumbra Morsel for the Tank.
  
• Chomp a Morsel to reclaim space to play more Morsels! This is particularly effective with (U) Morselmaster, as freeing up one Space is enough to play and duplicate a Morsel afterward.
  
• Like the use of (U) Feast or (R) Shroud Spike, this can be utilized for some Quick Sweep damage if a (U) Shadoweater Chomps a Morsel during your turn. Beyond that, sometimes getting a Damage Shield or Lifesteal effect is worth having immediately compared to waiting for the next turn.

There’s plenty more niche uses of this Equipment; it’s better than it might look at first glance! Even if you considered it up to a +24/+24 stat gain every turn, there’s a lot of ways to have fun with this one. Recent uses for us were Chomping Endless Imps, having a Plague Doctor get her Attack+Unstable effects increased every turn while blowing up Reanimator Orechi, and Bloat Matron Lady Gilda having her Whelps Chomped for the extra stats + Pyregel effects.

Finally, it’s a pretty safe Merge option with all sorts of other Equipment, though its 2 Ember cost will make that a bit pricey to play.

This section will briefly highlight the artifacts of the Umbra. Artifacts can range from "nice bonus" to "run-defining power" and though there are too many potential interactions to discuss, I'll make a point of ones that are particularly potent.

Unlike several of the other clans we’ve seen, there’s zero distinction between Umbra’s Shroud & Construct units.


(+) Quite helpful, a guaranteed Gorge/stat boost, and a chance of an Ember-generating Rubble Morsel even later in the game when they typically become less common.


(+) Multiple potential uses here, like protecting vulnerable backliners from damage, giving a damage shield to a Morsel that would've destroyed itself on Spikes, or getting multiple extra hits absorbed by blocking Morsels or Endless units.


I'm a little back and forth on this. On the one hand it's a +9/+9 boost and free Gorge if relevant, and even spawns if the floor is filled. But it also takes up a spot on turn #1 that could have gone toward other support units. Best with a Morselmaster, and more like a nice bonus than an awesome effect.


(++) A very big deal for numerous Umbra units; this is an artifact you're always hoping for if utilizing them! Overgorger and units like Morsel-Made or Glutton Penumbra can get nuts with this.


(+) Draws don't come easily in this clan, so it's nice to get this as an option to have them, particularly since Umbra tends to give lots of Ember to play cards with.


(+) On the one hand this is weaker than MT1 since the Heaven's Light Boss Artifact gives 2 Space now. On the other hand, if you're not stuffing every floor full, having this can be reason enough to take Hell's Flame/Limbo's Solace instead. Or, just having an even bigger middle floor is neat enough.


The issue I have here is that the majority of units won't make use of this effect. It's helpful to let your Gorge units take a few hits and recover off the damage, and is nice with Endless effects during Relentless. Would be a (+) rating with the Underlegion combo if you could Propagate this too.


(++) Really good! Most turns you'll be defeating at least one unit, so you'll either start the next turn with some Morsels, or your Attack spells/effects can generate Morsels into your hand during your turn. Be cautious of the Hand Full effect, especially using something like Antumbra Assault which will suddenly put 4 Morsels into your hand with this =)


(+) Though this seems kind of silly/like a gimmick, the reality is a 200 damage hit to every single floor of enemies can be an incredibly powerful nuke. The 20th threshold is often timed such that scarier enemy waves are out too. Watch that counter tick up to 20, and consider holding off on a few Morsels to hit more enemy waves for maximum destruction!


(+) A huge improvement over this Artifact that was among my least favorite in MT1. Now it repeatedly picks off the weakest enemies, great for sniping backliners and double-tapping enemies who had Reanimate effects.

Though there are Lifesteal effects in this clan, there aren’t many guaranteed ways to get them, and the consistent growth in Health pools by eating Morsels can have you clamoring for a big heal. Wyngh’s Spirit is thus an okay option for this clan, though I’d personally only take it if your sub-clan lacks consistent Healing/Lifesteal/Regen effects.

