i am not sure this is a bug or intended, but if its intended, its extremely annoying. or maybe it only happened to me.
i play 2 accounts at once, my storm and my life got to this battle and when one of them got polymorphed (my storm), shadow pips were taken away and i only got single pips. that would of been fine, something challenging i guess except 3/4 of the deck you get is filled with shadow pip spells or 8+ pip spells. the rest being mostly blades or transmutes or a natural attack.
i managed to win this battle after i do not know how many turns, mostly because the life polymorph did actually get heals that were not shadow spells. and i bought henchmen, which can get polymorphed as well.
but thats not all, i did finally manage to get a wizard back to themselves, but the double pips still only counted as single pips. i couldnt cast storm lord, even though i had enough counting the double pips, but when i got a shadow pip, i could cast glowbugs, which ended the fight, finally.