Ashes: Red Rains FAQ

Rules Clarifications

• In a 2 player game of Red Rains, the Chimera takes a turn against each opponent, starting with a turn against the first player (or the player the first player token is pointing to when the Chimera is the first player).
• Red Rains tokens are placed one at a time, potentially triggering an ultimate to resolve, followed by continued placement of the remaining Red Rains tokens that would be placed.
• While players are allowed to make decisions regarding choices the Chimera must make, this choice should be ignored when the Chimera is resolving simultaneous damage as a result of an aspect attacking. When an attacking aspect deals damage to a defending unit that counters, always resolve the attack damage first.
• The Chimera will continue reshuffling its discard pile to create a new draw pile any time it is depleted, even after it reaches Fatigue.
• The Chimera does not reshuffle its draw pile when it is required to create a hand of 5 cards for the purposes of effects that affect the Chimera’s hand if the draw pile has less than 5 cards. In this case, use as many cards as there are remaining to create the hand.
• Facedown aspects are not considered to be in play until they are revealed. 

Play Variants

Grim Fates: When making choices for the Chimera, instead of the players choosing any options for the Chimera, they may instead force themselves to choose the worst possible outcome for themselves, evaluated to the best of their ability. Players may apply this rule globally, or may choose to apply it to specific cards to better satisfy their play preferences. Some examples of cards to apply the Grim Fates variant to:

• E.g. Abundance allows the players to normally choose how many cards the Chimera will draw. Under the Grim Fates variant, the Chimera would always attempt to draw 2 cards, as to not take direct damage before reaching Fatigue.
• E.g. Generosity gives the Chimera a choice between receiving 2 beneficial effects. Under the Grim Fates variant, the Chimera should choose the effect most beneficial to it, or take the effect that the player wanted to resolve the most afterwards.

FAQs

General

Q: Does the Chimera have to spend dice from its active pool when it activates a side action behavior?
A: No. The side action behaviors are just considered to be dice powers for the purpose of cards that check for the source of an effect. For example, Golden Veil can cancel the effects of a spell, ability or dice power, therefore it can cancel a side action behavior that targets a unit you control.

Light Bringer

Q: If I use Light Bringer’s Infatuate ability to force the Chimera to take an Attack main action on its next turn, does it still roll the behavior and rage dice if there are facedown aspects?
A: No. The Chimera Rulebook (pg. 10) lists the actions the Chimera will take on its turn. Light Bringer’s Infatuate ability makes the Chimera choose to Attack with its leftmost unit that can attack, instead of rolling dice to determine its actions for the turn.

Coal Roarkwin

Q: In a 2-player game, if my opposing battlefield has no faceup aspects on it, but my partner’s opposing battlefield does, can I use Slash to deal 1 damage to the Chimera?
A: Since the Chimera controls units, even though they are opposing your partner, you cannot use Slash to deal 1 damage to the Chimera directly. You still may use Slash to target units on the battlefield opposing your partner though.

Whiplash

Q: How does Whiplash’s targeting work?
A: Whiplash will destroy the leftmost unit among units the opposing player controls with 1 or more wound tokens on it. If there are none, it will deal 1 damage to the opposing player’s leftmost unit.