Cathay After the FAQ: Early Results Look Promising
Cathay After the FAQ: Early Results Look Promising
Sometimes a small rules change tells us a lot more than a long theory discussion ever could.
From what we heard, Cathay was recently allowed to play without restrictions, and the first batch of results is honestly pretty encouraging. Across four games, the score came out to two draws, one win, and one loss. For such a small sample size, we obviously don’t want to overstate it — but it does suggest that the FAQ may actually be doing its job.
That is especially interesting because the army is still playing with a points discount. In practice, that meant 2000 points of Cathay going up against 2400 points of Empire.
And despite that gap, the results did not look like a disaster at all.
Why this matters
When a faction gets FAQ support, what we really want to see is not whether it suddenly becomes dominant, but whether it can actually compete and produce real games. Based on these first reports, that seems to be happening here.
Two draws, a win, and a loss sounds like the kind of spread we actually like to see in early testing:
- not an army steamrolling everything,
- not an army folding immediately,
- but something that can fight, score, and stay in the game.
That is a much healthier sign than endless speculation about whether a faction is “playable” on paper.
The points gap is still a big deal
The most striking detail here is still the points difference. If Cathay at 2000 can put up respectable results into 2400 points of Empire, then the discount clearly matters a lot in how the faction is currently balanced.
So while the early takeaway is positive, it also sounds like the story is not simply “Cathay unrestricted is fine.” It is more like:
Cathay unrestricted, with the current points discount, seems to be landing in a workable place.
And that distinction is important, especially for anyone thinking about event rules, house comp, or local army-building decisions.
Our first impression
Our immediate reaction is pretty simple: the FAQ seems to work.
Of course, four games is still just four games. We would love to see more matchups, more players, and more table time before making any bigger claims. But as a first signal, this is the kind of result that gives us some optimism.
If the goal was to let Cathay onto the table in a way that leads to proper, competitive games, then this looks like a step in the right direction.
We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on further results, because this is exactly the sort of small army-building and balance story that can quietly reshape a local meta.