Pyre of Savagery is decent for this clan. Monstrous Penumbra is fantastic with this, as he can get numerous Slay triggers by Trampling through enemies. Anything eating an Attack-boosted Primordium is likely to get a lot of kills as well. But I’d note that Attacking Morsels, Plink, Antumbra Assault, Mine Collapse etc. are all effects that may “steal” those kills as well, so I’d consider if your sub-clan will also benefit.

This clan has way more Ember-generating effects than most, so Aquath’s Reservation is unlikely to be a good option. Even in the unlikely situation of trying to play a (R) Shadowsiege, Herzal’s Hoard would have been better.

Lifemother’s Pyre is one of those options that works on just about any clan or any build. Its best use here would likely be for copying good Morsel-generating cards or units.

Herzal’s Hoard is a safe option for any clan, but for Umbra this is a particularly good choice, as two Uncommon and two Rare Umbra units cost 2 Ember, (R) Shadowsiege costs a ridiculous 6, and there are helpful Rooms and Equipment to deploy.

Fhyra’s Greed is a pretty helpful pyre for generating some extra cash, particularly at higher Covenants where you can simply choose not to play a Vengeful Shard to get 10 Gold.

Echoes of Time Father is a little better than average as several of Umbra’s cards are best with optimal timing, whether saving to use a boss-killing buff with Emberdrain during Relentless, or waiting for the best time to use Spells like (R) Shroud Spike.

Malicka’s Shifting Pyre is better for Spells than it tends to be for units, and many of Umbra’s spells are likely to benefit from free upgrades on them, meaning you can get a lot of well-boosted cards from this. Take care that this can put ill-fitting upgrades on units, which can be a real problem if it clogs up the spaces of units that need specific upgrades to support your builds.

Pyre of Dominion is a strong Pyre Heart for many clans. For Primordium, this will give you a wider array of starting options when choosing who to feed it to, which will likely help you breeze through early encounters.. fairly nice since Plinks often become irrelevant late-game. For Penumbra this could lock away the typical use of his Glutton path, but potentially make Architect more useful by playing stronger units on the floor. As always this is a bit of a gamble, as you may be forced to choose from multiple units that want to Gorge on Morsels, and you now don’t have the starting cards to help you feed them!

I frequently dislike Bogwurm’s Growth, but Morsels need space to be played and this may be a preferable choice compared to the 2 Ember it costs to put out a (U) Crucible Extension Room. Even if I’m not crazy about this Pyre, Umbra is probably the best clan to use it with.

I also don’t like Pyre of Entropy typically, but Umbra has so many ways to generate Ember that you can plausibly negate all the extra Vengeful Shards drawn and be gifted more Draws per turn as a result. So again, despite me not liking it, Umbra may be the best clan to offset its drawbacks.

Banished:
Just Cause (++): Always pick this over Inspire. It has a lot of utility and certain Banished units are very weak without access to this.
Inspire (--): Never choose this. It’s the worst clan starting card and locks away certain strategies.

Your angel buddies have a lot of ways to move units up & down floors, which can be very helpful for freeing up space to place lots of Morsels. Banished’s Valor effects pair very well with Umbra’s Lifesteal for making very survivable tanks, and both clans can supplement this with Damage Shield effects. Banished has a lot of cards based on Health & Armor effects, which is a great pairing with Umbra’s Morsels and the continual growth in Health stats they can provide. Umbra’s Ember generation talents are well-utilized here, as Banished has several high-cost/high-ceiling, Ember-hungry cards as Rare cards enter the draft pool. Monstrous Penumbra (and other Tramplers) love the Melee Weakness effects granted by Banished for huge-damage strikes. This is a surprisingly powerful and fun pairing! The biggest issue here is that both clans are unreliable at clearing backliners, so ensure you’re utilizing effects like counterattacks, Trample, or their Attack spells to deal with that problem.

