Finally, after two whole years. A comment worthy of pinning.

It's beautiful.

Nice.

That means a lot, coming from you! If you're interested, the 'About' page on my channel has links to several other Root content creators, each of whom I wholly endorse.

I'll agree that both approaches are valid here, and the difference lies in what you're trying to prioritize. One of the biggest factors here is: I do it because you'll rarely get punished for it. Only a couple factions in the game are positioned to battle that corner in the first two turns, and of these, they're generally happier to spend that time cashing in on the four free clearings they started with. While it's not the safer choice, I prefer taking the corner for a few reasons: * It amplifies the cost an opponent has to pay to break into the top line. It's one more clearing opponents have to clear out before moving on, and with only one build slot, it's a low VP reward that they have to wipe completely if they want to build a foothold in there. * It forces opponents to commit to either the top line or the south choke, because a push on either direction is being reinforced from the same clearings. Opponents can't afford to let forces build up for a split push, and when they do commit to a side (or even beforehand, if you're proactive), your forces on these clearings are well-positioned to move in and break their stuff. * Once opponents do commit to clearing out the top corner, you can field hospital all those cats and have them ready and waiting in the very next clearing they want to move into. I illustrate this at 13:50 - Those aren't meant to be new cats coming in, _it's the same cats over and over again._ * It lets me build pretty much nothing but sawmills in the double-slot clearings, because I have advance warning for when people are trying to target this space. * Lastly, it just makes your opponents' lives harder. Why let the birds have five roosts for free when you can force them to work for it?

@@Nevakanezah_ Problem is, your opponent likely *doesn't* have to clear out the corner to break in: - The Corvids and any Vagabond can just waltz right through with their Nimble ability. - The Moles can tunnel directly into your juicier double clearings. - The Lizards can Convert the sparse defenders in the double clearings and then attack with them. Overall, that's 4 out of 7 pre-Marauder factions (I'm not familiar with how the Warlord & Keepers work) who can rather easily circumvent a corner defense. And 2 of the remaining 3 (Eyrie and Otters) will sometimes be able to muster a big enough army to just march over top of it, and attack behind. Don't forget that a corner defense is a single point of failure. If someone like the Otters or Moles do break through, they likely have the actions to wipe out both double clearings in the same turn. Field Hospital is actually an argument *against* holding the corner. Warriors revived at the Keep will require spending two actions (three moves) to get back to the front line corner; if you concede it, they can get back to the farthest double clearing in just one March. This applies whether you're reinforcing your defense after an unsuccessful enemy attack, or if you're counterattacking when they do manage to break the first line. For these reasons, the Cats are much better off with a 'defense in depth' strategy. Take the warriors you would need to guard the corner, and distribute them in the double clearings instead. You make your heartland a far less attractive target, and are much more likely to have your buildings survive if they attack you anyway.

@@The_Invisible_Hand I suspect that, because both of these approaches are informed by our respective experiences, we could argue the merits of either tactic and never find a happy consensus that was optimal for all situations. Given that I had a target duration for the video in mind, my recommendations likely reflect several of my own biases as I decided which strategies to include. I think instead, I'll content myself with the fact that our discussion has done a great job of outlining the kinds of considerations one can apply to even small decisions like this one. It's a very nice addendum for anyone who might scroll down with similar concerns about that particular recommendation.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you liked it!

The next video in the series is on-pace!

Comments like these are pretty much the sole reason I'm making these videos. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

This video still outperforms shit I launched *this month.*

Being dense is my specialty!

Nice! It's always gratifying to hear that the advice is working well in actual games

Alright Gabe Newell, we shall sit and wait patiently.

We will wait, comrade

This comment gave me diabetes; that's adorable. If you're willing to send along a scan of her drawing, I'll make a community post out of it!

@@Nevakanezah_ It's an honor to be considered for that. Sadly their mother just did a recycle purge of sketches that were piling up in our small living space.

@@HobGungan Alas, my community posts shall remain relegated as the graveyard of my half-baked opinions.

My intent was to say that the quantity of cards is public, but couldnt find an elegant wording

You might also want to check out Lord of the board, Waterman121, and Nitrorev!

