THE FIELD NOTES · CRITTERFRONT
Your first little battle plan.
Recruit once. Fight twice. Here is how to make the first few decisions count.
Start with the two-board idea.
Critterfront combines an auto battler's shop and team synergies with tower defense. Every deployed family creates a tower to defend your board and a marcher to attack a rival. Battles happen automatically; recruiting and placement happen between them. Your objective is to keep your Nexus alive while rivals lose theirs.
Play a first match.
- Open the game and choose BATTLE → BOT GAME. This starts a solo match against three bots without an account. Play in a desktop browser with a mouse, or download the Windows or Linux build. NORMAL GAME is the online mode: it needs a free account and is easiest to fill at Playtest Night.
- Recruit from the shop. Shop tier follows gold cost: rounds 1 and 2 offer only 2-gold creatures, and every odd round unlocks the next cost: 3 gold in round 3, 4 gold in round 5 and 5 gold from round 7. Every shop slot draws from the remaining shared copies, so a family others are collecting appears less often.
- Set both formations. Place defenders to cover incoming routes and arrange marchers with their ability conditions in mind. One family gives you both forms.
- Press Ready and observe. Watch where marchers escape tower coverage, which units activate their abilities, and how your attacking formation progresses.
- Adjust one decision between rounds. Change a recruit or a placement and watch the next battle. Keep track of what actually changes.
Build around one small connection.
As a planning exercise, try Dog and Cat. They are different Swiftclaw families, so deploying both reaches the first attacking threshold. Their tower roles are Catalyst and Ravager, so that pair alone does not reach a defending-role threshold. Dog's bark can support a nearby tower that gets kills; Cat's fifth attack brings extra damage. This is a way to learn the rules, not a claim about the best starting team.
Compare Dog's ability conditions and Cat's base stats, then explore their positions in the planner. The shop may offer a different starting pair in a real match.
Merge copies; count families.
Two copies at the same star merge upward. Star II represents two starting copies, star III four, and star IV eight. Merging improves the unit, but another copy of the same family does not count as another synergy member. A benched family also does not contribute.
Check the limit before chasing a bonus.
The current Classic snapshot starts with room for 2 deployed creatures and supports up to 6 deployment slots as capacity increases. The bench holds 5. A planner can describe a later team before you can afford or deploy it in a live match.
Move from a team idea to a test.
Use the planner to inspect cost, distinct-family thresholds, and both formations. Save an idea, change one element, and compare the result in a match. The planner does not predict winners or model every combat interaction. Keep the build-date note in mind when moving from the current rules reference to the playtest build.
Next: how threats and roles work and how to approach positioning.