Pyreborne:
Firestarter (+): A simple card for doing a bit of damage and applying Pyregel. Targeted damage is welcomed for Umbra, so I prefer this option.
Bloated Whelp: Their ability to destroy themselves and do a bit of damage is good early in the run, but will drop off considerably later on. Outside of being targets for Cannibalize, and potentially buffed by Dragon’s Hoard, there’s very little use for these within Umbra’s ranks as the run progresses.

Pyreborne tend to offer the same benefits two benefits to any clan, that being a) Pyregel, a simple debuff for increasing your damage output, and b) Money & Artifact gain. Pyregel is a great status effect here, Umbra can easily exploit this with Attacking Morsels, their multi-hit spells, Shadoweater’s Gorge triggers, the Teeth of Gold artifact… even Plink stays relevant with Pyregel! Few of Pyreborne’s units have any way to escalate their stats or defend themselves, so Morsels can breathe new life into their units both with stat boosts and Lifesteal/Damage Shields. Pyreborne have numerous ways to reliably clear backliners, helping patch up Umbra’s deficiencies there. There are some very nice complementary synergies between these too, just remember that you’ll be heavily relying on Umbra’s effects for nearly all of your survivability.

Luna Coven:
Witchweave: Not particularly good without Conduit to strengthen the weak Heals, but potentially worth pursuing if you’d like to set up a Planetarium/Moon Pixie floor boosted by Morsels.
Moon Ritual(+): A slightly better option for most clans, and it’s important to several Luna Coven units if you intend to grab some.

Moon Pixies & Planetariums grow Conduit & Mageblade power based on the number of units on the floor, which can be a very fun combo by adding Morsels onto those floors. Many of Umbra’s targeted & multi-hit spells are significantly improved by Conduit buffs, allowing you to turn this team into more of a Spell-centric build. Luna Coven has numerous ways to strike backline enemies, helping patch up Umbra’s deficiencies on that front. Luna has some big Heals and Armor cards that can be very helpful with Umbra’s escalating Health stats, particularly when Lifesteal effects don’t reliably come around. Luna also has multiple units that grow in stats under specific circumstances, so combined with boosts from Morsels, this is a great combo for utilizing Endless units.

Underlegion:
Eager Conscript: An option to help trigger Rally on Underlegion units if you seek them out, or to give some early survivability. You’ll want to decide early on if you want your Funguys eating Morsels or not though!
Sporetouch (+): My preferred option as Decay is a powerful effect, and it can reliably target backliners unlike Shadesplitter or the randomness of Plink.

A very defensive clan combo: Morsels can trigger the Rally effects of Underlegion troops, and Funguy stacks can give some breathing room for your Umbra tanks that need to establish stat-growth and Lifesteal to perpetuate their defenses. Damage Shields, Regen, Sap, and Health growth give this combo some incredible staying power. If you’re lucky enough to pull Umbra’s (R) Glutton’s Maw, it can be fantastic for Gorging on Endless Green Recruits, Cheery Deathcaps, Waxcaps, and maybe even Truffles. Umbra lacks a debuff for enemies, so Decay can greatly help whittle down the Health of enemies as Umbra gradually builds up its offense. Propagate is amazing here as Damage Shield & Lifesteals are powerful effects to keep going, and an (U) Alloyed Construct in an Underlegion’s (U) Grow Room will perpetually regain Fuel and not even need to be on the front lines! Neither clan has a perfectly reliable way to deal with backliners, but a (U) Spore Launcher is amazing with this combo since it would Rally off both Funguy Troops, Endless Shrooms, and Morsels.

Lazarus League:
Secret Ingredient(+): My preferred option as Mixes offer you a wide variety of effects, including a way to deal with backline enemies.
Erratic Assistant: Their damage, utility, and ease use can be nice for a bit of extra damage, but they’ll be competing for space with Morsels, and Secret Ingredient offers more flexibility overall.

