The Night Lydon Won With Cats
It was the restart of my board game group, and we were aggressively playing all of the expansion content we thought we'd never see — thank you, Sandy — when my friend Lydon decided he wanted to play Bubastis.
Whether it was because Lydon is partial to pets, or because of the pretty gold trim on the faction box, and if you know Lydon, you know he can't resist metallic gold trim, he became determined to learn this new weird cat faction. I know I normally talk about my own sessions, but Lydon's experience was more interesting than mine. The first game, he was devastated. There might have been a quick second game in there too; I only vaguely recall it because of how fast it went. But that third game, Lydon won. And not by a little. He dominated.
That doesn't happen. Going from losing brutally to dominating in three sittings, with the same faction, in the same group, that is the gameplay experience of Bubastis in a single sentence.
They're weird. They don't want to control your gates. They just want to be where you are, and sometimes you trip over them.
That's cats. That's Bubastis.
Bubastis Doesn't Play Your Game. She Plays Hers.
Great Cthulhu was the tortoise with teeth. Black Goat was the vine with teeth. Bubastis isn't an animal at all in the sense those other two were. She's a category error. She's a faction that opened the rulebook, read the chapter on area control, decided it didn't apply to her, and built her win condition out of the parts of the rules everyone else was ignoring.
Here is the thesis, and write it on the inside of your skull before you read another sentence of this guide: Bubastis is not trying to win an area-control game. She is trying to prevent everyone else from winning one.
That sounds like a hedge. It isn't. It's the entire shape of the faction. She has no gates of her own to build, defend, or score from. Her Power doesn't come from gates. It comes from her monsters generating 1 Power apiece during Gather Power, which means her economy is a flat ceiling and a flat floor, never spiking. Her Doom doesn't come from Rituals on her own gates because she has no gates to Ritual at. It comes from Ailurophobia (1 Doom per cat variety in an enemy-shared area) and from Bastet's Requires-Attention ritual when she's parked next to an enemy cultist.
Everything she does, every Cat she summons, every area she walks into, every spellbook she unlocks, is calibrated to one purpose: be in the way, score a quiet trickle of Doom while you do it, and never become the player the table decides to kill.
She's not the threat. She's the friction. She's the cat that sits on your work, knocks your pen off the desk, and walks away before you can swat at her. When you turn back around, the project's late and your boss is calling.
The Moon, Lunacy, and the Cats Who Cannot Capture Gates
Bubastis starts on the Moon. Not on the map. On the Moon. It's its own area, off-board, that you place within reach. She begins with six Earth Cats parked there, 8 Power, and one of the most idiosyncratic rule packages in Cthulhu Wars.
The mechanic that defines her, the one printed in bold on her faction card and named Lunacy, is the closest thing the game has to a "you read the rulebook wrong" trap card. Spellbooks and abilities that target Cultists also target her Earth Cats, as if they were Acolytes. Earth Cats can be Captured, can be sacrificed for spellbook requirements, can be the target of capture-based abilities, but they cannot Create or Control Gates. They never count as cultists for the Doom calculation. They never let you Ritual.
This combination is what makes Bubastis Bubastis. Her cheapest unit looks like a cultist to half the rulebook and a monster to the other half. They generate 1 Power apiece during Gather Power like a Bubastis monster, they can be Recruited onto the map by other Cats via Catabolism like a monster, but they get captured by enemy spellbooks like cultists. She has the supply of a cultist faction and the per-unit Power output of a monster faction and the gate count of zero.
The Moon itself plays by a different set of rules from the rest of the map. It counts as a land Area with a Bubastis-Controlled Gate for every purpose except that no other faction can ever seize it. No enemy gate can be built there. No enemy can move to the Moon under their own power. They can only get there if Bubastis drags them via Catnapping. But once an enemy unit is on the Moon, it can leave normally, and when it does, you gain the Power they spend on movement.
The Moon is permanent, unassailable, and a gate in name only, because no Bubastis gate is a real gate. You can't Ritual at the Moon. You can't score Doom off it the way Great Cthulhu scores Doom off the Pacific.
What the Moon is is a teleporter. Your Cats can move freely between the Moon and any map area, in either direction, like every area on the board shared a border with the Moon. That's the trick. You don't need gates because you don't need to control territory. You need to be everywhere all the time, and the Moon is how you get there.