@@Nevakanezah_ thank you! Update i won using your tips 🤣🤣 bless🙏

Just pray they don’t have like “favor of the rabbits” or some similar card

​@@sparkfrog777 Just make sure they can't craft it.

While I can't make any promises as to timeline, do you happen to have the timestamp handy so I can make sure not to forget it?

@@Nevakanezah_ kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bdWTjatip5m7iGw.html i hope i'm doing it right (19:07)

Someone beat you to the punch ages back. Look on BGG for a fanmade board titled "workshop cats", or the like. It's pretty much exactly what you described

@@Nevakanezah_ wow… I gotta use this. This looks awesome! Wonder if I can get it into TTS…

Yep, tabletop simulator with the "Root - Ultimate" mod.

At 16:31 notice that he's placing a 4th recruiter as his sacrificial building. This is a great idea because you really don't care that much about losing a 4th recruiter because you maintain the card draw. If the enemies target a weakly defended recruiter instead of a much more valuable sawmill, that recruiter has paid for itself.

@@nitrorev yes, I’ve noticed! But other than as a sacrifice? I find it extremely interesting because the one strategy with which I’ve been able to not get too much « picked on » as the Marquise is going fairly heavy on recruits. Not that it makes me win a lot, though. But I’ve found that if I build, say, a fourth sawmill, I put a huge target on my back.

@@arthursimsa9005 Not sure what Nev has to say about this but because Sawmills are more important for scoring tempo, a 4th recruiter might make more sense in a deeply entangled game. Games where everybody is hitting eachother and scoring minimal points might drag the game out a bit longer to have the recruiter in place of a sawmill not be a detriment. Or for instance if you are getting picked on, recruiting 4 warriors instead of just 3 to make up your warrior loss will allow you more board control to better defend yourself and encourage opponents to seek trouble elsewhere.

It's basically an optimization problem - Recruiters are worth less as we empty our warrior supply, they don't make it any easier to score points over time (by providing more wood), and they take up slots we need in order to score. In a vacuum, we want to place as few recruiters as we can get away with; it just so happens that 3 recruiters gives us a decent warrior output and the extra card draw that helps field hospitals, making it the best value for the minimum number of recruiters. Case in point: If we could get all 6 recruiters on turn 2, sure it's 13vp, but then what? You recruit all your cats in 2 turns, and ~30% of the slots on the entire board are now taken up with pieces that aren't doing anything for you ever again. You can go with 4 or more and be largely fine (sometimes it's helpful if you plan to play dominance), but I would resist doing so unless you knew you were going to be losing a lot of cats consistently without being able to field hospital them.

If you're in voice/in-person, take advantage of the silence and talk about what opponents are able to do on their turns in order to play them up as a threat. If you're on the digital version where no one reads chat, do what you can to preempt upcoming threats yourself by destroying people whenever it will do the most damage. They can't hurt you if you removed their ability to do so

@@Nevakanezah_ Thank you for your advice my Cat Overlord! How many games have you played with them to come up with these tactics?

@@Leo-ww5lf No idea on game count, but I'm at about 1100 hours combined on TTS and Root digital. I can't claim too much credit for the strategies though, as they've been developed by the competitive community; I'm just making them more accessible.

@@Nevakanezah_ Holy Moly that's a lot, a god among men would I describe you as. I commend you for making it more accessible and very nice editing! I hope we the viewers get to see more

Yeah, this one's just a small editing mistake, and i ended up forgetting to properly move it. I was ambivalent as to whether I set up this example for base deck where rabbit crafting is better, or E&P where mouse crafting is the safest bet when you only have one workshop to place.

I made an eyrie and VB one that should be more consistent

The latter. The *number* of cards in there is public, but not the suits. Despite this, it's very valuable information to track.

@@Nevakanezah_ Thank for the clarification, I was very confused for a moment hahaha.

Rabbit has the highest possible vp gain because of coins, and access to cobbler & command warren in base deck. The catch is that all of these require two rabbit workshops, which can be a bit of a gamble to achieve. Myself, if my starting hand has good rabbit crafting ill go rabbit (same for fox, with emigree tbh), but mouse is just an easy and safe bet if you dont feel like committing to two matching workshops.