Lazarus’ sheer versatility is a gift to any clan. Their Infusion cards not only allow more access to Damage Shields and Lifesteal, but add new wrinkles like Reanimate, Spikes, and Regen to help keep your allies alive. The Graft units from Lazarus League can give some excellent benefits to Umbra units, either by perpetuating Lifesteal to keep tanks alive, or adding Multistrike & Trample effects to make use of the big Attack ceiling on Umbra units. Lazarus has many ways of addressing backline enemies, helping to patch up Umbra’s deficiencies here. Umbra’s Ember generation can be a big gift here as Lazarus has no such effects despite some very expensive and powerful Ember-hungry cards as the run progresses. Both clans also have multiple ways to gain stats throughout the battle, making for some very robustly-statted units!

Hellhorned:
Torch(+): An intentionally weak starting spell normally meant to clear weak backliners; it can reliably target backliners unlike Shadesplitter or the randomness of Plink.
Queen’s Impling: Does a lot more damage than Torch, but only to the front unit, and takes up 1 Space. Good enough for some early burst damage, but can also clog up space that should go to Morsels, and Umbra is not lacking in early-game damage anyway.

Rage is a big benefit to Umbra units since it gives another method for escalating the offense of their units, and Imps like (C) Fledgling Imp can get all of your Morsels doing damage before being Eaten. Armor can give some bonus survivability to your units, but be cautious that it’s being utilized in a timely fashion (i.e. a Lifesteal unit doesn’t need to heal if it only lost Armor instead of Health). Hellhorned brings some nice potential utility in effects like Ascend and retrieving Consume cards after use. Hellhorned’s Rage Room is incredibly useful for Trample & Multistriking Umbra units who will gain multiple procs of Strike->Rage when Attacking. Neither combo has perfectly reliable ways for dealing with backliners, so consider how you’ll approach those with the tools you have. A unit like an Endless+Dualism (U) Railbeater is particularly great if you can feed him Morsels to grow his Health stats.

Awoken:
Restore: A solid option to help overcome early survivability concerns since Lifesteal Morsels aren’t a guarantee. If you think you may grab Awoken banner units, three of them interact with Heals/Regen from cards like this.
Rootseeds: One of MT1’s best starting clan cards is now more just ‘fine’ as +2 Atk doesn’t mean as much and Draws are easier to come by. Still, it’s generally useful, and Umbra’s Ember-generation effects can get you to perpetually drawing a big hand.

A wonderful clan combo for those who like to see the stats of their units grow, as Awoken has numerous spells & abilities dedicated to stat growth, which just happens to pair with Umbra’s coterie of stat-boosting Morsels. Umbra’s big supply of tanks are thrilled to also have Spikes & Regen effects to counterattack enemies and Heal up the damage taken. Awoken has a huge array of units and effects for dealing with backline enemies, so Umbra can rest easily there. Though this clan combo lacks consistent access to offensive buffs & debuffs, they can solve a lot of problems simply with “meat & potatoes” Attack growth and stalwart healing/defense. Finally, Awoken has a litany of Card Draw effects, which pairs quite well with all of Umbra’s Ember-generating effects to help play that big hand of cards.

Stygian Guard:
Frozen Lance : One of MT1’s worst starting clan cards is… still bad unfortunately. However, it’s okay for some early offense and to put +20 Consume onto. Umbra doesn’t typically struggle with early-game Offense so I strongly prefer Forgone Power.
Forgone Power (+): My preferred choice. 0 cost is easier to play, it can trigger Discard functionality with Stygian Offering cards, or crucially discard Scourge & Blight cards to avoid their Reserve effects.

