Confused on Umbra

[onomastikon]

I just unlocked this clan and am struggling a lot more with it than the others which were new to me.
There are at least two mechanics I don't understand.
1. On one floor, I have a "Morselmaker". So far, it has been able to make them luckily enough, even though there really isnt enough room. But the morsels come between it and the front unit (which is also my champion). The champion does not have the "eaten" ability, but still doesn't seem to eat those morsels. What am I not understanding?
2. I see that there are a few rarer cards that allow me to gain extra ember, but they don't seem in any way enough to offset the huge ember drain from emberdrain (doh) that most of the base cards have. Why would I want to gain an ok buff for the ability to not play cards for a full turn?
3. There is hardly enough room on the floors for my units, let alone "morsels". Is there a trick I am missing?
thanks in advance

[BeastofBones]

1. MorselMaker summons 2 morsels every turn. If your champion is the regular Umbra one, Penumbra, he's eating 2 every turn, and then the Maker is spawning 2 more to replace them the next the turn. Do note that MorselMaker takes 1 turn to get going, so the turn after you've played the morsels, 2 will appear between your champ and maker, but they will only be eaten after you hit end turn.

2. Ember Drain.
Basically Umbra has ways to generate energy even while at zero. Holdover lets you do this even if you start at zero energy every turn, you just need to draw into your enabler. Cards with high ember drain affect your following turns until the Ember Drain stacks drop to zero. So like Void binding at base 3 energy will lock you out of playing anything next turn without an enabler, only have 1 energy the next turn, and so on. So it's very costly to play without a way out of ember drain, but void binding is an extremely powerful card that you build around in many high end umbra builds.

If you want a comprehensive guide for regular non-DLC Monster Train
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYpS_fjw8jk

3. Not really. Umbra Gorger units tend to be floor selfish. That being said, Umbra can expand floor capacity if you have Crucible Extension or Space prism. Penumbra architect can hide behind a defensive Gorge unit since playing Architect adds capacity. If you're playing non-DLC, sometimes you just have a defensive gorger up top acting as a safety against bosses, while your floors have more offensively minded units from your allied clan.

[ShinryuEXE]

1. Not sure what you mean here. Morsels get eaten by the front unit at end of turn. Gorge is an ability some units have that give them an extra bonus when they eat a morsel. But even without any unit with Gorge the morsels will still get eaten at end of turn and will pass on the stats stated in the Morsel's description.
If you're saying "Why isn't my champion eating the morsels my Morselmaker is making" then, it probably is eating them and then the Morselmaker is making a new set for the following turn as the eating happens before the Morselmaker's Resolve effect.

2. Several reasons:
- You can zero cost the cards in your deck such that it doesn't matter if you have no ember on a given turn.
- You have alternate Ember sources like Hell's Banners or Kinstone Totem, etc., that you can reliably trigger every turn, since the Emberdrain only occurs at the beginning of the turn so it you generate ember later in the turn it is unaffected.
- You are using holdover Perils of Production, which costs zero and gives Emberdrain, but also gives you 3 ember. So even if you start the turn at zero you can play the Perils and go up to 3 ember.
- All of the Emberdrain cards give a multitude of good buffs. One of them even imparts Multistrike, which is very powerful.
etc.

3. Play less units on a single floor. With two moderately sized units on a single floor you'll still have room to play at least one morsel on that floor. Or if you set up a single unit on the floor you'll have a lot more space to use. So generally you'd set up a lower floor to try to deal with waves and have a single unit set up top to just eat and eat and eat to get to high strength over the course of the battle.
Or you can use a Morselmaker which will generate the two morsels every turn which can go over the capacity of the floor.
Or you can Holdover Cave In to drop morsels from a higher floor to a lower floor even if that lower floor is at capacity.
Or you can use Feast or Shroud Spike to eat morsels mid turn and free up some space.
Or there's several cards that give you extra capacity on a floor.
Or several artifacts that give extra capacity.
Or you can take one or both of the capacity upgrades from the bosses.
etc.

[onomastikon]

Righto thanks much. 80% of what you mention is apparently not available to me yet so I'll just wait and see. Stygian was an instant "click" - the deck worked right from the start.

[Loviatar]

Another thing to keep in mind is the Ember Drain is a debuff on a unit. If that unit dies or is eaten, it no longer drains your energy since, well, it's no longer around. So one trick with Perils of Production is to put it on a morsel, which then gets eaten and the ember drain disappears. This gives you three free mana to play your turn with without affecting your next turn. Of course, you don't really get to fully enjoy the rage buff, but that's pretty minor all told.

[andrewcurrall]

Holdover Mine Collapse works instead of Holdover Perils of Production (I just had a win an hour ago making use of Mine Collapse for this). It's not as good- Perils is definitely better- but it will generate ember for you most of the time. You also need a damage upgrade on it, of course, preferably one of the divine temple ones.

Ember Cache can also work if you have enough of them, although it's slightly unreliable.

If you can't get Holdover Perils of Production (Holdover+Spellchain if you really want to get a lot of ember), simply reducing the cost of all your key spells to zero works fine.

I've had runs where I generated 100s of Emberdrain, but was still able to play stuff just fine.

Morsels do take up space. Occasionally (especially playing Umbra) you'll get a run where you have more space than you know what to do with. One particularly silly combo is Architect Penumbra + TranscendImp. Just getting the Good Ol' Wingmaker caverns event is sometimes enough. But more usually you'll need to worry about space, and I'm afraid my advice there is "ignore morsels". Generally they're not worth it; as you suggest.