THE FIELD NOTES · CRITTERFRONT

Bee and Cat: merged burst pressure

A small, heavily upgraded Ravager pair with a strong historical result. Treat it as a balance-sensitive composition, not a guaranteed early-game win.

Test budget12g

Net roster investment10g

Base-copy purchase total16g

Round rules testedRound 2

Net investment deducts merge refunds from the purchase total. 2g of the test budget is unspent. This is an owned-roster comparison, not a starting purse or a promise you can find these copies in that round. Shop rolls, reroll costs, liquidity and other players’ purchases were not simulated.

Focused investment · 2 DEPLOYED RECRUITS

The exact roster

Bee

Star III · 4 base copies

Brood / Ravager

A powerful last-line defensive stinger and retaliation against its marcher killer.

Cat

Star III · 4 base copies

Swiftclaw / Ravager

Repeated fifth-attack burst on defense and front-running movement support on offense.

Open this roster in the planner ↗

Exact families and stars, with an illustrative starter layout. Edit both formations before playing. This is not a recorded simulation layout. The planner’s base-copy value is the 16g purchase reference, not 10g net investment.

What the families activate

Attacking threats

No active threshold on this side. Individual abilities still matter.

Defending roles

Ravager: 2 distinct families · 2-family bonus

Duplicates do not add faction members. These are current rules interactions, not proof that a particular bonus caused the recorded score.

Give each side a job

Placement notes below are practical interpretation of the abilities, not experimentally optimized hex positions.

YOUR DEFENDING TOWERS

Cover the route

Placement suggestion, not a tested hex layout: give Cat sustained firing opportunities, with Bee able to cover enemies approaching the Nexus.
Bee’s emergency stinger triggers when a marcher has at most two route hexes left, then Bee dies. Do not mistake it for a repeatable turret attack.

YOUR ATTACKING MARCHERS

Plan the approach

Try Cat as the frontmost runner so Pack Leader can help nearby allies.
Bee retaliates on final death against the tower that killed it. That adds pressure, but a surviving original marcher can still be more valuable as a Nexus threat.

Recruit toward it, without forcing it

This is a conditional recruitment plan, not a tested shopping sequence. Keep a playable board while the shop decides which copies are available.

Suggested collection priority, not a tested buying sequence: concentrate matching offers into one three-star Bee and one three-star Cat.
Each needs four base copies. The roster spends ten of a twelve-gold budget; the remaining two gold is not included as another deployed unit.

Where it can struggle

The benchmark conditions on already owning eight specific copies; it does not show how often that collection is available in round two.
There are only two originals, and Bee’s defensive sacrifice can leave Cat carrying the rest of the battle.

Recorded matchup notes

The frozen holdout recorded 784 wins, 76 draws and four losses against 48 compositions. Its 95.1% points are not a universal or current-patch win rate.
The audit prioritizes merged Bee/Cat scaling for tuning. A future balance change can invalidate this historical advantage.

What the experiment measured

95.1%

Historical points
A win is 1 point. A draw is ½.

Opposing compositions: 48
Battles in this comparison: 864
Opponent-panel 95% interval: 92.8%–97.2%
Cap or allocation-drop battles: 0

Each opposing composition spends at least 85% of the test budget. Each opposing composition has equal weight. Repeated seeds and swapped seats are not independent opponent strategies. The interval describes this tested panel, not ranked players or a guaranteed result.

Formation sensitivity · the same roster under three placement policies
Test policy	Historical points
Planned defense · front-row offense	97.9%
Random legal defense · randomized Nexus	97.6%
Planned defense · randomized full-depth offense	89.9%

Scores pool many placements. None of these numbers is a result for the editable starter layout linked above. They compare both armies’ applied Nexus damage, not total DPS.

Evidence source and reproducibility

Frozen run: validation-20260906
Stage: validation
Roster: r-b5076bdc9f8692db7d35

Download the compact evidence snapshot, including source SHA-256 hashes. Read the method and limitations.