Root - Best match-ups in the game

Obvious follow-up to my post yesterday about the worst match-ups in Root since the discussions were so interesting and people seemed to appreciate it. I would add some clarifications, my analysis for this kind of things can be summarized with this: If I pick a faction, which other faction would I like to see be picked the most (or for yesterday's post, the least), strictly to improve my chance of winning. Which faction have the worst tools to mess my game plan up if they want to, disregarding my own tools to be able to hurt them back. I also am aware that this analysis ignore the other 2 factions in play (because I am still assuming a 4 players game, who all know what they are doing and what the others are trying to do), and a game of Root in more complex than just that, but that is fun for me to do so here goes.

With that in mind, here are my top picks:

Lords of the Hundreds vs Woodland Alliance: Woodland like to have people moving around and giving them cards, and Lords of the Hundreds like to have tokens to remove and empty clearings. But in my experience, LotH typically often have no cards in hand when they start advancing (you build and craft first), so destroying those tokens is free VP, and is not like the Corvids where attacking the plot can result on Warrior popping in clearings behind you preventing you from scoring. Sure WA will still get cards and be happy, but from the perspective of the Rats it cost him nothing. This is assuming they starting round 1 with putting 4 mob tokens with the Jubilant mood and let them spread, and do not intend on using precious cards to put more at the end of most turns, and if that is the case I suppose he would avoid Sympathy tokens for that round.

Duchy vs Marquise de Cat: Typically the Cat very quickly is either retreating in a corner or is pushed in a corner, and at that point will set up a network for their wood and protect that network. Then they have options to craft, build a ton of cards, or attack neighbors with weak defenses on tokens or building. They are not meant to cross the map to wage war on a faction who turtled up to protect his buildings, which is what the Duchy wants to do. Typically, the cats will leave you alone and your key clearings will not be contested by them. You will have the insurgent factions to worry about of course, but he will too. Not to mention they are often a good target for your Dig action, if they ever leave hard to move-to clearings with multiple buildings weakly defended.

Riverfolk vs Lizard Cult: Lizards is feared by many factions, even if they are arguably a rather weak faction and difficult to play. But what they do best is be a threat to buildings, and control board movement with total ruling of clearings with gardens. Well the Riverfolk have no buildings, and they don't move much, so that is not a problem at all. In addition, they have warriors to spare, AND they need specific suits and good cards to craft and to score, AND they rule often in many clearings which makes it easy to build outposts with their warriors. I think that as a Riverfolk, having a LC opponent improves my chances to win, and in my opinion might be the best case of positive impact caused by another faction in the game.

I will admit this was harder to do that the worst match-ups, I think because I am more naturally aware of the factions that will hinder me than of the factions who will have more trouble stopping me (or even help me).