The Cats, Ranked By What They Cost the Table
She has four varieties of cat plus Bastet, and you should not think about them in cost order. You should think about them in table-disruption order: what each one takes away from your opponents.
Earth Cat (cost 1, combat 0, 6 in roster). The chaff. The cultist-shaped thing. Generates 1 Power per Gather Power, can Recruit other Cats onto the map under Catabolism, and can be captured by enemy spellbooks. Spend Earth Cats like they're coming back, because at 1 Power each they basically are. Your most disposable unit and your most important one.
Cat from Mars (cost 2, combat 1, 2 in roster). The combat lever, paired with Zagazig. With Zagazig active, all rolled Pains become Kills and all rolled Kills become Pains, for both sides, which is exactly the kind of variance-swap that makes enemies not want to declare combat in an area where a Mars cat is sitting.
Cat from Saturn (cost 3, combat 2, 2 in roster). The defensive deterrent, paired with Savagery. Pay 1 Power, and every Cat from Saturn in the battle gets +4 combat for that fight. The math is so disgusting that the spellbook usually wins by existing, not by firing. Opponents see Saturn cats and route around them.
Cat from Uranus (cost 4, combat 3, 2 in roster). The murder finisher, paired with Predator. After any battle a Uranus cat was in, you pick one of the units the enemy lost and force them to eliminate a second unit of that type anywhere on the map. Two for one. This is also why Cat from Uranus is the Bastet bodyguard you want. See below.
Bastet (cost 6, Elder God, 1 in roster). Adds 1 fixed Kill to your combat total without rolling dice; the enemy must lower their Kill total by 1. She is an Elder God, so she doesn't roll combat dice ever. She's a flat-numbers piece in a game built around bucket-of-dice variance, and she breaks combat math just by being there. More on her in a moment.
Notice what's missing from that roster: a unit that generates Doom on its own. Notice what's missing from her play surface: a gate she controls. Every other faction wins by stacking Elder Signs on Rituals at gates they own. Bubastis doesn't have either component of that equation. She wins through Ailurophobia drips, through Bastet's Requires-Attention ritual, and through being so present that the rest of the table burns turns trying to deal with her instead of scoring Doom themselves.
The Six Spellbooks, In The Order You Should Take Them
Six spellbooks, six unlock requirements, and, like every faction in Cthulhu Wars, you will get all six in any real game. You have to. Combat as an Unlimited Action requires all six spellbooks, and the player who doesn't get all six has structurally given up on the late game, which is a thing only new players do. The question isn't whether you get them. The question is when, and in what order.
Order matters more here than for any other faction, because Bubastis's spellbook requirements double as your to-do list. She doesn't have an Awaken-the-GOO turn-2 line because half her spellbooks say "kill a Cat from Mars or Saturn" and "kill a Cat from Uranus". She's the only faction whose spellbook progression demands that she lose her own units in combat.
That's not a bug. That's the engine. The cost of Bubastis is your cats dying, and that is also the point.
Order matters in a tactical sense too, and this is the part most Bubastis players miss. Some spellbooks are functional immediately: the second you take them, your toolkit expands. Others are passive until later: they sit dormant until a trigger condition resolves at the end of the round, or until a future piece lands. When you're taking two spellbooks in the same round, take the immediately functional one first. Catabolism turns your Earth Cats into Recruit-anywhere kiosks the moment you take it; Ailurophobia does nothing until the Doom Phase at the end of the round. If you reverse the order, you've spent your Action turn holding a spellbook that hasn't activated yet, and skipped the chance to use the one that would have changed what you could do right now.
The other temporal trap is Catnapping. Its effect requires Bastet to be on the board and in the area you're Catnapping from. If you're not Awakening Bastet until Round 3, don't take Catnapping until Round 3 either. It's a dead spellbook until she lands, and there are five other spellbooks you can take first.
