Bats, Cats, and Rats.
This is a post-game commentary on a particular "recommended faction set-up" listed on the back of the Homeland 'learn to play' booklet.
So, after a long time of trying to get the game to the table after getting my copy of the homeland expansion, I finally get my opportunity to play the Twilight Council. I'm the most experienced player at the table, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert, I'm going first. Second after me is the next-most experienced player, who has played a fair bit of the digital version of the game, and enjoys playing the Eyrie but today decided to give the Marquise a go to refresh his memory. Finally, we have the newbie playing Hundreds; this is his third game after playing cats in his first game and moles in his second.
We're playing on the Gorge map.
We ultimately chose this set-up after we found the phrase "Bats, Cats, and Rats" fun to say, noted that we could actually play a game with just those three, and saw that it was a recommended set-up in the book.
So, I'm going to start off by pointing out that I made an error in judgement on the set-up. Because Cat was rusty on cat gameplay, Rat was basically completely new to the game (and the faction in question), and my new faction would be a learning curve for myself and the others at the table; I made the decision to not play with Hirelings. Now, I knew that Rat tends to steam ahead on lower player counts, but I was more concerned with overcomplicating things than making sure the game was balanced. Oh, we were playing with the S&D deck, so that was new too.
My second error was found out on Rat's second turn. After Rat went jubilant on his first turn, he ended up getting good mob dice luck and spreading all of his mob tokens across the board - even into Cat's second sawmill and only workshop. I thought "this is fine; he can only raze in the clearing the mob dice rolls". Yeah. Had I remembered how Raze worked I would have either attacked them myself or made sure that Cat attacked them. So, now Cat's lost a bunch of material and Rat's much further ahead on points than he should be. Not to mention that the board is so empty that Rat's scoring easy Oppress points. This is turn 2 and we're already way behind.
I'm not going to go into full depth of every turn, but the important notes are that I drew exceptionally few bird cards (about two total) rarely had more than two assemblies on the board (only one of which was actually scoring...by blocking off one of Cat's sawmills😩 I really should have just removed that one. Cat I think checked out kinda early on...he couldn't see a path to regain his resources (and to be fair he never used Hawks so I think he was suffering from a lack of birds, too) and one time when I banished his warriors to an exposed fort and mob he chose to move them to the hoard next door and battle there (although now that I think back on it, I think my banish was illegal as I didn't have an assembly in that clearing, whoops). Rat only ever managed to open two ruins during the game, and his final item list was Hammer-Boot-Bag-Bag-Tea, so he was able to constantly swap between Wrathful and Stubborn - so either we lose an extra warrior every warlord battle, or he shrugs off our damage. Also, I'm pretty certain the Warlord's prowess allows him to move-then-battle every action, but he was playing it as 'do a bunch of moves then battle' but since he was already winning so heavily I didn't feel like checking or correcting him (dick move? you guys decide, I fully accept that I was feeling a little salty during a bunch of this game). I also made an early mistake in summoning a bunch of loyalists to a fox clearing...and then not having any fox cards to do anything with them. You could even say we made a mistake in allowing all five of the mob tokens to stay on the board for a long time because it meant Rat couldn't spread them anywhere else...we essentially reliquished a big chunk of the map because we were too scared of an obvious and easy to defuse time bomb.
So, getting into the endgame, I've managed to slow down Rat by battling a bit over a few turns and spawing in his backline so his opression isn't scoring. I'm basically fully sacrificing myself to try to give Cat a chance to catch up. Cat has focused totally on building sawmills over the other two buildings, and has managed to claw himself to 20 points after building the last one (Rat is somewhere around 16-18, and I think I'm on 10-13).
Rat explains that he needs to cut the game short as he has to go, and then runs through his actions - double move six warriors into a corner clearing where I have four, then take a bunch of moves with his warlord and a bunch of other warriors into the opposite corner. Yep, it's a bird dominance.
(To put this into perspective, Rat seems addicted to the notion of successfully pulling off a dominance win. He tried in his first game, only for Cat and I to demonstrate how it's not a good strategy.)
I take a look at Cat, and simply ask "Shall we let him have it?" He's basically resigned at this point. "Can you score 10 points in your next turn?" We check, best we can see is five. I pass over all the actions on my turn, he passes over his, the rare Rat dominance win (and the newbie's first win, so good for him).
So. Why did I share this commentary?
Because I don't know why the book suggests that Bats, Cats, and Rats is a good faction set-up. We already know that Cats v Rats is heavily Rats-favoured. We know that Rats love low player counts. The raze action is a garanteed 'Entreat' whenever Rats does it, but it's also a garanteed lost assembly and a lost loyalist if you can't bring them out with the entreat (probably my fault from always going all-in with the entreat), and if the Bats goes a little too hard into ruling Cat buildings then Cat suffers from not being able to build effectively to keep up with the Rats' scoring.
Maybe hirelings would have been the solution? Taking up more space to nerf the Rats' scoring even just a little. Hell, even just not being a dumbass and forgetting how Raze worked would have completely changed how we played from the early game.
So, I turn this to the Root community:
What do you guys think of this match up?
Please do ELI5 if I missed something obvious that could've made it more balanced and fun.
Thanks for reading.