Lord of the Hundreds

Lead your savage horde, keep the Warlord in the fight, and smother the Woodland under an iron mob.

Easy

Background

The Lord of the Hundreds is a rat warlord who has whipped a vast, undisciplined horde into a conquering force. You arrive with a single powerful Warlord piece and a mob of warriors ready to overwhelm whatever stands in your path.

Unlike other factions you have no permanent infrastructure to build and protect. Your power is raw and mobile — a swelling mob, roaming strongholds, and a Warlord whose ever-shifting mood reshapes your strategy each turn. The Woodland does not kneel to your empire; it breaks under the weight of your boots.

How you win

You score victory points each Evening through Oppression — the more clearings you rule that contain at least one of your pieces and zero enemy pieces, the more points you collect. The table scales sharply: one or two oppressed clearings earns 1 point, three or four earns 2, five earns 3, and six or more earns 4.

You can also score a point whenever your Hoard tracks are full and you are forced to discard a gained item. Staying aggressive, spreading your warriors and mob tokens, and stripping enemy pieces from every clearing you control is the direct path to 30.

How they play

Your faction revolves around three interlocking systems: the Warlord, the Hoard, and the Mob.

The Warlord is a single special piece that sits among your warriors. Each Birdsong you choose one of up to eight mood cards — Wrathful, Relentless, Stubborn, Bitter, Jubilant, Rowdy, Grandiose, or Lavish — each granting a different power for the turn. As items fill your Hoard, moods whose matching item sits in your Hoard become unavailable, narrowing your options and forcing adaptation.

The Hoard replaces a normal Crafted Items box with two tracks: Command (boots, sacks, coins — up to 4 items) and Prowess (hammers, tea, swords, crossbows — up to 4 items). More items on each track raise the track's value, giving you more actions per Daylight. When a track is full and you would gain another item, permanently remove any item from it and score 1 VP.

The Mob is your area-denial and engine. During Birdsong, mob tokens already on the board Raze every enemy building and token in their clearing, then roll a die to spread to an adjacent clearing. During Evening you spend cards to Incite new mobs in clearings where you have warriors.

In Daylight you split your actions between Command the Hundreds (move warriors, battle, or place strongholds — up to Command times) and Advance the Warlord (move the Warlord with warriors and battle — up to Prowess times). Strongholds let you craft cards and generate extra recruits each Birdsong.

Strengths

✓
Your warrior pool is enormous and you recruit more every Birdsong — one per stronghold and a burst equal to your Prowess value in the Warlord's clearing. High Prowess lets you flood a contested clearing with fresh bodies faster than most factions can respond.
✓
Mob tokens do your dirty work for free at the top of every Birdsong. Each mob that survives a round razed every enemy building and token from its clearing before you spend a single action. Spreading mobs across key clearings forces opponents into constant, expensive cleanup.
✓
Eight mood options cover a wide tactical range — extra hits when attacking, damage reduction when defending, snowballing mob placement, free warriors from discarded tokens, and more. Choosing the right mood for each board state gives you a meaningful edge turn after turn.

Weaknesses

!
The Warlord is the heart of your engine. While you recruit primarily in the Warlord's clearing and your best moods revolve around it, a faction that focuses fire on that one clearing can push the Warlord off the board, triggering the Anoint step and costing you position and tempo.
!
Every item you acquire from the board removes one potential mood from your Birdsong menu. A stocked Hoard is powerful, but it means your opponents can read you more easily — they know which moods you cannot pick and plan around the ones that remain.
!
You only score for clearings that contain your pieces and no enemy pieces. Opponents can deny your Evening points at low cost by dropping a single warrior or building into your clearings. Keeping contested clearings clean demands constant military investment.

Tips & tricks

Tip
Mob tokens take a full turn to act — they raze on the next Birdsong, not the turn you place them. Incite mobs in Evening targeting clearings you plan to contest in two turns, not clearings you need clear today.
Tip
Wrathful is strongest when you are the attacker and expect to fight. Stubborn matters most when opponents are hunting the Warlord. Jubilant compounds your mob spread when you are already present in many clearings. Match your mood to the actual board each Birdsong — don't default to the same pick every turn.
Tip
Command governs how many times you can move, battle, or place strongholds. Prowess governs Warlord activations and recruitment. Let one track fall too far behind and your turn becomes predictable. Aim to keep both values climbing in rough parallel.
Tip
The Looter ability lets you forgo rolled hits when attacking in exchange for stealing one item from the defender's Crafted Items box if you win the clearing. Against item-dependent factions like the Vagabond or River Folk, this is a devastating exchange — you gain Hoard value while gutting their engine.

Walk through a turn →

↑ Back to Root overview