Catabolism (Ongoing). Earth Cats can Recruit monsters as if those monsters were Cultists, instead of needing to Summon them from a gate. Take this first in most games. It is the spellbook that solves the structural problem of "everything I want to deploy is stranded on the Moon". Once Catabolism is online, you walk an Earth Cat into a contested area, Recruit a Cat from Mars or Saturn onto the spot, and skip the cost of Moving from the Moon. Without Catabolism, every upper-tier cat costs you Power to summon at the Moon plus Power to move to where you need them. With Catabolism, your Earth Cats become deployment kiosks. Unlock requirement: as your Action, pay 2 Power. No requirement on units killed. So this is also the spellbook you can take on Turn 1 without spending a single cat to do it.
Ailurophobia (Doom Phase). Gain 1 Doom per Monster Cat Variety sharing any non-Moon Area with units from enemy Factions. Take this second on Turn 1 in nearly every game. This is your Doom generator, the single source of trickle-Doom that pays the bills for the first four rounds while you race to Bastet. The requirement is types, not bodies. If you have three Earth Cats sitting in an enemy area, that's still 1 Doom from Ailurophobia, not 3. If you have an Earth Cat, a Cat from Mars, and a Cat from Saturn each sharing an enemy area, that's 3 Doom. The structure of the spellbook tells you the structure of the faction: diversify your cats in enemy areas. Don't pile Earth Cats; spread varieties. Unlock requirement: a Cat is in every enemy Faction's Start Area; gain 1 Power per enemy Faction. Which leads us to the opener.
Catnapping (Action: cost 1). Choose any or all enemy Factions in Bastet's Area; move all their units from that area to the Moon. When an enemy unit on the Moon later leaves, you gain the Power they spend on movement. This is the scalpel, not the hammer, and it is the most misused spellbook in the Bubastis kit, both in when you take it and how you use it. Don't take Catnapping until Bastet is on the board or about to be: it requires her Area to fire, so until she's down the spellbook is a dead slot. And once it's online, use it on the player whose plan actually breaks, not for laughs. More on the usage rule after the openers.
Predator (Post-Battle). If a Cat from Uranus was in the Battle, you can select one Unit lost by the enemy and force them to eliminate a second unit of that type anywhere on the map. Two for one. The anywhere on the map clause is what makes this devastating. It doesn't matter how carefully an opponent spreads their units to protect against type-loss; if there's a second unit of that type on the board, you can eliminate it. The white-whale target is the Ancients specifically, because Extinction makes Yothan deaths permanent. A Predator chain on a Yothan removes two of their three Yothans from the game forever. Predator also bites against any faction with multiple high-cost monster types in play. Unlock requirement: a Cat from Uranus is Killed or Eliminated. So you only get Predator after you've lost one of your two Uranus cats, which means you only get it after combat that hurt you, and now you have one Uranus cat left to swing it with. That's tight. Plan accordingly.
Savagery (Pre-Battle). Pay 1 Power; all Cats from Saturn get +4 combat this battle. The deterrent spellbook: it usually does more work by being on the table than by being paid for. Unlock requirement: a Cat from Mars or Saturn is Killed or Eliminated.
Zagazig (Pre-Battle). If a Cat from Mars is in the Battle, all rolled Pains become Kills, and all rolled Kills become Pains, on both sides. A variance-swap that hurts whoever rolled more Kills than Pains, usually the attacker. Unlock requirement: as your Action, pay 2 Power. So Zagazig is also a no-cats-lost unlock, like Catabolism. The opener doesn't include Zagazig only because you should usually take Catabolism + Ailurophobia + populate-start-areas instead, but the requirement is friendly.
Bastet Comes Down On Round 3. Maybe Round 2 If You Made A Deal.
Bastet is the engine, and her summoning conditions are the bottleneck of the entire faction. To Awaken her you need:
- All four Cat varieties (Earth, Mars, Saturn, Uranus) in play.
- 6 Power, paid as the Awaken action.
- An Area containing no enemy Units to place her in.
I have never gotten Bastet down before Round 3 without a deal at the table. The only path to Round 2 Bastet runs through one of two doors. The first is capturing two enemy cultists in Round 1. Each captured cultist pushes 2 Power into your next round, so two captures move 4 Power across, and with your 8-Power Round 1 start you can land at 12 entering Round 2. Saturn cat (-2), Uranus cat (-4), Bastet (-6) = exactly 12. The second is negotiating a 2-Power donation from another player, which gets you from your end-of-round-1 Power level to that same 12. This is worth pushing for. Most players massively undervalue 2 Power. They treat it as the cost of a single Earth Cat. But for you, 2 Power on Round 2 is the difference between Bastet on Round 2 and Bastet on Round 3, and that is the difference between rituals starting at Doom Phase 2 and rituals starting at Doom Phase 3.
