This is a guide for how I completed every challenge. This may or may not be the best way to do challenges, it is simply a way. I leaned heavily on strategies that used the Vagabond and Eyrie Dynasties and had to cheese for an ideal starting hand several times.

Completing the challenges will make you particularly good at playing against AI, but it is more difficult (and generally frowned upon) to wipe a player out of the game when playing real people. You will likely destroy the Marquise keep and several bases over the course of completing the challenges. If you ever plan to play with new players it is important to stress not only that these are plays available to the other players, but also that they are both very potent and very easy to guard against. Don't be that guy that makes someone hate this game because you thought it was funny to destroy the new player's base after they finally revolted after 4 turns.

This is just the basic game against AI. Even if you are familiar with the board game, play through the tutorial for a basic run-down of how the interface works.

It is important to note that the tutorial does not show you how the different factions win, so I will give a quick rundown of how to win as a faction playing against AI. I finished this challenge as Eyrie Dynasties because I found them the easiest.

Marquise de Cat: Your job is to build and fight. You have the most difficult time crafting cards of all the factions but the easiest time fighting. Plan to craft cards that cost at most 1 resource and spend the rest of your cards to overwork and take extra actions. Build an early sawmill and make sure there are no Alliance sympathy tokens where your buildings are.

Eyrie Dynasties: Your job is to build and craft. You get points at the end of every turn based on your roosts, so make sure you begin with a wild on Build. If you have a wild bird in your starting hand, I recommend starting with the Builder leader, and going with Despot otherwise. It is very easy to craft expensive cards, so the Builder's upside is incredible as long as you have an early wild Build.

Woodland Alliance: You job is to revolt. This faction is by far the most difficult and luck-based. You should spread sympathy using all of your starting Supporters, keeping in mind that sympathy can only be spread from places adjacent to other sympathy. Also, you want to spread sympathy in places that have more than one path leading out of them; revolting on the top or bottom area will severely hamper your movement once you have a base.

On your first turn, you should mobilize with all cards no matter how good they are. Once you have revolted, your most powerful craft is the Cobbler because it allows you to Organize without wasting an action to move.

You will be able to gain the most points by using Craft and Organize late game. I highly recommend training at least one officer and at most two to have the right amount of actions to Warriors. Do NOT spend your time attacking to get points; you get significantly more points from Organize

Vagabond: Get an early Root Tea. No matter what flavor of Vagabond you are playing, you will be able to do more with Root Tea. You get some points from helping factions who like you, some points from crafting cards, and a bunch of points from destroying buildings. As such, despite the usefulness of Tea, I find Thief to be the most difficult character to win with since they cannot destroy half the map with Favor of the (Suit) cards like Tinker and cannot go nearly as aggro as Ranger.

The difficult part of this challenge is the Woodland Alliance, so I will focus on them. Start the game by spending your Dominance card for more Supporters. Play the game as normal, but focus on controlling the two opposite corners of the map. You will have a much easier time getting the Bird Dominance card than any other because you can revolt on both of those spaces. Once you have revolted (preferably in a corner), build Cobbler to get to the other end of the map ASAP. To finally win, it will come down to luck of the draw: you need to have the Bird Dominance card in the discard pile and to draw a Bird card to claim it.

Exactly the same as Classic Mode with the caveat that the top and bottom spaces are not nearly as terrible for Woodland Alliance.

Favor of the (Suit the keep is on).

If, for some reason, you don't want to just wait until you draw the exact right card and control the exact 3 spaces that will allow you to play it, you should start with the Charismatic leader, build until you can get 8 warriors on the enemy keep, purposefully go into turmoil, switch to the Commander leader and attack the keep several times.

Training costs so much because it is incredibly powerful in this mode. Being able to train on turn 1 is so powerful that I reset until I had a hand that allowed me to do so. Cobbler and Command Warren are musts even more than in the normal game. It is a good idea to begin by spreading sympathy far away from your base because you will be able to Organize with your warriors in the late game much easier if there aren't sympathy tokens around your base.

Favor of the (Suit) is not considered an attack. Play as Tinker, grab that card from the discard pile, and sit on it until you can drop it for crazy points. Note that you only need to reach highest friendship with a player, not remain there at game end; Favor will almost certainly make every faction mad at you.

This is literally a version of the game that is skewed toward you. If you can win as the Marquise, you should be able to beat this challenge.

Ambush cards being removed from the deck hurts Woodland Alliance and Vagabond the most as the former relies on them early game and the latter is the most unaffected by them. I recommend playing Marquise de Cat or Eyrie Dynasties.

Play Eyrie Dynasties and craft up a storm. Keep in mind that you make points on any card you craft, not just those cards that are normally worth points.

Vagabond is the least affected by fighting, so play as Ranger and go ham.

In particular, attack Marquise early, like destroy their Recruiter first turn and their keep second turn early. They have legitimately no way to stop you from taking them out of the game with your starting crossbow and you will get 2 points every time you destroy a building.

This is cheesy, but starting the game with a Bird card will make this challenge go much easier; reset until you have one. Start as the Builder, place your wild bird card on Build and make sure you craft enough to win before turn 8 (when you run out of roosts). Attacking to lose warriors so you can recruit on your next turn is sometimes required. You can also always play random cards into move if you are afraid you won't be able to do everything.

The Eyrie Dynasties AI will go into Turmoil during the game. They will probably do it multiple times. Do not start a coalition with them. Woodland Alliance can make the most use of extra cards and tend to have fewer points at the beginning, so you should ally with them. Attack the Marquise and the Eyrie early and often. It is highly recommended that you play the Ranger or Thief because you simply don't have a reason to craft late game.

Start with your keep on the top right mouse space and a sawmill on your keep. Your first turn should be building a Recruiter on your keep, building a Recruiter on another space, and using Recruit. On your second turn, Move to get control, build another Recruiter, and Recruit again. You will get much more mileage out of the Overwork action rather than building Sawmills since they don't gain you points. You should play much more defensively than you are used to because losing a building is back-breaking. You should always have at least 2 warriors (3 being ideal) on your keep space as the AI will destroy your keep as soon as they can.

It is finally time for the Charismatic leader to shine. You will not run out of Warriors because the AI attacks you with reckless abandon. Always have at least 3 Warriors on every roost until you get to 4 roosts. You can then double play into the Build action and win.

I played Vagabond as the Tinker and collected all three Favor of the (Suit) cards over the course of the game using the Day Labor action. Playing them one after the other will win you the game, no matter how far ahead the other factions are.