Branch and Claw introduces a total of four token types. Beasts, seen here, don't have any innate effect like the rest do, but make up for it by being weighted, through the event deck, towards acting and appearing more often than other token types. Their usual stuff is just Fear generation here and there, with some Explorer munching and occasional costly damage.
Unless you either know the next card in the Event deck is going to be one that packs a kick for Beasts, or are playing with a lot of Beast-synergy powers (perhaps because you're Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves) then stuff like Teeming Rivers isn't that great. Not really a bad card, but not going to do as much for you as a card with similar elements and less of a beast focus. Like, say, Call to Tend.
Next up is Strife. Like Wilds, it blocks one instance of an Invader action, namely Ravage. Unlike Wilds, it's on a per-Invader basis, and has a lot more synergy with certain Fear cards. Usually, operating procedure when adding Strife is to find the biggest piece in the target land and slap one on, and then to treat it like a relatively reliable Defend that you don't need to spend a future power on.
Which means that for Twilight Fog Brings Madness, the cost isn't measured in NRG, but in weakening the Dahan in the area so they can't reliably follow up on the upcoming Ravage. That's mostly in the Push effect, despite appearances; there are very few cards that instruct you to damage the Dahan, and most effects that do would focus on killing as many as possible before the Slow powers phase, so the splash damage rarely, if ever, secures any kills.
Unless the Event deck has lowered their max health. Then you should worry.
Finally, you have Disease. Like Wilds and Strife, Disease blocks one shot of Build in the target land and is then spent. It's a very powerful token, since Wilds does nothing of note if Invaders already exist in a land, and Strife is a per-Invader token. However, most instances of Disease in the Event deck also deal out damage to the Dahan, which makes them unsafe to put into lands where the Dahan are going to live for a while.
This means that Tormenting Rotflies, while good at putting out Disease due to its longer range, is frequently more valuable for generating Fear using already-placed Disease tokens. You CAN stack multiple Diseases in a single land, but that's usually fairly wasteful and can be hazardous.
This doesn't really feel like an expansion card to me. It just feels like another version of Call to Bloodshed, there to keep the new cards from the expansion from diluting everything with new token shenanigans.
It's a good card, though.
Also a really good card. Wilds placement is incredibly powerful, particularly early on, but it loses potential if Invaders are able to get in regardless of the Wilds. Throwing an Explorer push on top of things can go a long way towards keeping a given land safe.
The big problem is that it's much harder to predict where Invaders are going to Explore than the other actions. You can hedge around what remains in the Invader deck, like with A Year of Perfect Stillness, but it's always going to be a bit of guesswork. And Disorienting Landscape has a terrain restriction, too, so sometimes you can't even hedge safely because all that remains for the next turn is Sands or Wetlands.
I guess even Ocean's Hungry Grasp has to try to replenish Dahan and heal Blight sometimes?
Except the Blight heal, for them, is much more valuable considering how little they like the Dahan and how important coastal lands are to them.
Maybe just let River Surges in Sunlight have this card instead.
I see this card taken a lot, but I rarely see the threshold on it.
I don't blame most players for that, either. Getting an elemental Yahtzee is no small task, especially for spirits who demand heavy investment in their choice elements to maintain strong innates.
I think the two spirits most able to get this one to work are Vital Strength of the Earth (whose starting cards have highly varied elements and who doesn't really care too much about their innate) and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares (who can achieve half of the elements on this with ease and use their other two card plays to tag the others).
And Unlock the Gates of Deepest Power is still a good card regardless, because it can get people a free Major power. The lack of choice on it isn't a big deal since you take it without forgetting another power, so if your draw here is bad, just sacrifice it next turn for a different Major power more suited to your tastes.
[ed: I have finally witnessed an elemental Yahtzee. It was exactly as glorious as you might expect.]
Well this one's perhaps one of the most bizarre cards in the entire game.
The artwork, the effect, the elements, even the name. No part of this card is normal.
I like it, I guess.
(Oh, fine, actual mechanics talk: because it's a remove rather than a destroy, you don't add Fear for removing structures, and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares can actually remove pieces this way.)
Despite the appearance of the token, Wilds can be represented in many potential ways. I doubt that Pyroclastic Flow would add greenery. Probably the opposite. So in this case, I'd say that this is you destroying pre-existing paths, natural or otherwise, and forcing the Invaders to find another way through the region.
It's a good card, I like it.
This might just be the easiest elemental threshold on a Major power to hit in the entire game.
