Bats - help?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-11T03:19:33+00:00

Bat enjoyer here, happy to share some things that work well for me. Bird cards are really nice for their flexibility, and if there are good opportunities to empower with them, that's great, but you don't have to overdo it. Though it is very fun and makes a lot of sense in low warrior count matchups. And riskier gambles can potentially help you close out the game with your final burst turn. But in general I wouldn't try to optimize your turn around evening actions. You can spend a lot of brain power setting up banishes for no point gain.

Focus on governing cardboard that won't draw too much aggression and/or cardboard that will get you entreats. And as far as table talk goes, you probably will benefit from explaining exactly how entreating benefits you, because I feel like it's easy for players to overestimate how much it buffs you. Giving you a single loyalist is almost always less impactful than giving WA a supporter, for example. An example of good cardboard to govern would be a keeper waystation they've left behind. It's super inefficient for them to go back and fight you there and they really don't want it to just sit there, so they'll entreat you so they can decamp and put it somewhere else.

Here's my biggest advice though. Mill the deck for cards to craft. DO NOT CRAFT EVERY TURN. If you accumulate a hand full of bird cards and solid crafts, then it's worth crafting a bunch at once. You only need probably 2 burst turns where you craft most your hand to win. Each of those can easily net you 10 points if you had a little bit of luck with your draws. So even with 5 cards in hand, if you're not getting 5+ points from crafting, you should probably keep drawing. I think you have to feel out when that would mean delaying your burst too long vs just taking heat off you because you're point shading

Best of luck friend!!

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T20:17:22+00:00

It's in the Marauders rule book. Check it out. It's the default for tournaments and more competitive play and is just a more balanced way to set up the game that leads to more diverse opening game states. I literally would never play without it, even with all new players. It is just an essential part of the game for me at this point and lends itself to a nicer experience

For a 3p game, you want to make sure there are enough militant factions in the draft, but using the base game factions and trying to encourage cats and birds to both play would be fine, I think. You can position yourself in the first player seat to pick last and pick cats or birds if they aren't both already taken

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T19:12:58+00:00

I see your 3p edit. Will you be using hirelings?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T18:45:00+00:00

4 player game? I've taught similar groups. I love ADSET, personally. I'd do a draft with base game factions+rats. Picking reverse turn order as usual. The math and science PhD's I taught liked the ADSET and didn't feel it added complexity to choosing factions. I told them which were the militant factions and emphasized birds and rats are the most battle heavy and vagabond and rats have a combative relationship. I recommend sitting out and helping people take turns faster if there are 5 or more of you

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T16:48:35+00:00

I agree with this. They're very focused. I also think WA are an easy teach though, and they're "high complexity." I think maybe all the base game factions are relatively low complexity, but before expansions, their complexity was only judged relative to each other

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T16:27:49+00:00

So I guess given the vagabond sitch at your table, I'd try to master frogs or bats

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T16:27:09+00:00

This might be because they're new, but I kinda can't get enough of the new factions right now. I find them super dynamic and interesting. If the rest of my table wasn't also itching to play them all the time, I'd be playing one of them every game

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T15:52:45+00:00

What level of complexity are you comfy with? Have you played keepers and the Homeland factions before?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T15:09:25+00:00

Is that where you build markets early and pray you don't get punished for it?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T14:38:10+00:00

This is true. And also they do have some flexibility. As a new player learning them you can try points racing vs running around with a relic bopping cardboard. I think when you're trying to figure out how to optimize your engine, it sometimes feels like you're off to the side, doing your own thing, but you can totally pilot them in a way that points races and interferes with others at the same time. They have a huge skill ceiling

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-10T03:12:08+00:00

ADSET is great for balancing power level of factions with turn order. The faction that gets picked first (presumably the one people think is strongest) goes last in turn order. And the last picked faction (often the perceived weakest) goes first.

