[Gittin Gud] Riverfolk Company Advanced Guide for Root

[Music] whoops! wrong tape. [Crappy chiptune jingle] [Music] Rivers. the super  highways of America's oceans. we live in an aquatic age. a  Utopia of freedom on the fjords. these homegrown Innovations represent only 7% of  our nation's landmass, yet transport the goods services and coal mine tailings our modern  Industries desperately need with exciting new affluents being invented every day our  underfunded river system just can't keep up with our growing greatness L Trina regional manager  for

the riverfolk company is a world famous...? We you heard it here first, folks! America needs more Rivers call your representative today and demand they replace our aging infrastructure  with the thoroughfares of the future the riverfolk company is the most social faction  in route designed around the notion of selling services to your opponents success with this  faction rides on your ability to convince the other players that supporting you is their best  interest this Reliance on the generosi

ty of our enemies not only makes the otter one of the  game's most engaging factions to play but it's also their biggest heal in fact even a simple  Google search exposes just how large and pendulous this it means what the OTS have 15 Warriors  which is respectable we start with only four of them on the board which is mid we take all of  our actions through funds meaning that our action economy is virtually uncapped we draw cards as a  daylight action giving us the best card economy in the entir

e game we ignore rule whenever we're  moving along the river and we're arguably the best crafting faction in the entire game lastly  our trading posts are a major source of victory points that opponents can't actually stop us  from placing on the downsides however we depend on these other factions using our services in a  way that benefits us half of our Warrior Supply is going to be in our funds box most of the game  we have maybe the most expensive recruiting of any faction we have a large gap

between the VP on our  Faction board and the VP that we'll need in order to win Advanced setup nerfed the river folk  harder than any other faction and last lastly our services are frequently part of an opponent's  wind condition and there's not really much we can do to stop that here's the plan in the broadest  possible Strokes the otter game plan is thus we make as many early sales as we possibly can  holding on to those Warriors as long as we're able we use the early game to draw cards and 

craft as many things as we can get away with we place our trading posts only one at a time  using our own funds and only when we need it to craft something we drew we use use the Garrison  Warriors from those trade posts to accumulate a death ball of ERS that we'll need for Rule and  battle we make our way to 18 to 20 points using as few funds as we can get away with we avoid  getting ourselves killed or forced into policing someone else and once we've reached the end game  we dump all those for

eign funds to place as many unblockable trading posts as we can hopefully  reaching 30 points in the process since they form such an integral part of our strategy let's  talk about those funds for a moment just like in real life the biggest thing standing between us  and our hopes and dreams is money sadly us rugged individualists don't get to be born with 30 points  we're Otter Not Elon muskrats we have to earn that [ __ ] our success depends on how efficiently we  can convert our funds into po

ints because they're reusable the value of each fund actually decreases  with time since you have fewer turns to make use of those funds we'll need to spend funds to craft  and to mass Warriors but the longer we can hold on to those funds before doing so the more value  will'll get get out of them overall holding on to foreign Warriors and our funds both limits our  opponent's board presence and is an effective form of passive policing picture the charismatic  Eerie turmoil early because they're

missing three Warriors or a mole player who's been flooding  you who now has no Warriors left to rule or build now on the topic of holding on to foreign  funds as long as we can I'd like to talk about stingy OTS stingy ERS refers to the approach  of taking whatever funds you're given at the beginning of the game and keeping them forever  stinginess brings guaranteed access to funds better agency by not depending on your opponents  and more passive policing by virtue of holding on to their [ __ 

] longer friendliness or making and  keeping quidd proo agreements with your opponents means propping up other table threats to drive  counter purchases getting more use out of the foreign funds that you're given and building more  positive table relationships overall I personally am a proponent of stinginess friendliness is not  an equal agree ment especially in a competitive game it's a prisoners dilemma where the only  winner is the first person who reneges on their deal now I will absolutely

agree that making  deals and interacting with opponents is the major draw of playing otter but holding on to the  funds is simply better for you in a competitive context I don't regret lying to all of you even  with completely trustworthy opponents There Will and evitably come a point where one of you must  Rene egg on your deal in order to preserve your chances of winning the game save yourselves  the time and just kidnap that [ __ ] turn one if you're spending the funds that you're  given eac

h turn then your action economy is never increasing hoarding the funds Nets  you more funds each turn from protectionism by spending those foreign funds to recruit  or place trade posts you're giving up other options by returning those Warriors things  that you could use on actions card draw and crafting these lost opportunities are more  efficient use of your funds and relying on them for these agreements can leave you  lacking in the end game no matter what your approach people really only ben

