Craftable Items (Core): 2 Boot, 2 Bags, 1 Crossbow, 1 Hammer, 2 Swords, 2 Tea, 2 Coins. <-All Base Game

Vagabond 1:

• 1 set of R (ruin) Items (Boot, Bag, Hammer, Sword) <-All Base Game
• S (starting) Items:
  • 1 Torch (Base Game)
  • 2 Boots (1 Base Game+1 Riverfolk)
  • 1 Bag (Base Game)
  • 1 Crossbow (Base Game)
  • 1 Hammer (Base Game)
  • 2 Swords (Base Game+Riverfolk)
  • 1 Tea (Base Game)
  • 1 Coin (Riverfolk)

Vagabond 2:

• 2nd set of R Items <-All Riverfolk expansion
• S Items: (no Bag here)
  • 1 Torch (Riverfolk)
  • 2 Boots (Riverfolk+Vagabond pack)
  • 1 Crossbow (Riverfolk)
  • 1 Hammer (Vagabond pack)
  • 1 Sword (Riverfolk)
  • 1 Tea (Homeland)
  • 1 Coin (Vagabond pack)

Knaves: 3 copies of all 7 'normal' items (no Torch). These have no letters (like R and S) <-all Homeland expansion

Spare:

• 3rd Set of R Items <-All Homeland Expansion
• Tea and Coin (Homeland)

How to introduce the game, piece by piece, to players willing to play this many games. I try to introduce everything in release order.

Base Game

• Games 1-3: Base Game factions on Autumn map. I will be Cats, then Eyrie, then WA. VB will also be cycled: Thief>Tinkerer>Ranger. All VB will use their matching meeple from the Vagabond Pack.
• Game 4: Winter map. I am Vagrant VB from Riverfolk, everyone else their last unplayed faction.

Riverfolk

• Game 5: Autumn map with random clearings. Double VB game: Arbiter and Scoundrel VB used. I'm Arbiter, slaughter everyone, and then after the game introduce Despot Infamy XD.

From this point on, Winner will typically have first pick of an old faction, chooses map, and maybe seating order. As well as any new elements that get introduced (card deck, landmarks, adset, hirelings). If anyone chooses VB between games 6-19, a new VB from Vagabond Pack is introduced (Adventurer>Harrier>Ronin).

• Game 6: I play Lizard Cult.
• Game 7: I play Riverfolk Company (and insist on going 4th).

Underworld

• Game 8: I am Underground Duchy. Lake Map.
• Game 9: I am Corvid Conspiracy. Mountain Map. (I may switch things so Moles go on Mountain map, for thematic reasons).
• Game 10: Introduce Landmark Pack, play with 2 of them (Except Raft and Tower). Also introduce the Exiles & Partisans deck, and it becomes an option for all future games.
• Game 11: Play with remaining 2 Landmarks from the pack. Landmarks are now available from this point forward.

Marauder

• Game 12: I am Lord of the Hundreds. VB banned this game only.
• Game 13: I am Keepers of Iron.
• Games 14-19: I introduce Hirelings, and work through them all in release order (Marauder expansion, and the first 3 Hireling Packs). I also introduce Adset, and will be used for all 5 games. Adset will become an option again starting Game 23.

Homeland

• Game 20: I am Lilypad Diaspora, Marsh Map. Standard Setup. Squires & Disciples Deck is used, and becomes an option for all future games.
• Game 21: I am Twilight Council, Gorge Map. Standard Setup.
• Game 22: I am the Knaves of the Deepwood, with Cheat, Gladiator, and Jailer as it's Captains. Standard Setup.
• Game 23: Homeland Hireling Pack, with all 3 Hirelings from this box. I will be Cheat VB.
• Game 24: Try to arrange a 5P game on the Marsh Map. Landmarks for this map become available for all future games. Maybe make it double VB to introduce Gladiator and Jailer VB.
• Game 25 and beyond: At this point, I'm not sure how to plan things. Still a lot of Hirelings that never showed off their Promoted forms, that will take 11 more games at 4 players. Oof. Knaves would need to appear 3 more times to show off all their Captains, but showing them off isn't a huge priority. There is also the Mechanical Marquise I skipped over from the Riverfolk expansion. We could do a few games of that, possibly. Competitive, cooperative, and try that campaign setting and see how far we can go.

