How to play Umbra?

[Talesin]

After unlocking Umbra i've tried several times on c0 but i can't seem to get far as Umbra just seems to be completly chanceless.

I just can't figure out how you are supposed to win with them.

The umbra units are just to weak, and you have few support options due to the morsel cards.
And you can't even put a tank in front of the gorge units as only the first unit will eat.

Trying to put the leader card on the top floor and gorge the morsels doesn't work either, as then the lower floors can't kill anything and eventually he dies from being grinded down to death.

So any suggestions on how you are supposed to play them?

[Lorska]

Umbra are actually really great supporters, are you looking for anything that uses them or them as primary?

[Talesin]

Messaggio originale di Lorska:

Umbra are actually really great supporters, are you looking for anything that uses them or them as primary?

Currently i've been trying to clear c0 with them as primary.
I haven't tested how they do as supporter yet.

[Kahvipannu]

Umbra is really strong from my experience.

Morsels have good synergy with some of their units, you can set up engines that just get stronger on their own with their minions.

Also Morsels can act as cheap meat shields, taking big hits for your units.

I don't have many screens taken, but here is couple, they can get way more crazy than this
https://i.imgur.com/61wySFU.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/5DC0mOF.jpg

[kebabsoup]

The good news is that umbra gets easier to play as you unlock cards!

Overall, I use Umbra as tanks and support. And it makes sense because they need to be in the front to be able to gorge.

Umbra has one of the strongest tanks in my opinion: The crucible collector. He gets 1 life steal each time he gorges. The key with these units is to leave enough space on his floor to feed him at least 2 morsels per turn. This way you can stack 10-20 stacks of life steal before the boss, and as long as he can overheal the attacks from the boss, he is virtually invincible. So if you put a decent damage dealer behind him, even Seraf can easily be defeated in one single floor.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2111676692

[Talesin]

Messaggio originale di Kahvipannu:

Umbra is really strong from my experience.

Morsels have good synergy with some of their units, you can set up engines that just get stronger on their own with their minions.

As i mentioned, i allready tried that but it didn't work as they died pretty fast.

[Talesin]

Messaggio originale di kebabsoup:

The good news is that umbra gets easier to play as you unlock cards!

Overall, I use Umbra as tanks and support. And it makes sense because they need to be in the front to be able to gorge.

Umbra has one of the strongest tanks in my opinion: The crucible collector. He gets 1 life steal each time he gorges. The key with these units is to leave enough space on his floor to feed him at least 2 morsels per turn. This way you can stack 10-20 stacks of life steal before the boss, and as long as you can overheal the attached from the boss he is invincible as long as he has lifesteal. So if you put a decent damage dealer behind him, even Seraf can easily be defeated in one single floor.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2111676692

Ok i haven't gotten that one in all my attempts so i guess its a high level unlock?
In any case that picture shows an insanly high attack power and health compared to any of my attempts.
i can't even tell how you managed that.

As i mentioned before, i've tried this tactic but the gorge units i've gotten just dies after a few turns due to the low health.

[Lorska]

Did you unlock remnants yet? those are very strong with umbra as primary or secondary.

Bosses are actually not a big problem for umbra, but they do kinda struggle with trash units due to how morsels work, so a strong anti-trash faction like awoken or stygian are good. focus to build up your beefy guy at the bottom (if you do it right it shouldn't die) while you clean up in the upper floors or with spells.

[kebabsoup]

Yes it can be tricky to keep your Umbra units alive long enough to let them feed and buff their stats. Typically, I don't put them on the first floor where they will weather the blunt of the attacks. I will try to put them on floor 2 or sometimes floor 3 where they can feed more quietly.

On floor 1 you can put units from another faction to filter out the low hp high dmg units, you can do this with spells, units with sweep, units with thorns, or trample and multistrike if you can kill past the first enemy.

This way your Umbra units above are not overwhelmed. Umbra don't have good AoE crowd control. Another thing is that you need to be picky about what you feed your units. Don't fill the space with +1 energy morsels when you can add health or damage. Be on the lookout for the card that gives a rare morsel that gives +5/+5. Umbra have also units that autospawn morsels, or duplicate models, these are really good.

Finally when it's boss time, you will want to use descend or ascend cards to put a high damage unit behind your Umbra tank. You don't want to do this earlier because you want to keep the space on the floor free for feeding. In early levels your well fed umbra tank can solo the bosses, but for later levels it's good to have such a descend or ascend card with the Permafrost upgrade, so that you are sure you have it when you need it.

[K]

I'm only on Covenant 6 atm, so who knows how well this will work later on, I definitely could be wrong here. But I say forget about morsel and gorge gimmick, its too slow. Trample Penumbra + Furnace Tap (-cost twice) + Void Binding(Holdover) is all you need to win. Damage shield is op as ♥♥♥♥ if you got a guy with big damage. Put a Crucible Warden in the middle and it will buy you all the time you need and eat all the morsel the deck comes with, it will chip away front units for that big trample damage on the top level with Penumbra. The aoe even chips away at the boss.