efit  from a limited number of purchases in any given game more often than not people asking  for their funds back have already finished shopping if you've been playing the otter for  any length of time you may be aware that they used to be pretty high on the tier list I  say used to because they're one of the only Factions that actually got worse with your  Rel pie of advanced setup under basic setup everyone at the table started with three random  cards after having chosen their faction if you

r hand sucked for your faction buying from the  otter was the only way to fix it in time under Advanced setup however everyone gets to pick  three cards from a set of five since there's only 54 cards in the deck the table now gets  to see just about 40% of the deck before the game has even begun I still think that ad set  is better for everyone overall but when you're playing as otter it makes Milling the deck in  the first few turns even more important while dividend plays are quite a bit worse

while we're  on the top of funds let's talk about the services we'll be selling in order to generate them our  cards are the number one way we're going to make sales in every game people generally only care  about cards your goal as an otter player is to have a hand full of craftables and ambushes as  often as you're able if your hand looks really good setting prices at three will force your  opponents to choose between them Excel ating your economy or leaving you to craft all those  cards and

gain all those points choosing whether to craft all those good cards or keep them to  yourself for a turn is a important distinction a strong riverfolk hand presents an unspoken  threat if you don't buy someone else might in spite of the obvious versatility people pretty  much never buy Riverbats there simply aren't that many situations where using the river is more  advantageous than taking a normal turn most often opponents will only buy Riverbats if they  need to escape from a corner or if th

ey're going to win the game on that turn mercenaries is our  most complex and divisive ability it allows other players to use your Warriors for battle and rule  during daylight this daylight restriction means that lizards will never really be able to use  this no matter how desperately they may want to for us as the otter mercenaries is a promising  prospect on paper only let's imagine that your otter ball is sitting on an enemy clearing with  mercenaries priced at three you gain three funds tak

e out some enemy cardboard and save yourself  some actions if someone were to buy sounds like a pretty good deal right the problem lies in just  how quickly your losses can and will exceed the funds that you've gained if the defender has  an ambush your Patron certainly isn't going to play one of theirs to spare you from losing  three or more otters in the first battle alone no your Patron wants you to lose Warriors they've  just weakened two of their opponents at the same time for a lower cost

than if they' done the  fighting themselves in fact when playing as any other faction mercenaries is my preferred way  to police OTS you just wait until they sit on a strong opponent buy mercenaries and spend your  turn wiping out the whole clearing in most games I personally price mercs at four and leave it there  the entire game however so long as you understand the risks involved you're free to price it however  you like you can only go wrong if someone actually calls you out in spite of this

risk there are  ways to get out ahead when using mercenaries and they all rely on correctly calculating the  value of your funds against what you stand to lose one situation I found where mercenaries can  actually shine is when one of your opponents needs policing despite the appearance of our many  actions and warriors we never want to police on behalf of the table spending all those  actions to move and losing our Warriors in battle battle is a cost that we rarely ever will  recoup however if

we're nearing the end game and we're no longer as dependent on our Warriors  mercenaries can be an ideal situation spend your turn farming all the points you can via  crafting and Otter fund trade posts then end your turn sitting your otter ball on top of the  policing Target without battling your opponents then need to buy mercenaries from you in order  to police the target spending their actions to do so while also feeding you multiple funds that  you can use to close out the game lastly I'd

like to address the strategy colloquially known as CAT  tax here because mercenaries is involved the catac strategy involves sitting on someone else's  stuff in the very early turns of the game and blackmailing that player into buying mercenaries  if they want to proceed with their normal setup the CAT tax moniker of course comes from the  fact that you usually see this done against a mares player's Sawmills I personally do not  advocate for this approach least of all because I'm a Relentless ca

t apologist and this is a bit  of a dick move a cat player who pays the CAT tax is giving you a huge material advantage that  will only make their own life worse in the long run but a cat player who responds by destroying  your starting Warriors will put you in a huge material deficit while you've just eliminated  one of your best customers this approach also exposes you to the risk of someone else buying  mercenaries and in order to [ __ ] both of you welcome to riverfolk company marketing 101 

before we begin if the prospect of proactively convincing people to buy your services makes  you uncomfortable then I can assure you there's nothing to worry about you see just like anything  else in life nothing you say or do will ever ever matter ever the first and most valuable thing you  can do is simply remind people you exist each turn I personally like to end my turns by announcing  what cards I have in my hand as well as their current prices I also like to draw random garbage  in tablet