The two MT1 clans that got the biggest boost from the Deployment Phase are here together! Stygian Guard brings a lot of potential benefits to other clans like Card Draws, Discards, a helpful debuff in Frostbite, and uncommon powerful effects like Daze/Sap/Mute. Stygian’s units (U) Siren of the Sea and (U) Titan Sentry were already great uses of the Endless upgrade, and are even more here if they get to feast on some Morsels to grow their stats. Stygian’s got a variety of Sweepers, spells, and Frostbite effects to deal with backline enemies, helping to patch up Umbra’s inconsistencies there. Like Pyreborne, Stygian Guard doesn’t have a lot of consistent effects for keeping your units alive, so you may need to fall back on Endless effects or swarming your deck with Morsels to keep tanks alive long-term. Finally, Umbra’s propensity for Ember gain is great here as it can help with Incant strategies, or help pay for expensive rare Stygian Guard cards like (R) Deep Offering.

Melting Remnant:
Dreg: Cheap chaff units that can help do a bit of damage, but these are more important for Melting Remnant for Harvest triggers.
Primitive Mold(+): Adding Reforms is a cool trick that helps resurrect defeated units, and multiple Melting Remnant units are better with this card, so this is the preferred choice. Be careful about getting Morsels defeated vice Eaten here, as Morsels are often not ideal for Reforms.

A fun combo here, Reforms and Endless are both delightful combos as your Morsels also boost the stats of anything that’s Endless or Reformed. Effects like (U) Cannibalize or (R) Glutton’s Maw’s Chomp are fantastic for intentionally triggering the Extinguish effects of Melting Remnant’s Tombs or Little Fade. Morsels can also be put in enemy’s attacks to deliberately trigger Harvest effects. Melting Remnant was MT1’s clan focused on Gold gain, so like Pyreborne, they can help a bit to increase your coffers for the expensive upgrades you want. Your waxer buddies give can give a variety of other options beyond Reform with rare effects like Endless, Daze, Stealth, and Debuff-clearing effects that are incredible for removing pesky Sap/Corruption/Melee Weakness (particularly fantastic to clear debuffs from Superfood Primordium). Do be careful about playing Morsels with the Votive Key or the (U) Memorial for the Melted Room, as you may not want your entire next hand to be Endless Morsels back into your Draw pile =) It is, however, one plausible strategy for avoiding cycling your deck/drawing Scourge cards! Finally, both clans struggle a bit with backliners and are heavy on tanks, so be ready to swarm the floors with damaging units to overcome that issue.

Mr. Savagery loves melting through even modestly-beefy units by Enraging floors of attacks and sweepers, and any tank on Floors 2 or 3 at the outset will have to contend with 60 or 90 damage (Titan trial) first turn if you don’t have a way to block that hit. This is a very challenging fight for most clans and it presents some notable issues for Umbra, as its Ragewing & Chosen Assassins will immediately destroy Morsels, even with the Winged Technology Artifact, forcing you to use (U) Feast/(R) Glutton’s Maw/(R) Shroud Spike to Eat before battle. This version of Seraph summons huge Health pools in meatshield-enemies like Avowed Gladiators & Terrifying Amalgams to cut through, and a few Eaten Morsels won’t cover that. On the good side of things, Damage Shields are a strong counter to the potentially Deadly Melee Weakness effects, as well as Lifesteal to recover once they’ve taken a beating. Consider early on if your clan combo can support destroying Ragewing & Chosen Assassins before battle (the latter’s 50 Health threshold is three Gorges from Shadoweater), or survive their offense for counterattacks. Then consider what methods you have for ramping up damage to destroy 1k of enemy Health. A tough fight here, so prepare early!