Dang, half a year to go through everything, if playing once a week. I'm sure you could condense things. Perhaps Base Game only needs 1 game total. Landmarks, Hirelings, and the new card Deck could be introduced much sooner, before their associated expansions came out. But I don't want to overwhelm everyone with too much info all at once.

What do you think?

Recently got the ALL-IN package from Kickstarter, I decided to kill some time and play solo against MM 1.0. I have heard and read in the past they are badly design, and made completely obsolete by the Clockwork expansion. But I wanted to see for myself, and also I don't have Clockwork and have 0 plans to obtain them.

So what follows will be my experiences playing against MM 1.0, and some analysis on top of that. I'll also share some beginner tips to those who want to try for themselves.

Judgement calls, and some setup tips

Before we can get to the main part, some questions need to be answered. The only place that explains MM 1.0 is in the Riverfolk "Learn to Play" booklet. They were never explained in any version of the "Law of Root", I checked. And I find it lacking in parts. It was very unclear that Lowest # = Highest Priority, heck the word 'Priority' isn't even used in the Learn to Play, only the faction board. But even with that cleared up, there are still unanswered questions. In what order does MM fight you. across the clearings? Which clearings do they recruit in, when their supply runs out? Does the human choose which ones? For me, I opted to borrow from the "Law of Rootbotics", and made the MM fight and recruit according to clearing Priority. I chose this way for the challenge, but I think it's perfectly a valid option to have the human choose, if they want an easier time. I would recommend this for beginners.

The last unclear thing was the "mode". You can either play in competitive mode, or cooperative mode. If doing "co-op", MM gets a buff to their scoring and recruiting. Now, if going RAW, co-op mode is for 1-4 players. If you are playing solo, don't do this to yourself. The extra VP every turn, and recruiting without needing to rule, will overwhelm you in a 1v1 against MM. The confusing part, is that in the "Scenarios" section at the back, it looks like there are 3 modes presented: Solitaire Mode, Cooperative Mode, and Competitive mode. So, are there 3 modes, to? For most of my solo games, I opted to play Solitaire+Competitive rules. Solo+Coop doesn't even make sense, whom am I cooperating with? So yeah, that's my justification for bending the rules, a little.

As for setup, I recommend a couple accommodations:

1. Just go first. Turn order is supposed to be random, but just go first. You need every edge you can get. Letting MM go first is suicide.
2. Where to place the Keep? You choose. For most of my games, I placed the Keep based on a dice roll. It wasn't until much later that I realized "Hey, technically, I'm in control of operating MM, I am technically able to place the Keep where I want!". For beginners, I would recommend you choose where to place the Keep. This is so you can plan where your faction ultimately goes, based on your starting hand of cards. Having cards that are compatible with your starting corner clearing will be a nice boost to your plan

I also had to make a judgement call for the Vagabond, but I'll save that for the VB section.

^(Now onto some actual analysis)

Mechanical Marquise (1.0)

• Scoring: 2VP per clearing they rule with 3+ Cats. So, while they typically won't score on their 1st turn, it will be a frequent occurrence to have them score an average of 8VP per turn, starting turn 2. This is a ludicrous amount of points. See why you should not play in Co-op mode, if single? A possible 9th VP is just an extra twisting of the knife. Because of this, your main game plan is to disrupt their rule as much as possible. Even if you have to ignore your own scoring engine for a bit. It's that important. Else MM will win on turn 5. Their scoring curve will rocket ahead to the teens, but with your intervention, slow down to a crawl, while you attempt to catchup.
• Battle: The main part of the MM's turn. You have a roughly 53% chance of getting battled: 27/51 in Bunny/Mouse clearings, or 28/51 in Fox. And since you can't Ambush bots, you'll just have to sit there and take it. But it's not all bad news. Since they fight you more often a human should, they too will often take heavy losses. A mutual kill which clears out all Cats and your warriors is often in your favor, believe it or not. And you can also exploit their battles, sacrificing warriors so you don't turmoil on Recruit, or gain Acolytes 😉. Just be prepared for huge casualties and fluctuations, in the early-mid game. If a Spy or Ambush card is drawn (9/51 chance), they will be Battling (and maybe Moving) again, after the Recruit step fails. So watch out.
• Move: I honestly don't see this triggered all that often, since you need 4+ Cats in a clearing (which you should actively work against) and it has to match the revealed Order card. And even when a move does happen, it's often a nothing-burger. I think it was meant to move cats into empty clearings, but even if it does do that, it's not a huge deal. Because of this, one of 2 steps I frequently forget. Oops.
• Recruit: Now here is the part that actually may tighten your sphincter. All those cats lost in Battle will likely come back to the board, and then some. They recruit based on the craft cost. See this "chart" I made below.