Negotiate hard. "I have to put a cat in your start area on Round 1 — that's Ailurophobia, I can't skip it — but it'll be a friendly one, no captures, no provocations. In exchange, pay me 2 Power on Round 2 and we have a deal." A player who thinks 2 Power is meaningless is a player who hasn't done the Bastet math. Find that player at every table.
But, and this is the part most aggressive Bubastis players ignore, it is not always correct to land Bastet on Round 2. Bastet on Round 2 means rituals start firing on the Doom Phase of Round 2. Rituals firing on Round 2 means you are visibly scoring Doom while every other faction is still building. Visibly scoring Doom early means you are the threat. And being the threat as Bubastis, a faction whose units are 0-3 combat and whose Great Old One doesn't roll a single combat die, is death.
If holding Bastet to Round 3 lets other players catch up enough that the table's attention spreads away from you, hold her to Round 3. Bubastis does not want to be the focus until she can defend herself, and Bubastis can never defend herself the way Great Cthulhu can. She defends by being annoying enough to ignore. Round 3 Bastet, with the rest of the table making moves of their own, is usually correct. Round 2 Bastet is correct only if you can land her in a position where she doesn't show up as a threat in the Doom math, which usually means a slightly delayed first ritual rather than firing it the same Doom Phase she awakens.
And once she's down, park a Cat from Uranus next to her. Predator-style monster punishment means no enemy wants to risk losing two of the same unit. The Uranus cat is Bastet's bodyguard, and as long as Predator is online, opponents will route their combat elsewhere. I have not yet seen a player lose two enemy Great Old Ones from a single Cat-from-Uranus Predator chain. I will, eventually. It's a personal goal of mine. Something I'd violate a truce for, just for the lols.
The Opener: Catabolism, Ailurophobia, and Cats in Every Enemy Start Area
Bubastis has effectively one opener and a small handful of variations on it. Here is the line.
Round 1 (8 Power, 6 Earth Cats on the Moon, no gates of your own):
- As your Action, pay 2 Power: take Catabolism. (-2 Power → 6.) Now your Earth Cats can Recruit monsters directly onto the map.
- Move Earth Cats from the Moon into every enemy Faction's start area. Each move costs 1 Power. With 4 other players at the table, that's 4 Power. (-4 → 2.) With 5+ players, you'll need to skip a start area or two. Pick the players whose start areas are most exposed.
- With your Cats now in every enemy start area, the Ailurophobia unlock condition triggers: gain 1 Power per enemy Faction. With 4 other factions at the table, that's +4 Power. (+4 → 6.) Take Ailurophobia. No Action cost; it's a passive unlock. (Note the order: Catabolism first, Ailurophobia second. Catabolism was functional the moment you took it; Ailurophobia doesn't fire until the Doom Phase. If you take them in the opposite order, you've spent your Action on a spellbook that won't do anything for the rest of the round, and skipped the chance to use the one that would have. Don't do this.)
- Optionally, attack 1-2 weakly defended enemy expansion gates with the Power you have left, picking up Earth Cat captures of any lone defending cultists. (Don't attack home gates with 3+ defenders: pointless, and it makes enemies.)
You end Round 1 with cats in every enemy start area, Ailurophobia unlocked, Catabolism unlocked, and somewhere between 2 and 6 Power going into Round 2 depending on how much combat you initiated.
You also end Round 1 with the table thinking you're harmless, which is the second-most-important thing to accomplish on the first round of a Bubastis game. The most important thing is the Power math above. But the second-most-important is the perception. Cats showing up in everyone's start area looks annoying, not threatening. It looks like the cat that sat down in the wrong armchair. Nobody attacks the cat in the armchair. They sigh, pick it up, set it down somewhere else, and move on.
That is the entire posture you are trying to project.