Not as bad as the Savage, fortunately. Mr. Entropic’s worst effects often come in the form of its Deafening Heralds, who will Silence the Gorge triggers of Umbra units. However, Eaten effects from Morsels aren’t Silenced, and Umbra can more readily deal with those with a single Holdover +10 damage card like (C) Antumbra Assault or (C) Mine Collapse. If you’ve been relying on Attacking Morsels, note that Entropic’s +10 Sap is enough to shut down their Attacks; only a Magma Morsel in a (U) Fight Club maintains 1 Attack when Enchanted! Plan early for the fact that you don’t want Gorge-centric strategies to be Silenced – (U) Alloyed Construct wouldn’t even gain Fuel, for instance. However, if you can address the Silencers, Trample effects & Shadoweater can mow through Entropic’s Purified Souls, and Umbra can grow its Attack stats enough to offset the Sap effects, leaving the Scourge cards as the remaining annoying element to deal with. How well Umbra can handle this fight may entirely come down to your ability to deal with Deafening Heralds. Though the Incanting Ardents are sometimes a concern, do note that you can freely play spell cards like (C) Shadesplitter and (C) Packed Morsels up in the Pyre Chamber if you want to avoid triggering their Incants.

Finally we have a pairing that Umbra is fairly good against. Morsels are Eaten before the damage tick of Corruption, meaning that they won’t be defeated by Mr. Dominion’s backline Corruption, and crucially they can confer their bonuses in time to save units. The Dominant can put up insurmountable amount of doubled-Corruption on Tanks/Frontline units, but a single Morsel Jeweler can be Eaten to offset that damage, no matter how high the stacks get. Even a lowly Antumbra Morsel has enough Health to absorb several attacks from Dominant’s allies. The Dominant’s waves of lower-Health Corruption-spewing enemies are better targets for Umbra’s effects like Shadoweater’s Gorges, Trample effects, Umbra’s random-target spells, and even Attacking Morsels in the backline. Now, you’ll still want to be careful here since traditional “take damage -> heal it off with Lifesteal” effects won’t always work (a Crucible Warden’s guaranteed Damage Shield outdoes a Crucible Collector’s Lifesteal in this fight), and you may not be able to reach Supplicants in the back of a floor to stop the Scourge cards, but there are enough tools in Umbra’s kit to make this a smoother fight than with some other clans.

Umbra is a swingy clan when it comes to tackling the Titans. On the positive side of things, Damage Shields are a hard-counter to the offense & Trample effect from Titan Savagery. A Dualism Crucible Warden is a brick wall here, and a Endless blocker with a Shieldstone can do wonders for protecting your lines! Morsels can also strategically be placed in front of a floor to take the Corruption damage dealt to “front” enemies by Dominion, and absorb Entropy’s annoying 20 Damage strike. With the way they can escalate their Health stats, Lifesteal effects can turn the tide of battle. Finally, Primordium can have numerous turns to pass on huge stats or buffs. On the negative side of things, Savagery’s escalating damage, Entropy’s continuing Attacks, and Dominion’s Corruption can lead to damage numbers that Umbra’s Tanks have never faced before, potentially ending their run in a few turns. Morsels that could previously Block damage will be laughed off by Savagery’s Trample effect unless they’re also given Damage Shields. Even Monstrous Penumbra’s huge 120 Health pool with consistent Lifesteals may not work on Savagery’s third loop. Prepare your defenses to weather the storm so you can build up your team enough to smack them down once and for all!

In my Underlegion guide, I had to make a point of the fact that Underlegion had some mindlessly strong early-game strategies (e.g. Cluster Colonel + Squad Leader, or Sporesinger Madame Lionsmane) that would mop the floor with early-to-mid game enemies before struggling at endgame. Umbra can have a very similar arc in their runs, as the stat boosts gained by even a few Morsels can help you breeze through early encounters in ways that some other clans can’t match. Crucible Collector with even a few Morsels in its belly can make a joke of many early boss fights, for instance.


To wit, Shadoweater is one of those units that can give a false sense of security as you progress in your runs. Honestly even with only Titanite, a Shadoweater being fed Morsels (say, with a Morselmaker) can make an absolute joke out of much of the early-to-mid game encounters. It will easily take the enemies’ attacks, heal off the damage, and blow away the backline threats for you. By time the boss arrives, it will have gained enough stats to put up a serious fight, possibly winning it solo if it gets a Lifesteal or two. It’s a very strong unit that can carry even a lackluster run on its shoulders…. for a while.