Yes, I'm just slow. Bird guide's next; it has script & VO done. I'm just working through visuals now, before picking BGM and maybe some broll before it's complete

I'd already trimmed that clip and synched up the timing when I realized I forgot to actually leave cats to rule that southern bird clearing when I recorded the example. Instead of re-do that work, I just slapped some text on the bird clearing and called it a day.

Iirc, I only provided suggestions for the corner clearings because there's a lot of variation in how different corners play, and if you're using ADSET, the discussion of where to set up becomes a lot more involved. ...And just in case you might be newer to the game: Under standard setup rules, the vast majority of factions are *only* allowed to set up in the corners. Advanced setup lets you start anywhere you like, making the middle fox clearing an option.

Ah, right you are. I had a sneaking suspicion that example was scuffed, as I recorded it late; probably had bird cards in mind at the time. I believe my intent was to say that you can still reach the same board state on turn 2 if you had to police instead of building a recruiter.

@@Nevakanezah_ yeah policing just once gets you to the same spot as long as you overwork. All you really lose out on is the flexibility of doing whatever you want on your third action on turn 2. Great guide though, I'm excited to try the strategies here. I've been looking to up my cats game as besides the Lizards, they're the only ones I can't win consistently with.

Chalk it up to my crappy recording setup at the time

Field hospitals is counted for every separately-timed instance of warrior loss. Thus, ambush does in fact force you to FH twice for the same battle. C is correct.

@@Nevakanezah_ thank you for your responses! Also I want to praise your videos, please continue making more!!!

@@Rimbombannus Glad you enjoy em!

In progress

>Is it to greedy Oh, it's positively *filthy.* Unadulterated grime. Disgusting, reckless, wonderful avarice. It's playable at any table that you think will fail to punish you for the first two turns, at which point this strategy catches up to the board position of typical play, but you're now a turn ahead on scoring/sawmills. Sometimes the faction mix is amenable to this (lizards, despot eyrie, WA if they're being nice/your sawmills are somewhere they really don't want to revolt), and sometimes you can find it in players who just aren't prepared to mix it up that early, even if they know what you're trying.

How did I come up with them? Arbitrarily! The aim is to illustrate which clearings you could most likely hold onto in a typical game. Generally it's clearings within two moves of the keep, that you wont have too much trouble competing for in a typical 4p game. Sure it's not a 100% scientific model, but it's unrealistic to try aiming for advice that's going to be correct in every game, so instead i just give guidelines that help illustrate what i feel is feasible in most games.

Tabletop simulator. You trade fiddlyness for content. Check out the woodland warriors discord for people to play with

Ah, unlucky. How close were you able to get? Idk how your game played out, but oftentimes I find that my endgame losses were avoidable by disrupting opponents earlier. Birds are a great example of this: If you turmoil them as soon as it's easily feasible, they lose a ton of momentum trying to rebuild and won't be as big a threat in the endgame.

@@Nevakanezah_ It was fairly close, like one turn away from winning. I had very aggressive WA spreading in my main clearings - they spent way too many followers and lost as a result but slowed me down. Then mid game eyrie hit me with a mouse favor which destroyed 2 clearings I had fortified against WA and I think that's when I fell behind

@@JesterOnCrack oof, yeah. Favor cards are so brutal for cats. Sounds like you held up really well in spite of a very hostile game though

Base deck only, bunny crafting gives more actions

Its part of the latest expansion, "marauders", which is slowly emerging from supply chain purgatory

Thanks for quick reply, well, I could have googled that 😅 damn will need to wait at least until Q3 to get one, but at least this is official rules. P.S. @Nevakanezah your video editing skills and chosen way of narative is 10/10. This is something I would pay to watch on Patreon. I do hope you will cover the rest of the factions as well!

@@Averageeveydayuser You're too kind. I aspire to eventually have the full set of guides, but you can imagine that these aren't the fastest videos to make

@@Nevakanezah_ such vids worth the wait, take your time, we will wait 👌🏻

To be precise: The number of supporters is public. Its something thats often overlooked when evaluating who's in the lead at the table

I have not and will not read this comment