The First Mistake Lydon Made (And You Will Too)
In the very first game Lydon played, he was not aggressive enough. He set up cats carefully, kept them safe, built no threats, and lost very badly.
The next game, the one I only vaguely remember because of how fast it went, he attacked early but he attacked wrong. He put cats where he wanted to win. Players noticed, the table came for him, and Bastet died holding a quiet corner that Lydon thought was his.
Game three was the one where he won. The opener above. Cats in every start area. Catabolism + Ailurophobia. And then, the part that mattered, when he did pick fights, he picked them in areas where other players wanted to win. The Great Cthulhu player wanted the Pacific; Lydon put a cat there, declared combat, lost the cat, and unlocked Savagery off the death. The Yellow Sign player wanted Desecration on the East Coast; Lydon put a cat there, lost it to a counter-attack, unlocked Predator. The cats died exactly where the cats were supposed to die, in fights other players had already wanted to start, and the table thanked him for absorbing the damage.
This is the single most important strategic insight in the entire faction. I'm going to put it in italics and you should put it on a sticky note on your monitor: Attack where they want to win, not where you want to win. Your cats are spellbook fuel. Losing them is the engine. Losing them in fights other players already wanted is the free version of the engine. Losing them in fights you started in territory you wanted is the version that paints a target on your forehead.
Be the cat that knocks over the vase the other cat was about to knock over.
Have A Plan. Then Throw It Away. Then Throw It Away Again Because You're A Cat.
The Black Goat guide leaned hard on a principle I cribbed from a Cthulhu Wars maxim of mine: have an idea how you want to play, then look at the board and throw your plan out the window if it doesn't make sense. That maxim is true for every faction. It is doubly true for Bubastis, because Bubastis's plan is shaped by what the rest of the table is doing in a way no other faction's plan is.
A few principles, all Bubastis-specific:
Cats are spellbook fuel. Every cat you lose unlocks something or progresses toward something. Don't grieve over cats. Cats are how you pay for the engine. The only cat you grieve over is Bastet.
Combat doesn't win you the game. Combat stops other players from winning it. Bubastis's Doom comes from Ailurophobia, Bastet rituals, and the occasional Catnapping payoff. Combat kills enemies, which prevents them from scoring, which prevents them from winning. You are a denial faction with a Doom side-business. Most players read your spellbooks and assume the opposite. Don't be most players.
Be the annoying friend, not the enemy. You want to be the player nobody wants to attack because attacking you doesn't generate anything they need. Capture a lone cultist on an undefended expansion gate, fine. Capture a cultist on a home gate stacked with three cultists? Pointless, and now the home-gate player hates you. Save your hostility for places where the hostility is doing work.
Make deals with 1-2 factions per game, and make honest ones. You can't have the whole table as friends and you can't have the whole table as enemies. Pick one or two players to be your useful allies, usually the ones with the highest aggression or the highest visible threat, and tell them, sincerely, "my cats are sacrifices to your cause; we'll kill ourselves on the things you want killed; in return, leave Bastet alone." The one deal you cannot honestly offer is "I'll stay out of your start area." You can't. You have to put a cat in every enemy start area on Round 1 or Ailurophobia doesn't unlock and your whole game seizes. So when you negotiate, frame it accurately: "I have to put a cat in your start area, but it'll be a friendly cat. It won't threaten you. It'll defend you, even, against the third party walking through." A deal that lies about start areas falls apart the moment you have to break it. A deal that's honest about start-area presence holds. The Great Cthulhu player who wants to Devour will happily eat a Cat from Mars you put in front of him; you get the kill for Zagazig, he gets Devour progress, and the rest of the table watches the Cthulhu player score Doom while you quietly tick up Ailurophobia.
Doom > kills. Two Bastet rituals at 3 Elder Signs apiece is a winning total in most games. Killing Great Old Ones is fun. Killing Great Old Ones at the cost of being too aggressive to score Doom is how you finish fourth.
Those principles run through every page of the rest of this guide. Page 2 is matchups: who at the table you befriend, who you fear, and who breaks your usual playbook. Page 3 is the neutrals you actually want (the Cat from Neptune is a love letter to your faction) and the maps that reshape her. Page 4 is the mistakes, the commandments, and the cinematic close that brings Lydon back.