I could make another post just based on bot recruiting alone. Lots to analyze here.

Stats:

• Icons: 22 Bunny, 15 Fox, 21 Mouse, 3 multi, 1 Royal Claim
• Cards: 20 Single-Icon, 16 Double-Icon, 2 Triple Icon, 3 multi, 1 Royal Claim. Not pictured, 9 blanks (Ambush and Spy cards).

For just some surface level analysis, Fox clearing will see the fewest reinforcements. So, if given a choice, you can usually get away with ignoring Fox clearings, at least for a little bit. Bunny clearings will see more consistent Cat recruits, usually 2 at a time. And the double-icon cards are usually enough to take a Cat clearing into the scoring zone, since they all start with 1 cat already. Mouse clearings are feast or famine. Majority of Single-icon cards are here, but then the uber dangerous triple mouse cards exist. These will wreck your day, and most often will contribute to cats scoring from the mouse clearings, turn-after-turn. Taking out cats in Mouse clearings should be top priority. Be thankful if Stand-and-Deliver ends up in your hand, instead.

Tax Collector's danger level depends when in the game it appears. If near the start, you have a serious uphill battle. If near the end, and you (hopefully) reduced MM's # of ruled clearings, it's a nothing-burger. Royal Claim's danger level, is hard to quantify. 4 Cats in a clearing is a lot, but it's only a single clearing, the Keep. A clearing the Cats will often already be already getting points off of. If you manage to take out the Keep first (your only source of points on the map, btw), you can have a good laugh when this is drawn as an Order card. But if the Keep is still there when it arrives, taking it out will be that much harder.

Spy Cards: This seems like the best spot to discuss them. When they appear, they could possibly be a nice boon, as you may be able to plan your turn better, and possibly control your fate (moving Stand-and-Deliver to the back). If you can get 2 Spy Cards, you'll be have bright days ahead. If they appear that is. In solo, you won't be able to get through the deck before the game ends. So you can't rely on them. Niche, if useful tool.

^(Next 3 sections will be going over the "recommended" solo-mode scenarios, at the back of the Learn To Play: Eyrie, Vagabond, Lizards. All games were play on Autumn, fixed and random suits, and Winter maps)

Eyrie Dynasty

Difficulty: 4/5. After a couple false starts (1st game had an illegal Favor card, oops. Forgot to take it out. I still used it), I settled into the groove. I only won about half my games. It seemed pretty tough. Maybe I'm not that great of an Eyrie player, maybe I just had terrible luck with my starting hands. In hindsight I shouldn't have placed the Keep randomly, like I mentioned before.

Well, for your first leader, the only correct option is Charismatic. Despot won't cut it. You need to flood the forest with Birds, so you can contest Rule away from the Cats, and reduce their scoring. However, I wouldn't put a 2nd card into Recruit in the very early game, as you risk Turmoil on Recruit that much sooner (happened to me once). 3rd turn is a good point for a 2nd Recruit action. Then adapt as the Cats wear you down (there will be heavy losses). Be prepared to have as many as 4 cards in Recruit. I'm serious.

As for building Roosts, if you don't have a Bird card, then I'm sorry. You can try your luck and not but a card into Build, but if you don't get draw a Bird at the end of turn 1, you will have to resort to the dreaded suited Building. Meaning turmoil in 3-4 turns, instead of 6. In either case, you can try something advanced and leave Roosts undefended. Giving a VP to the Cats sucks, but delaying Turmoil on Build can be worth it.

For the Battle action, do try to get at least a 2nd card in there. Ofcourse, this and everything above will depend on the cards you draw. Good luck. As for where to battle, try to make sure you clear out all Cats from a clearing. Remember, MM can only Recruit where they rule, and a clearing with no Cats at all is 99% safe for the rest of the game (barring a rare Move action from them). Killing and outruling Cats is a higher priority than Building roosts, you gotta MM's scoring by any means. Winning often means nearly boardwiping MM 1.0. That is what it usually devolves into.

When you do eventually Turmoil (I only ever managed 1 non-turmoil win), Commander is the best 2nd Leader. In the late game, you shouldn't need to worry about Building new Roosts, or Recruit. You just need to kill cats. If you haven't already, now would be a good time to advance on the Keep (every VP matters!).

