We're So Board!
We're So Board!
Episode 31 - Root
In this episode, we're getting down and dirty with the war of the woods in Root. This asymmetric area control game offers different woodland critters the opportunity to protect, take back, or liberate their homeland. Each faction has a very unique play style that gives players different ways to experience the game. Listen to find out what's Jake's favorite faction is and how sometimes more rulebooks is not necessarily better.
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Hello and welcome. I'm Rachel.
Jake:I'm Jake.
Rachel:And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game to help answer the question, Will this cure our boredom?
Jake:That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to well, let's say, trying to keep your sweat off your computer while you plan for your next podcast episode in a 90 degree house because the AC repair company first broke your AC five days ago, and now can't come to replace it for another five to seven business days.
Rachel:Yeah. Love living in Arizona.
Jake:Good thing it wasn't 115 Now yet? No, not yet. We are getting there.
Rachel:Before we get started today, we have an exciting announcement. So this is something that I've been teasing for a couple of weeks now. But we are going to start streaming board games on Twitch. Yes, we've got basically all the equipment that we need. At this point in time, we have run a little like setup and test recording, which I did upload to Instagram and Facebook recently. So you can go and check that out and kind of see what things look like. But basically, tomorrow, Wednesday, April 27, we are going to be doing our first live stream.
Jake:Yes. And a very, very, yes.
Rachel:Very what?
Jake:That's it. I'm just very Yes.
Rachel:Okay. I'm not sure what we're playing yet. But it is
going to be at 5:30pm Pacific Time, which is 8:30pm. Eastern time. So you can follow us on Twitch at so board podcast just like everything else. Right now our goal is to stream a board game about once a week, I'm hoping that we can increase that in the future. But our plates are just so full right now. So that's what we feel we can commit to is once a week. Come check us out. And we would love to have you guys come interact with us and tell us all about how we're playing the board games wrong or something.
Jake:That's probably true. And speaking of streaming, I have been streaming video games semi regularly on my personal Twitch, you can find me at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541. That's NAU gh t y d, OC 541. My schedule changes each week. So every Sunday I update that to reflect the coming week of what I'll be streaming and when I'll be on. So come check me out if you'd like to watch video games. And if you don't, you can come check me out and just make fun of me. That's fine, too. So come check us out. We're excited for this new streaming platform.
Rachel:Yeah, that should be fun. All right. So today we're talking about Root.
Jake:Yes, Root is an asymmetric start area control game. It was published in 2018. By letter games, that's le d e r. It was designed by Cole whirl with art by Kyle Ferran. And this game is pretty impressive. It's been nominated for a ton of international board game awards, and won no less than 13 of those nominations since 2018. This game is always very high on the board game geeks hotness list. As of today, it is number 15. Which is once again impressive for a four year old
Rachel:game. It really is. Okay, so what is Root,
Jake:bear with us because this is going to be kind of a long rule section. Probably the longest one we've ever done.
Rachel:That's probably true. But I think you'll understand why it needs to be that way as we're going through it. So this is a game about forest critters, basically trying to take control or take over or maybe liberating the forest and all the forest creatures. The goal of the game is to either be the first person to reach 30 victory points, or you can choose to complete a dominance card which sets up some separate set of victory conditions in the middle of the game. You can choose to switch over to that.
Jake:Yes, so the board is it looks like a forest. Honestly with a bunch of clearings that are connected by these forest paths with a river going through parts of it. Each clearing is assigned one of three suits, I guess you would want to call them either rabbits, mice or foxes. Each clearing has between one and three spaces where buildings can be constructed. Some of those also contain ruins, which are only used for the Vagabond pretty much, which is a playable faction the floor stereo between the paths can only be entered by the vagabond. So all other players have to go between clearings via these forest paths, unless you are either the vagabond, or you have a specific expansion that we will talk about
Rachel:later. So the cards that you have in the game, this is a deck of cards, you have a max hand limit of five, but you don't have to discard down to that until the end of your turn. And so that becomes important to note that you do have the ability to access and use more than that during your turn as long as you discard down later. And so these cards contain one of four suits. So again, you've got the rabbits, mice, and foxes. And then now you also have birds, the birds act as wildcards. So it's essentially any of the suits that you want it to be for whatever purposes, and you use these cards in some actions that require you to have a suit matching a clearing. So for example, crafting some cards allow you to craft items and gain victory points, if you have like crafting abilities such as workstations, or each faction has their own specific like building that allows them to craft. Yeah, and so if you have those in the specified clearings, you can play these cards, and like tap those little workshops or whatever, to be able to craft this item. The items themselves are only used by the vagabond, but you will almost always get victory points, I think you always get victory points for crafting the item. Yes. And then if somebody is playing the vagabond, then that's something that you can trade,
Jake:some items are worth more victory points, and others, with the exception of the Eyrie most of the time, the Eyrie playable faction will only get one victory point for grafting most of the time.
