THE FIELD NOTES · CRITTERFRONT

Five Hatchers: the recursive summon engine

All five Hatcher families combine protected summons, recursive Bunnie copies and Treant growth. Strong against broad opposition, but with a demonstrated mixed-army counter.

Test budget27g

Net roster investment27g

Base-copy purchase total32g

Round rules testedRound 7

Net investment deducts merge refunds from the purchase total. 0g 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.

Advanced · 6 DEPLOYED RECRUITS

The exact roster

Bomb

Star II · 2 base copies

Nightveil / Blaster

One-shot area damage and stuns; neither form has normal attacks.

Bunnie

Star II · 2 base copies

Swiftclaw / Hatcher

Persistent recursive marching copies and adjacent-kill bonus-gold chances on defense.

Egg

Star II · 2 base copies

Brood / Hatcher

Recurring defensive Hatchlings and a final-death marching shield.

Hydra

Star I · 1 base copy

Evergrowth / Hatcher

The fifth distinct Hatcher family and a once-per-battle marching recovery.

Petal

Star II · 2 base copies

Nightveil / Hatcher

Battlefield-wide two-hit protection for newly created allied summons.

Treant

Star II · 2 base copies

Ironhide / Hatcher

Scythe attacks and compounding growth from allied summons anywhere on the battlefield.

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 32g purchase reference, not 27g net investment.

What the families activate

Attacking threats

Nightveil: 2 distinct families · 2-family bonus

Defending roles

Hatcher: 5 distinct families · 5-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 Egg time to produce Hatchlings and position Treant to cover the route at range one.
Five different Hatcher families create three Guardlings with their own three-hit shields. Petal can stand elsewhere: its summon shielding has no combat-row or adjacency requirement.
Try Bomb where marchers are likely to be near its own or adjacent hexes after five seconds; the tower is removed after exploding.

YOUR ATTACKING MARCHERS

Plan the approach

Keep the original Bunnie alive long enough to duplicate. Each copy is a full recursive copy that can make more copies; the parent stays alive.
Bunnie copies remain summons and deal no Nexus damage. The original marchers still need a route through to score breaches.

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: fill the five distinct Hatcher identities before treating repeated copies as extra faction progress.
This exact guide uses six deployment slots, including Bomb. Its 27-gold net investment does not imply it fits an earlier round’s smaller board capacity.

Where it can struggle

A large summon count is not the same as Nexus pressure; protected copies can still produce a long draw.
Recursive Bunnie engines can stress the shared combatant cap. The audit measures that separately from strength and does not propose removing recursive copies.

Recorded matchup notes

The separate targeted counter panel reduced this army to 44.9% points. The Wyrm/Petal guide beat it in all six direct tested battles.
It still scored 82.6% points against 48 unseen holdout opponents. Targeted counters and broad-opponent strength answer different questions.

What the experiment measured

82.6%

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

Opposing compositions: 48
Battles in this comparison: 864
Opponent-panel 95% interval: 77.1%–87.6%
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	84.2%
Random legal defense · randomized Nexus	83.5%
Planned defense · randomized full-depth offense	80.0%

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-9aceaed88303ae4f0d6d

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