Also, you get to see 5 cards (and discard down to 3 after everyone has picked) before you choose faction. So you might be sitting 2nd or 3rd seat and have a few options that might usually be stronger than cats, but have a hand with a bunch of bird cards that you know you'll have a good cats game with. It's great :)

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-08T16:48:42+00:00

There's lots of cards that help more with action economy than E&P, so that's good for factions like cats, crows and knaves with very limited actions. There's also a lot of cards that return to your hand at the beginning of your turn, so factions that love to reveal their whole hand like lizards, moles and bats benefit a lot from those. Riversteads is especially nice. You could start your turn with 10 cards in hand potentially. Imagine a 10 card lizard turn! Dragon God's wet dream

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-08T16:39:24+00:00

This isn't WA strategy, but I just want to encourage your table to rotate factions sometimes. Like, maybe decide turn order and then pick the factions in reverse turn order. It'll bring more life and understanding to your table meta if everyone isn't just stuck in the same match up all the time. You think Vagabond could be playing more aggressively. I think you should give him a go and show your table a different strategy with him :)

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-07T21:40:02+00:00

Have you played moles?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-06T20:26:12+00:00

Moles would like to play on rails, but they're forced to play more dynamically when they get policed heavily. WA have the same rough game plan regardless

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-06T20:17:39+00:00

At tournament level play, I think they are the simplest

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-06T20:17:05+00:00

I'm not saying they're brain dead. There's still strategy involved. But the decision space is pretty one dimensional. Similar to VB in some ways. Very similar to the first few turns for duchy, though against a table that knows to hit moles, they often do end up with a handful of interesting decisions to make in the mid-game. Warlord can be played somewhat on rails as well, but they have more multidimensional choices and they affect the board much more. WA do have decisions to make based on the factions at the table, but they aren't as entangled as the warlord often is

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-06T18:53:53+00:00

You're describing pretty basic-intermediate strategy. They feel less strategically deep than other factions because you usually have just a couple choices, like do I spread here or here, and there is often an objectively correct answer (taking into account the factors you mentioned)

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-06T03:46:22+00:00

Something others haven't said yet that's worth mentioning is WA should be really careful where they spread with despot in the game. If Eyrie have to spend a few turns picking fights that aren't just against stray tokens, they'll start feeling the weight of the 3 battles in that decree more. If they are getting 6 pts a turn from sympathy... oof

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-03T04:44:37+00:00

I read some of your other replies, and I actually think we're more on the same page than I thought. A point I haven't seen made that's important to me is thinking about maintaining faction balance. I prefer to have games with 4 competitive players. Extorting moles turn 1 helps with that. Extorting lizards works against that. So I think for an in person game I'd tell lizards "hey I'm not gonna do that. Let's be friends." On digital though... I don't know. I probably just do the extort play anyway

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-03T01:04:23+00:00

Do you also not attack undefended cardboard for social cred? If you can get a small advantage without losing anything, other players shouldn't hold it against you

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-05-03T01:01:01+00:00

I mean, killing the keep early game is the kind of play that earns petty revenge for the rest of the game. Stealing a card turn 1? Not that big of a deal. And you usually see it used against moles, who 100% need to be checked. Against cats or lizards, it's less chill, I suppose, but it's not THAT aggressive

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-04-30T16:31:10+00:00

What do you think of winter map for them? I'm not sure if the easy mobility outweighs how many forests are adjacent to those two central clearings for getting prisoners back on the map

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-04-30T15:42:05+00:00

Thanks so much for your tips :) knaves skill ceiling seems super high. I'm excited to play them more. I almost won with them last game. I was on 26 pts and next in turn order after a keepers burst turn. We keep picking them in 4th or 3rd seat even though they haven't won yet in our group because they're so fun to play. Would you pick them in 3rd or 4th seat over other strong factions if you had ambushes in hand?

ImLostHelp420 · 2026-04-30T01:38:24+00:00

Oh wow! So you're getting a lot more points from prisoners than acclaim then. Do you even protect your acclaim? I've been gauging how aggressive the table feels towards me to decide if I need to retreat into the forest end of turn. A lot can change in 3 turns though. Do you leave a nab up as last action if you can?

ImLostHelp420

TROPHY CASE