Morsel in general just takes way too long to ramp up, but its unavoidable and it isn't bad, I just wouldn't build with it in mind. Optimistically you get +12 hp and attack per turn, If you have the right cards. That's nothing compared to Rage and Damage Shield. 1 Void Bindings is 2 shields and 12 damage from 6 rage, all from 1 card which you can holdover and cast for 0 mana every turn. Dupe it and morsel will never come close to matching that ramping, definitely not from 1 card. And its not random like Morsels.

[imaloony]

Gorge works really well, and Umbra has several units that take really great advantage of the mechanic

With your Champion, I did very well with the Glutton path. While a 15/15 sounds pretty pathetic late game, he grows VERY quickly. Place him on floor two or three, give him some snacks, and he should be ready to go by the time the baddies get to him.

Some of Umbra's cards (like Perils of Production) can seem very bad at first since they bog your units down with Emberdrain, but the trick with those cards is that you usually want to put it on your Morsels, who will be dead before you have to pay for Emberdrain. That turns cards like Perils of Production into effectively free Ember.

Speaking of which, Umbra is really good at generating their own Ember, so you probably won't need to pick Ember upgrades for your major upgrades. Results may vary though, and you might find yourself running low on Ember, so just remember that none of this you should follow religiously. Be flexible above all else. Buy Umbra's excessive Ember also means that it does very well with big cards.

Expanding your Train's Floor Size is really good for Umbra. The more Morsels you can squeeze in at once, the more buffs you can get off. And it can be really easy to fill your hands with Morels (with cards like Cannibalized, Packed Morsels, or Retch, for instance), so having space to dump them on the board is equally important. This means that you'll probably only have one big attacker per floor, so getting something with multistrike is also helpful.

You won't always have the chance, but if you get offered Overgorger early, take it. Take it and never look back. That boi will be mulching bosses by the end if you feed it properly, and especially if you can get Multistrike on it. Morselmaker and Morselmaster pair very well with it.

That's what I've found success with anyways. I'm sure Umbra has other playstyles that work with it, but I've just had the most success by abusing Gorge.

[Talesin]

Well i tried again and this time i easily won.

The difference was that i got the crucible collector (lifesteal one) + morselmaker and cloned them.

In addition i got super strong artifacts for Umbra (+2atk pr kill, +3atk for all units, +3 mana when the second unit is summoned, damage shield on morsels)
(Yeah summoning a bunch of morsels every turn who get +3atk, damage shield and also gives me 3 mana to summon more was an insane combo)

With that said, my champion was completly useless despite also having gorge.
He kept dying quickly and i ended up cloning a third crucible collector so i could cover all 3 floors.

So it really seems to me Umbra as main is extremly reliant on luck unlike the 3 first factions.

And i really haven't figured out what to do with the champion.

[imaloony]

Messaggio originale di Talesin:

With that said, my champion was completly useless despite also having gorge.
He kept dying quickly and i ended up cloning a third crucible collector so i could cover all 3 floors.

Put him on the top floor. That'll give him time to get buffed up and give you a chance to give him lifesteal and/or Damage Shield from the Morsels. Once he gets rolling, he's basically immortal to non-bosses and one-shots all non-bosses. In my last run in the final battle he ended with over 600 Attack.

[Nine]

Umbra rocks. Overgorger is great in itself. If you combine Umbra with the melt people it's amazing. Wax people have consume (Gain ember for every unit that has died), this includes morsels consumed. Combine this with "X" cards such as the damage shield one or the one that triggers eaten/gorged of a morsel for every ember. Very easy to get 40-50 ember and give a unit 100 damage shield. I play random/random and I'm only at cov 5 at the moment but it's been most effective for me.

[kebabsoup]

Hey congrats Talesin on a first of many wins! Yes the Umbra champion can feel a bit underwhelming. I usually just go architect to create more space to spawn some more morsels for another unit in front. As a bonus if you give him one level of trample, he can do a little bit of AoE if the frontline has been softened a bit. That said, I also want to give the glutton champion a try, I can see how it could work.

Note that the added floor space that the architect penumbra creates remains even after he dies. And you can resurrect you champion with the melting to take advantage of penumbra's summon trigger multiple times. As @Need Owl said, umbra and melting play very well together, you can even reform morsels to pick and choose exactly the one you need. Just be careful because they also share the same nemesis: the mobs that get armor for each unit that dies on the floor. Your run has just to be good enough to outscale them, or you need to find ways to instakill them (subsuming blade, memento Mori, crushing demise, bounty stalker)

[Magelan]

My very first win run with umbra on c0 was a win. All in on the trample boi. He was just devouring everything before him. Its hilarious what 300+ trample dmg can accomplish.

a deeplink for reference or try yourself. windowskey+r and paste.

monstertrain://runresult/c9b50869-fea2-4c92-ae12-abd2cb929899