Bringing it to the Battlefield

Question: A few boon combination questions, all with Army of One. What happens when you use Army of One in conjunction... with Natural Army? with Colossus Armour? with Unseen Shield? with Shadow Bodies?

Well, first let's quantify the idea of "in conjunction with". As I'm sure you know, you cannot use any knacks or boons once Army of One is activated, so any of these powers you wanted to have active would need to be used before Army of One. In addition, it technically doesn't work to use any of them in a double action with Army of One; because Army of One only includes powers you already have active when you activate it, and the power you used on the same action would not yet be active, technically that boon or knack would just fizzle, since it wouldn't be active when Army of One was spent for but couldn't be activated after it was already in use.

But you can absolutely use a bunch of boons, and then use Army of One and have them all carry over, so we assume that's what you're talking about and we'll go from there.

Colossus Armor is easy; all ten of you (or whatever) running around from Army of One have Colossus Armor, as long as you used it first. Hooray! Indestructible army!

In contrast, Unseen Shield and Shadow Bodies don't change. Shadow Bodies simply creates shadow copies of yourself that can run around, but they're already created and rocking themselves out by the time of Army of One, and they aren't an ongoing effect on you that would be duplicated. You'll end up with ten of yourself from Army of One and the same five shadow copies of yourself you already had. Similarly, the Unseen Shield has already been created and is now a free-standing construction that is not attached to you, so you won't sprout a bunch of new Unseen Shields around all your new selves. The one shield is still there, protecting whomever you told it to protect, and will remain so until it's broken or the scene ends. All of the Army of One bodies are you, however, so they're all automatically included in the Unseen Shield as long as you haven't gotten yourself kicked out of it for violence yet.

And finally, you can't use Natural Army with Army of One at all. The only powers you can use while in your animal army form are your mental Epics and knacks; you can't activate boons while transformed into either a single or multiple animal form. You'd need to turn back into your humanoid form before you'd be able to use Army of One anyway, and wouldn't be able to use another boon afterward.

Army of One is honestly kind of a mess of a boon, so we sympathize with the difficulties inherent in using it.