THE FIELD NOTES · CRITTERFRONT

Mushroom and Seed: sustain through the lane

A compact Evergrowth pair built around poison, route slows and marching recovery. It trades burst for time on target.

Test budget6g

Net roster investment6g

Base-copy purchase total8g

Round rules testedRound 1

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.

Approachable · 2 DEPLOYED RECRUITS

The exact roster

Mushroom

Star II · 2 base copies

Evergrowth / Blaster

Poison-cloud damage on defense and rechargeable hit blocks while marching.

Seed

Star II · 2 base copies

Evergrowth / Binder

Line-based movement control on defense and healing sprouts on the march.

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 8g purchase reference, not 6g net investment.

What the families activate

Attacking threats

Evergrowth: 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: aim Seed’s vine line along a useful part of the route and let Mushroom cover that slowed approach.
Mushroom’s cloud needs time to work. Look for sustained coverage rather than assuming its first poison tick will stop a leak.

YOUR ATTACKING MARCHERS

Plan the approach

The two distinct Evergrowth families activate continuous marcher regeneration.
Try Seed ahead of a damaged ally on the same route so its one-use sprouts have a recipient. A full-health unit will not consume a healing sprout.

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: build one two-star Mushroom and one two-star Seed when their offers appear.
Four base copies become two deployed units. Six net gold excludes offer-search costs and is not a guaranteed round-one purchase path.

Where it can struggle

Fast breaches can outrun the time needed for poison and recovery to pay off.
Healing prevention and disrupted vine coverage are reasonable threats to test, not measured universal counters.

Recorded matchup notes

Dog/Pollen won the direct points comparison at 75% over twelve early-panel battles.
Mushroom/Seed scored 58.3% points against Dog/Mushroom, illustrating that early matchups do not form one simple strength ranking.

What the experiment measured

75.0%

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

Opposing compositions: 9
Battles in this comparison: 108
Opponent-panel 95% interval: 60.2%–86.1%
Cap or allocation-drop battles: 0

Only opponents spending all six gold enter this score; cheaper controls are excluded from this comparison. 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	63.9%
Random legal defense · randomized Nexus	80.6%
Planned defense · randomized full-depth offense	80.6%

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: finite-early-20260906
Stage: finite-panel
Roster: r-5d6ba15799b08d5b01f2

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