Rachel:And we're gonna go into all the factions in much more detail later, you'll see, yeah, some of the other effects that you can have in these cards are like ambush cards, these let you as the defender do some damage before a battle actually starts. So it kind of lets you level the playing field a little bit. If someone comes in with a bunch of warriors to attack you, and you only have one guy there, for example, there are also ongoing effects that allow you to take extra actions or do more damage. There's a whole bunch of examples of those that you can craft similarly to the items and have placed just beside your board at something that you can do. And then lastly, we have those dominance cards that I talked about a second ago. So those are the new victory conditions. When you choose to take one of these dominance cards, you remove your token from the victory point tracker, so you're no longer gaining or losing victory points, and you can no longer win the game by gaining 30 victory points, you have committed to this new dominance card, you can only choose to accept a dominance card once you've gained 10 victory points. So that allows a couple of rounds of the game to have gone by at that point before you decide to do that. And if you use the dominance card for it suit, like the fox rabbit or mice, instead of it getting discarded with the other cards, it actually goes on the side of the board and other players can choose to pick that up at any time and gain that and so there's a little bit of deep consideration that needs to be taken before you decide to use a dominance card as something else and then discard it.
Jake:Yeah, you should hold on to those if it's going to benefit an opponent to pick that up. Yeah, basically.
Rachel:Oh, and like an example of the dominance card says that you need to control three mice clearings or three Fox clearings, or maybe the two corner clearings that are kitty corner from each other on the map.
Jake:That's my favorite dominance card personally, because you only have to hold two.
Rachel:Yeah, but you do have to get your warriors like across the map. So that could be difficult. It's difficult in its own way.
Jake:So this game is an area control and combat game. I don't want to say it's a combat game necessarily, because you don't have to do combat to win depending on the faction that you're playing. If you play the vagabond, you don't have to fight. But it is definitely a majority of the factions have a area control and combat component. In order to control a clearing, you have to have more of your units warriors really than anybody else in that clearing. With the exception of the Eyrie which are the birds, they can be tied and they win those ties. And in order to build any buildings there, which is what we're going to be using for those crafting elements Rachel mentioned earlier, you have to control the clearing. So in order to start building up your resources and really kind of gaining ground you want to control those clearings. This is kind of an interesting take on moving your troops as well. Because in order to move your troops to a clearing, you either have to move from a clearing you control or to a clearing you control. So you cannot move from a clearing, you don't have control over into a clearing you have no control over. For example, if there are two clearings right next to each other one is empty one has a cat and a burden, the cat cannot move from their clearing into the empty clearing because they do not control this clearing they're moving from nor do they control the clearing they're moving to however the bird would be able to move from the clearing because they win the tie. They control it into that empty clearing.
Rachel:I had to read this a couple of times when we were first going through the rulebook, it's confusing to understand why they have that setup as you're just reading the rules. But as you play the game, I feel like it balances things out or prevents you from retreating basically, like you have to retreat back to where you already are. If you're in a clearing that you don't control, you have to retreat back to your own safety, not just some other empty clearing or some other clearing that's got less people. But still more than you don't know, it's really interesting.
Jake:Yeah, it is kind of an interesting take on troop movement, I don't think I played a game that has anything very similar to that where you have to have control in order to move. So battling. As we said, this is a combat game. This is an action that can be taken whenever you have units in a clearing with enemy units or enemy buildings. So you'll take two of these custom 12 sided dice, they have numbers ranging from zero to three. So there's three of each of them on each of the dice, and you'll roll both of them the attacker the player attacking will always take the higher number, with the exception of a specific faction, the woodland Alliance, they will take the higher number always, the defender will take the lower number, each side loses the units and buildings, adding it to the number on their dice. For example, as the cat if I have three troops there, and I roll it three, I'm able to deal three hits to anything in there.
Rachel:It's a little confusing, and I couldn't find the right way to like word this in our outline. So sorry, but basically like you roll the dice, and the number on the dice is like the potential hits that you can take against your enemy. But you also have to have at least that many units in order to do that many hits, right? If I roll a three, but I only have one unit, I can only do one hit. But if I roll a three and I have three units, I can do three hits,
Jake:the defender will also deal hits equal to the number they roll on their die, assuming they have that many troops there. So if the cat rolls a three and the bird rolls or two, and the birds have at least two troops there, they will deal those full two hits to the cat who is attacking. Yeah. Which is kind of interesting. It makes it so that even as a defender, you can still take out enemy units.
