Scratching the Surface: the role of factions

We've focused on presenting Scratch as a rules light game mostly because when you come to people with your pockets turned out and ask them to try your game and give feedback, you want to make the game seem as approachable as possible. Asking for 20 minutes of your time is a lot simpler than asking you to gather 3-5 friends and invest an afternoon. The reality, though, is that Scratch has a lot of nuanced complexity hidden away in its rules. We're going to spend a few articles looking at some of those complexities in a little series aptly named, Scratching the Surface. [Just a warning, I sort of enjoy puns...] First up is the role of factions.

Factions play an important role in the meta-narrative of the game (that of warring armies) and also serves to break the game down into more discrete chunks which facilitates understanding and mastery. While both of those roles are really important, I want to save in-depth discussion of them for another time. Today we'll just look at how factions interact with the rules and impact game play.

Tendencies
Each faction tends to have higher numbers on a single side. For example, Monster tends to be higher on top and Kingdom on bottom. This stemmed from an old draft of the game in which each of the four stats were named. Beginning at the top and moving clockwise, they were power, morale, tactics, and troop (basically sheer numbers). Early powers referenced and sometimes modified the stats (like a fear based power that reduced troop and morale of adjacent cards) but they tended to muddy game play. Eventually, we realized that we had culled the last power that referenced specific stats and so the stat names were also culled.

During the game, tendencies help you strategize. If your deck is heavy in one faction, you might try to anchor the game on a certain side. For example, if your deck has a lot of Monsters (top tendency), you might decide to start the game and play in the top middle with a Kingdom card (tendency bottom). Since all subsequent cards have to share a side, this anchors the game at the top of the grid. Your monsters will then often be able to pit their top stat against the exposed undersides of cards.

Factions also help you take a mental snapshot of your opponent's deck. In match-play, you'll have an idea of what cards your opponent has after the first game. If you get the impression that your opponent is Wild heavy and you are trying to decide between one of two potential plays, you might inform your decision by assuming your opponent's strongest cards will have their biggest numbers on the right.

Deck Building
Factions afford a few considerations during deck building or drafting. In addition to the ability to anchor the game discussed above, you'll want at least a few cards of the same faction if you plan to use the Champion! power (+1 all stats while adjacent to 2+ cards of a specific faction). It isn't necessarily required since Champion! triggers even if your opponent controls the card, but it helps.

The more important role of factions is probably in selecting uniques because only one unique from any faction may be in play at a time. We'll talk more about this rule when we Scratch the Surface on card frequency. One really neat thing that people tend to discover, though, is that putting multiple uniques from the same faction in your deck is not necessarily a bad move. In fact, even putting duplicates of the same unique is not a bad idea. If you really love playing Dragon, putting two of them in your deck dramatically increases the likelihood that you'll have one ready to play. The reason it isn't a bad play is that you will almost never run out of cards, so having to discard that extra Dragon (or any blocked unique) is really only as punitive as playing a single round down one card. The payout (having the unique when you need it) is far greater than the penalty (playing a round down a card).

Game Play
Most of the impact on game play has been covered above with one exception. That is, playing uniques defensively to try and block your opponent's ability to play uniques of the same faction offensively. If after the first match you learn that your opponent has two Dragons in his deck and you have a Hydra that isn't ideal but could be played, you might want to play the Hydra just to block his Dragons. Remember, if you're behind on points during match-play you get to decide who goes first after looking at your hand. You could force your opponent to go first (and recall that uniques cannot be played as the first card) to ensure that you get to play your Hydra as the second card.

All of this feeds one final tactical suggestion--sometimes you might want to hold onto a card you could discard (like that second Dragon) just to hide your strategy from your opponent.

Surface Scratched!
Hopefully that puts a little more insight into how factions, a seemingly simple addition to the game, add layers of tactical complexity that slowly emerge as you move from a new enthusiast to an old-hat at Scratch.