op simulator and do other goofy [ __ ] that comes to mind to draw attention to myself  at the start of every turn a lot of UT players will tend to coers people with empty statements  like ooh wouldn't it be nice to have this bird Ambush but nobody really cares unless they were  already planning to buy it the better way to go about it is to put in the work to actually identif  a valuable course of action that card enables them to take and suggest that instead something like  if I may make a sugge

stion you could buy this bird Ambush at to which allows you to fight the  four moles here in this clearing without needing to recruit or move then if you aren't ambushed but  you roll badly you could spend the bird Ambush for an action to finish the job concrete suggestions  like this with measurable benefits make a much stronger impression on people's judgment and  they compare much more favorably to the Warriors they'll lose in payment as a Counterpoint to  this sometimes opponents will approa

ch you with offers like well I'd buy that car if you drop  your prices first these opponents are full of [ __ ] if your prices actually mattered in their  decision- making they wouldn't be discussing the prospect at all this principle applies to you as  well telling people things like I'll go police the leader if you buy from me isn't fooling anyone  an experienced opponent is able to calculate both the cost benefit ratio of their card purchases as  well as the needss of your turn based on the b

oard state it should come as no surprise to you that  our best maps are the ones where the river has the most impact winter and Mountain are prime  examples of this with mountain also providing us the opportunity for easy points from the  tower and passes while the lake map may seem good for us the raft acts as competition for  our services dampening our overall income the best place for our starting Warriors is probably  whichever River clearing we can use for crafting that won't get us killed

right away you probably  already know what a good starting hand will look like for the Otters but while you're drafting  that hand there's no reason you shouldn't be negotiating with your opponents as to which cards  you should keep your hand is public even during your setup steps and this includes all five cards  you draw in advanced setup see which cards people might be interested in buying from you and tailor  your hand accordingly the last step in our setup is setting our prices and it's imp

ortant to know  that the price we set for our services either here or through the rest of the game sends a specific  message right at the beginning of the game is just about the only time that setting your prices at  one is actually worthwhile literally any purchases we get before our first turn is pure profit this  is why we are one of the only Factions that enjoys being last in turn order because we can then  optimize the number of First Turn purchases the one exception to this idea is the Vag

abond in  your game because they exhaust items to buy the vegabond normally has to skip turn actions if they  want to buy something on their next turn on turn one however the Vagabond has three items they can  use to buy that will get refreshed before their turn even begins it cost them literally nothing to  buy at three so if you have a hand of cards that you rather didn't fall into your opponent's hands  like coins or swap meat a starting price of three is frequently a good call or set a price

of four  and try and prevent people from buying them at all contrary to other factions we don't really have  an engine to build on the first couple of turns and our funds will never be more valuable to us  than they are on this first turn for your first turn as OTS you can't go wrong by committing all  of your funds just to draw cards not only does this fill up our hand so we can make the best  use of our most important service but it also starts building the card Advantage our faction  can lev

erage like no one else any of you who've played Magic the Gathering already know if you're  touching more cards than your opponent you're more likely to put your hands on the cards you need  to win taking all of the best cards so that no one else can have them is our faction's greatest  strength as it fuels our scoring pressures people into buying those cards and denies those cards  from our opponents with our first turn out of the way the question we have to answer for  ourselves for the rest o

f the game is what kind of Advantage we want to be building there's  two leading schools of thought here the first and most reliable approach is to keep leveraging our  card Advantage focusing on our card Advantage like this is reliable it drives opponents to buy from  us even if they're in intentionally avoiding it by virtue of the fact that we hold all of the  valuable cards or we've already put them in the discard it is a rational dare I say competitive  strategy except for the fact that you

need to actually draw those good cards in order for this  to actually work now let's say that you more of a risk taker an angel investor who doesn't need  critical thinking because they have Vision well you can try by our second offering dividends  anytime we start our turn with at least one Trade Post on the map and warriors in our funds  box we are given one Victory point for every two Warriors we have in there it's practically free  real estate if we're going to make dividends work as a strat

egy however then we want to use it when  people lack the resources to actually punish us for it ideally we start with our opponents making  a purchase or two then we place a Trade Post on our starting OT so that we have five Defenders  guarding our only post we use the odd numbered fund we have to draw cards then we just keep  skipping our term farming sweet sweet points the moment that anyone at the table then says  anything like we've got to do something about these OTS it's time to stop farmi