Sadly, crafting won't be much of a source of VP, especially early on. You need to focus building up your decree. Once you are drawing 3 cards a turn though, do your best to craft what you can. At one point, I tried to be cheeky and chose Builder as my 2nd leader, not Commander. And I got a crap-ton of VP! Sadly, I was 1 move short of outruling the Cats in a clearing, and lost.

I barely got to use the Spy cards here, I often deemed them more useful in my Decree.

Vagabond

Difficulty: 3/5. For my first game, I tried to be cheeky and chose Tinkerer. Wanted to see if I could craft my way to victory. I got stomped hard. Didn't help I couldn't get my ruin Hammer earlier. Actually, I had terrible luck getting the ruin Hammer in all my VB games, never got it in my 1st or 2nd ruin. Agh.

But anyways, the only correct choice is to choose Arbiter, and then race MM to victory for Infamy. This is your only real option. Question? Pfft, forget it, that ain't viable in most normal games. Aid strategy? Literally throwing away the game, bots get VP if they are given cards, you dolt. Also, it wouldn't work anyways since there is a 52% chance if getting attacked (and likely killing in defense). No, you need to kill cats, so they don't get VP from clearings with 3 Cats in them. There is literally no one around to contest their Rule. It's time to play Dynasty Warriors.

That said, it would be a really good idea to Aid, up to level 2, before the inevitable Hostile status. 3VP for you, 3VP for MM. I hope your cards lets you do that by turn 2. If you can't do all 3 Aids by turn 1, try to retreat to the one corner clearing that doesn't have a Cat, so you don't get bopped on the head too early (and risk Hostile). Which means your 1st ruin should be by this empty clearing. Unless you can get the Hammer turn 1, then you can stay and try to go Hostile on MM's turn. That would be ideal, but I never had that happen to me.

But the real goal of aiding is getting those items MM is holding. Okay, so here I had to make another judgement call. With RAW, VB can only take from Crafted Item boxes, and MM 1.0 has a Items for Sale box, and starts with 4 of them in there. Technically, I shouldn't be able to take those items for myself, if doing literal RAW, right? Well, it is called Items for Sale. Rulebook doesn't say if you can or can't. But I'm sure it was intended for them taken for the VB's purposes. Otherwise, I'm sure a VB win solo would be literally impossible. You need those items for the extra hit points and actions. If I broke the rules here, let me know.

In order of importance as to which items to take, I would rank them Tea>Boots>Bag=Sword. Ranking is kinda moot since you should nab 3/4 in your first 2 turns anyways. Tea is essential, as always. Extra boot is needed, since you will be going hostile pretty quickly, and to keep the MM's scoring down. And when you get hit, a Boot is likely the first to go, anyways. Bag is always a nice buffer, but eventually get's thrown away. And obviously, another Sword means another battle. Which item to leave behind is up to you. Sword can be picked up later in the game. You only need the Bag if you manage to craft anything. Either way, the extra hit point might outweigh the VP you give MM. Oh, and good luck crafting anything, you'll often be using your Hammer to fix yourself (I sadly in all my games, was never able to craft the 2nd Hammer.)

Depending on how things go, you might have to leave behind 1 or 2 ruin items. Exploring them might just let MM get away with earning points. Failing to get the Hammer bumps up the difficulty to 4/5. I don't recall ever taking a Forest turn.

Battling 2 clearings a turn is ideal. And remember, the Keep will be worth 2VP, so don't forget about it! Likely a stack of Cats sitting on that too. Royal Claim appearing as an Order Card could actually be very beneficial. But don't delay wiping out the Keep for that reason. I won 3/4 Arbiter games (I don't count the Tinker game), while the other factions had around 6 games each. Reason I played so few VB games is I felt I "got" the strategy. There wasn't anything left to explore. I did probably get lucky with my cards and dice.

It was with VP that I finally got to experience the Spy cards. The helped ensure I wasn't battled, and good for crowd control too.

A very close game. They usually are.

