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THE FIELD NOTES · CRITTERFRONT

Hermit King and Treant: the historical shell

A historical reference for a remarkably efficient taunt-and-scythe pair. Hermit King has since been nerfed, so the old score is not a current recommendation of equal strength.

Test budget12g
Net roster investment12g
Base-copy purchase total20g
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.

Historical reference · 2 DEPLOYED RECRUITS

The exact roster

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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 20g purchase reference, not 12g net investment.

What the families activate

Attacking threats

  • Ironhide: 2 distinct families · 2-family bonus

Defending roles

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

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: keep Hermit King reachable so enemies can engage its taunting shell, and cover that approach with Treant’s range-one scythe.
  • Treant hits the target hex and its two lateral neighboring attack hexes. This pair has only one Hatcher family and no built-in summon source, so do not expect a self-starting growth engine.

YOUR ATTACKING MARCHERS

Plan the approach

  • The two distinct Ironhide families provide marching Plate; Hermit King’s fifth-shot reflection works only while its Plate remains active.
  • Keeping Treant near a friendly marcher can enable its death-triggered healing, but this two-unit roster offers few such triggers.

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.

  1. Suggested collection priority, not a tested buying sequence: view four-star Hermit King as an expensive copy commitment, even though its base purchase price is low.
  2. Hermit King requires eight base copies and Treant requires two. Twelve net gold does not include rerolls, liquidity or the difficulty of securing those copies from the shared pool.

Where it can struggle

Recorded matchup notes

What the experiment measured

99.8%

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

Opposing compositions
48
Battles in this comparison
864
Opponent-panel 95% interval
99.4%–100.0%
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 policyHistorical points
Planned defense · front-row offense100.0%
Random legal defense · randomized Nexus100.0%
Planned defense · randomized full-depth offense99.3%

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-76be931cd2226cf99f85

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

A different direction to try

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