ng dividends  and play like a normal human being depending on who you are you may probably have a different  opinion on whether using dividends is worthwhile in your games the ability to gain points for  doing literally nothing is pretty appealing so you might be asking why is it that dividends is  so unpopular trade disruption we can avoid trade disruption 90% of the time just by committing all  of our funds each turn and that way we never need to worry about protecting our trade posts the  num

ber one way that trade disruption happens is a situation like this imagine your opponents have  been fighting and there's some tasty unprotected cardboard on the other side of the map it's not  worth trudging over there for it so you drop a post and fight with the warrior there right you  fool you absolute [ __ ] you were given but a single pitard and you chose to be hoist upon it  now you're getting ambushed and you're about to lose not only half your funds but half your  entire godamn turn fin

ancially or emotionally you will never recover if you absolutely have  to put a Trade Post at risk like this make sure that your battle is the Last Action you take  this turn so that your funds are not at risk there's one other problem with dividends though  even if you do succeed at farming up to 10 or so points from dividends you've sacrificed all  the actions and card Advantage you could have gained by taking normal turns it's been a few  turns you and your friends have reached about 10 point

s the board has filled up with Warriors  and cardboard and purchasers from your opponents are but a distant memory this is how you know  you've officially entered the mid game this is the most challenging phase of the game for us with  protectionism as our only source of income there's no safety net if we overspend or need to replace  our Warriors our goal as the riverfolk company is to cross the 20 Victory Point threshold while  holding on to about three to four trade posts left uncrafted and a

s many funds as we can save in fact  one of the defining features of an otter mid game is having to avoid the many pitfalls we can be run  into the first of these is the Trap of otters as table police spending our entire turn moving  and fighting someone to then end up spending half our funds replacing Warriors is a bad deal  and opponents will never pay you enough to make it worthwhile traing across the map to police  someone is the number one way otter players lose games they could otherwise h

ave won our next  threat is Runaway opponents who might be out crafting you crafting is a major part of our wind  condition and we can't let someone else beat us to it if if someone else is threatening to get ahead  of you or is crafting more than you are breaking their kneecaps as early as possible is perhaps the  best and only time you should be policing anyone another threat is wasting actions move recruit  these do not score us points these are not words we understand you should be planning

your movement  carefully so you do as little of it as possible finding ourselves trapped away from the river is  one of the most devastating situations we can be in if we get overruled away from the River it's  going to cost us big time in actions and warriors to make our way back next some players will  happily flood you with their funds because they know they can outrace you in points especially  if they know you won't be able to convert their funds into valuable trade posts whenever you see 

this you need to react quickly to these situations because you won't be able to place TPS using your  own funds as normal use the surplus funds that you're given to Mill the deck or to recruit and  destroy your generous Patron if they're getting ahead of you the most competitive players know  that rivero's greatest weakness is their Warriors and they will force you into recruiting as a means  to get their funds back the easiest solution to this is to avoid players who've been overfeeding  you wi

thout flooding but if this isn't possible then take the initiative from them first and  weaken their position before they can do the same to yours newer players who've been burned  by the riverfolk in Prior games often resort to perhaps the most direct and simple form of  riverol counterplay just don't liy the choice of refusing to interact with us is disproportionately  effective for how easy it is we need purchases in order to compete this baks the question in a truly  competitive game how muc

h should our opponents be buying the answer is a lot more than you would  think let's picture a four-player game if the table is United to starve out the otter they've  successfully eliminated one player from Victory contention at no cost to themselves now let's  picture the same situation but one of those opponents is willing to break the anti- autter  compact every card they purchase further their own advantage while also propelling the otter is  a threat the table now has to solve you actuall

y eliminate two players from contention by choosing  to buy from the otter for us as riverfolk players though it's important to know that refusing to  buy is a prisoners dilemma if even one player is clever enough to break the pack for their own  benefit it makes it far more likely the other players will have to pry as well the secret of  optimal card purchases is this if somebody other than you or the otter won you weren't buying  enough lastly well there's not a lot of ways to get more funds i

n the mid game there is one method  that dares not speak its name and that's because export bad when people argue about rebalancing the  game they like to bring up things they feel could use improvements things like impeded age agents  the Vagabond Quest deck fear of the faithful cats export is the one feature so uniquely terrible  that people literally forget it exists when they're discussing balance changes in brief if  you ever find yourself crafting a card you could instead choose to just th