Lizard Cult

Difficulty: 2/5. I had very low expectations coming in, seeing as how the Lizards are most affected by card RNG, and is a big reason why they are ranked 2nd from the bottom, after Corvids. But to my surprise? The Lizard Cult is perfectly equipped to handle MM. Able to recruit anywhere is great for reducing MM's recruiting, my reach across the map is league's better than the Birds and VB (ironic, given the official Reach values). And then MM battles me, it is often a mutual kill, and I get an Acolyte who can then hurt the cats even worse! Gardens were also fantastic with interrupting MM's scoring and ruling (just make sure you have defenders!). And the Lizard's card draw is fantastic, I saw those Spy cards way more often, and I could even craft things. Finally (also ironic, since crafting is another Lizard weakness). Even ran out the deck once (I won when I would reshuffle). Controlling the Outcast is also way easier at 2P than in 4P. And even when I couldn't control the Outcast like I wanted, I still was able to effectively use my Conspiracies.

Yeah, I had a higher win % than Arbiter VB... and it wasn't even close. My wins were often guaranteed 2 entire turns before the actual game end, with MM often reduced to 2 clearings with no means to recruit anymore (can't rule). My only loss was a game with really terrible RNG: got nothing but Fox, Order cards were nothing but Bunny. I couldn't do anything that game. But that one seemed like an anomaly. Otherwise MM's final score was often in the low teens. Yeah, I usually rofl-stomped them.

So I decided to up the difficulty, used turned on the coop mode buffs. Now MM doesn't need to rule to recruit, and will get 1VP minimum every turn. NOW it was a challenge. I'd say difficulty was 3/5. And yeah, I lost a couple more times, but I still held my own, and won more games. Huh. Just emphasis how good the Lizards are at tearing about those machines. It was around here when I realized I should simply choose where the Keep is placed, instead of using dice all the time.

Eyrie Dynasty (again)

Difficulty: 5/5. So, feeling high from my Lizard success... I decided to try the Birds again, this time back to the Coop mode that destroyed me the first time I attempted (back then I only got 14 VP). This time placing the Keep where I wanted, so I can get a better clearing that suited my hand. Maybe this detail was enough, maybe I got more lucky with my cards, and maybe I was just more experienced with MM now, but this time I finally held my own (or maybe I accidently changed my fate when I forgot to discard and draw new Order cards when I should have. That was my most common mistake, after forgetting to take MM's Move action). I even won a couple times against MM at this higher difficulty. I even did a very crazy double-Build game with Bunny and Fox, and went the distance. I let MM burn 2 Roosts at a time, and delayed Turmoil way beyond than when it should have happened. Not sure if I won that one. But still very proud of myself. Still wouldn't recommend this for beginners though, for reasons mentioned already.

End thoughts

Games against MM tend to focus on overruling and killing the cats. MM's scoring is explosive at the start, you often need to focus on slowing them down to a crawl, then you can focus on catching up, and win from behind. But yeah, with how the Order cards work, there is a wide variance between Cats coming in at a trickle, or getting flooded. Did I mention the time getting Tax Collector twice in a row? MM is hard, but not consistently hard. Very volatile. Unless playing Lizards, then they become a joke.

I'd be interested in trying MM 1.0 with other folks, both competitive and coop modes. Maybe even the campaign setting mentioned in the rulebook. But only as a gimmick. I have no interest in getting the Clockwork expansions, they seem like a headache to operate IRL. I already experienced the versions in Digital version (even beat the Fortified challenge), and that is all I want to experience of them.

I'm just curious how much variance there is, across the world. Here is what I got:

Canada

Box name	Printing	Rulebook date
Base Game	16th Printing (2025)	Sept 4, 2024
Riverfolk Expansion	7th Printing (2025)	Sept 4, 2024
Underworld Expansion	4th Printing (2024)	April 26, 2024
Marauder Expansion	3rd Printing (2025)	Sept 4, 2024
Homeland Expansion	1st Printing (2025)	Oct 5, 2025
Riverfolk Hirelings	2021	Less text on Page 11&12
Underworld Hirelings	2021	Less text on Page 11&12
Marauder Hirelings	3rd Printing (2025)	More text on Page 11&12
Homeland Hirelings	1st Printing (2025)	More text on Page 11&12
Exiles & Partisans Deck	3rd Printing (2025)	3 cards got updated
Squires & Disciples Deck	1st Printing (2025)
Vagabond Pack	4th Printing (2025)
Landmarks Pack	3rd Printing (2024)

I am curious if anyone got any deviations from what I got? Don't forget to post your region! (don't worry, you don't have to make a chart)

Post inspired by a 3 hour unboxing by an Aussie called Laterbot. He got the 1st Printing of the Marauder's expansion. Everything else seems to match (though I am curious about a couple of my Hireling boxes).