So I bring this up to point out two important things as you do runs with Umbra! One, Morsels’ Eaten effects & stats don’t scale as the run progresses. The strongest Morsel, a (R) Morsel Miner, is even available with a Common card early in the game. The only way to get more benefit out of Morsels long-term is to simply eat more and more of them; there are no special secret mega-morsels that exist late game to balance out the enemies’ escalation in stats… or I mean there is, but its name is Primordium X) By the end of the game, depending on the way you’ve built up your units & deck, Morsels may be more important just to give one life-saving Lifesteal or Damage Shield to a tank compared to their usual stat gain.

Two, Shadoweater is unfortunately countered by all three iterations of Seraph Aeternus to varying degrees x_x… Seraph the Savage is the worst, it will summon Ragewing Assassins (and Chosen Assassins at high Covenants) that will mow down any Morsels on its floor, even ones protected by the Winged Technology artifact. At low Covenants you can utilize Feast/Glutton’s Maw/Shroud Spike to quickly defeat these, but at high Covenants, a Chosen Assassin’s 50 Health pool requires three Gorge triggers from a Shadoweater to defeat it =\

Seraph the Entropic will bring Deafening Heralds out to Mute Shadoweater’s triggers, resulting in it neither regaining Health on Gorge, nor doing damage to enemies… particularly scary because they’re often coupled with high-damage Purified Soul enemies that can rarely be addressed by spells. This one can be overcome by something like a Holdover +10 Antumbra Assault or Mine Collapse to defeat the Heralds, but there’s no guarantee you have these available. Note that if you use a Morselmaker in tandem, its Morsel-creation effect will also be muted, completely neutering this once-dynamic-duo!

Seraph the Dominant is theoretically the weakest against Shadoweater, as repeated Gorge effects will strip Reanimate stacks off Deformed Duos, and the backline threshold of 35 Health for a Chosen Supplicant is beatable with only two Gorge triggers. However, Shadoweater will be absolutely pelted with Corruption by Deformed Duos, Misshapen Fiends, Blightbound Guardians, and Seraph himself such that even Titanite and its passive Healing will not let it live very long. Pre-battle Gorges do not stop this effect, so the only option to keep it alive long term will be Morsel Jewelers, since it can eat them on Resolve and gain a Damage Shield to stop the Corruption tick from killing it. That isn’t a big ask if you have many Morsel-generating effects, but again it’s not enough to utilize a tag team of it and Morselmaker alone.

So this is your friendly warning to ensure you’re still ramping up the effects of your deck as the run progresses! Umbra ultimately has gotten some nice gains in MT2 with the additional space granted by Heaven’s Light & the Deployment phase, but the way enemy stats & effects escalate does not give them the same late-game dominance that they have early on. Nothing that can’t be solved by hordes of Morsels and the other tools in Umbra's deck, mind you =)

This is guide #9 for me on Steam! X) Getting very close now! Even though this one was longer, I enjoyed working it because Umbra is my wife’s favorite clan, and we’ve been doing well with them despite some other reports of players struggling to use ‘em. Hopefully I covered enough bases to explain why they’re still awesome and not just adorable, even if they can sometimes run into a bit of trouble!

I’ll still update these guides occasionally as we find more strategies we haven’t come across, any card changes happen (c'mon devs, you know Architect Penumbra isn't good... you have to know that) etc. I think I spent a lot of time covering various important aspects about playing a clan in detail... I don't personally think it would help to go over every single card or sub-boss. But if I'm wrong, this guide is useful to you, and you'd like to see some other point of discussion, please let me know!

We've got enough practice and wins under our belts that I'm ready to write up guides for each clan, but this takes more than a bit of time to do, so stay tuned for future installments as I chip away at this.

Thank you for reading, and enjoy your runs with these proud little miners and their terrifying masters! =)