row that card away in  exchange for this decision you get to place one Warrior into your payments box meaning that you're  immediately canceling protectionism one Warrior regardless of how expensive that card was to craft  if OTS represent the influence of corporations in the Woodland then export represents an investment  in cryptocurrency that your uncle told you about the one case where export does have a use is  dealing with opponents who are flooding you if you know they're going to make ano

ther purchase  you could export some otter funds into your payments box first this might be the only time  export has value ever but if you some kind of lunatic trying to break new ground on forbidden  strategies perhaps you could try exporting once per turn and leave your car prices at one for the  rest of the game who knows maybe those purchases will work out somehow you've held on to your funds  as best you can and you've made it past 20 points this means that you finally reached the end game

  the very first thing you should do once anyone at the table reaches 188 to 20 points is set all of  your prices at Four and leave them there for the rest of the game one of our greatest weaknesses  is that we can't prevent someone from winning on the backs of our services outright but we can  make it as difficult as possible with high prices and an empty hand next the endgame is where we  are no longer as reliant on placing trade posts using our own funds as a result we no longer  need to be a

s defensive of our Warriors and can fight all we like without having to worry about  repercussions repercussions leave percussions percussions in the worst case we can always  recruit the bare minimum number of Warriors we need for Trade Post and battle lastly we then  proceed to our secret weapon like a Walmart on Black Friday our trading posts are powerful and  dangerous in equal measure and just like Walmart they're the Insidious festering rot that will  bring about the end of all civilizatio

n ation if you reach the end game with a good number  of foreign funds in tow then you can rest easy because these funds allow you to place a trade  poost in someone else's clearing and there's nothing they can do to stop it this unilateral  power enables the otter to win games without having so much as a single piece on the board and  our opponents know and fear it the ideal otter end game involves spending all of our remaining funds  to jump from 20 straight to 30 using trading posts and craft

ing while watching as our opponent Souls  vacate their impotent bodies now it wouldn't be a corporate presentation without at least one dry  boring PowerPoint yes this is a recreation of a real slide I was once forced to endure yep it's  time for our matchups and C preferences cats lizards and moles are our best customers Birds  rats crows Vagabond and keepers are okay but they don't buy that often expect the Woodland Alliance  to never buy in fact the Woodland alliance with their limited numbe

r of funds shouldn't ever  buy from us and if they do you should never return them birds and rats are the two factions  that will fight us the most and lizards will be pretty willing to convert US if given the chance  if you find that someone like moles or lizards are flooding you then it's your job to punish them  bombs and sympathy are a major threat if we ignore them but we draw our cards in daylight which means  that we can expose plot pretty much for free the ability to go around the map li

ke this guessing  Corvette plots can Farm us from points but it's not as efficient as just playing normally more  importantly bullying root worse faction is kind of a dick move and if you make a habit out of it  you'll learn very soon that those Crow players are just as capable of bombing you before your  first turn even begins lastly we get to our un important cards and there's not too much to be  said when it comes to craftables we want all of them end of story propaganda a bureau Master  engr

avers coffins saos and planners are our s tier cards each one of these either strengthens our  existing game plan or solves a major weakness of our faction command Warren cobbler Yuri igra and  League of adventurous mice give us more actions which is always great especially when those  actions are free sappers armors partisans and ambushes make us an unappealing Target which  is good especially when people have to pay us to remove those defenses Better brough Bank  charm offensive tax collector

and boat Builders are all cards that compete with our services we  want to prevent people from having these in the long run but it's never really worth using these  cards ourselves Marine Brokers sand and deliver swap meat and false orders are all cards that we  don't want to get hit by or we definitely don't want people to have when it comes to swap meat  especially otter are disproportionately targeted because opponents know when there's something  worth stealing in our hand favor cards we're

one of the factions that has the best chance  of crafting these but it still takes us quite a while before we get there that said nothing  says forced to purchase it four like a favor in your hand and two matching trade posts informant  tunnels and boat Builders are three cards that we are literally mechanically incapable of using if  we craft them is still funny to do it though and that my buzzword addled Brethren is the riverfolk  company a faction that's seen its share of boom and bust but wh

ich still holds promise for those  bold enough to play it so for all you aspiring riverfolk Mains out there it doesn't matter  whether your Market is bull bear otter or twunk to me you are all Tash I'd like to thank you all for  watching and until next time be good to each other