Rachel:You can but it does limit you. I mean, if you have only one guy there, you can't destroy like three of your opponents. Right, which it makes sense for like the capabilities of what a single warrior would be able to do when surrounded by a bunch of enemy warriors.
Jake:Unless you're me, then I can do as many as I need to.
Rachel:Okay, that's true, just because you're Jake. Yes. Okay. Got it.
Jake:Have you seen me play Dark Souls? Okay, so each unit can only generate one hit. That's a very clear, concise way to say that each unit can only generate one
Rachel:hit. But that's not the case for modifying cards. If you have only one unit there, but you play an ambush card that does two hits, you can still do that two hits with the ambush card. You just can't do two hits from the dice after you roll. So hopefully that's not confusing at all.
Jake:Yeah, well, this game has a lot of rules. And we're going to talk about those rules later. I mean, as far as the rulebook goes. So the turns for each faction are broken up into three phases, Birdsong, daylight and evening. And depending on your faction, you can only take certain actions at certain times, sometimes they are in specific orders as well. And that's why we wanted to go really in depth on these roles on these factions. Because when we say this game is asymmetric, this isn't just a typical asymmetric Star game where you have a unique ability, each faction is very asymmetric in the way they play. Because sometimes you will do things in birdsong that another faction doesn't do until the evening, or the actions that they take are completely entirely different than the actions that another faction would take. Yeah, and the way that they complete these actions is different from faction of faction. So we're gonna go through each faction from the base game and talk about them.
Rachel:Yeah. So we're gonna start with the Marquis de cat, as the cat, you start out with a keep in one of the corners of the map. And this is just kind of signifying like your home base. And then you get one warrior in almost every clearing. Basically, every clearing except for the one corner, that is kitty corner from where your keep is, that's where you exist. That's one of the reasons why you can't have dominance cards like right from the beginning of the game, because the cat would win every time. If you had a dominance card. If you could just pick that from the beginning. Oh, I have control of everything, because they start with a one warrior in every space except that one corner. So yeah, it wouldn't be okay. And then the marquee gets three unique types of buildings. It's the only faction that does. You have a sawmill which is used to produce wood, you have workshops, which are used for crafting, and then you have recruiters, which will be the locations where you spawn more units. So once you have all of that place, and then you go through the setup of every other faction, but the actions that the cat can take are as such. So in Birdsong, all you have is each of your sawmills produces one wood. That's it, that's the entirety of your birdsong. And then daylight is where the majority of your turn is going to take place. So you can take up to three of the following actions you can battle, you can march, which is moving. And this is also a little unique to the cat, the movement includes moving to spaces, so that could be taking units from one space and moving them two spaces away, or two units from two different spaces and moving them one space away. You can also recruit one warrior at each recruiting station, you can build, which consumes wood from your sawmills, and the wood from the sawmill stays on the board. It's not something that you like collect back into your hand or anything at the beginning or at the end of birdsong. And you need to have basically a supply chain from where those sawmills are to wherever you're wanting to build, you have to control all the clearings between the sawmill and the clearing where you want to build. So that's something to keep in mind when you're kind of planning out where you're going to be and what you're doing. And then the last action that you can take is to overwork one of your sawmills, this cos one of your cards, the suit has to match the clearing in which the sawmill exists. And then you can produce one more wood at that saga. And so you can take three of those actions. And then if you have any bird cards in your hand, like bird suit cards, you can also play those to gain an additional action during your turn. Once you're done with all of that you go into evening, where you will draw a card plus any number of cards that you have uncovered on your board. These are uncovered by replacing recruiting stations. And so you can draw up to three cards at the end of your turn. And then you have to discard down to five.
Jake:Yes, that is something that is I think, typical of every single faction, I think you do discard down to five with each one. Yeah. So the next faction is the Eyrie dynasty or the birds, the Blue Jays, I really like these guys, the way that they are set up is very interesting. You start with six warriors and a roost in the opposite corner of the cat's keep. So as Rachel was saying, the cat gets one troop in every single clearing except for one. That's your clarity, you get to start there, you start with a leader, this leader provides a special benefit these benefits can range from when you remove an enemy warrior from battle, you get to score a victory point or there is one leader that allows you to gain extra recruits when you take the recruit action. So you get more troops faster. There's a few others. But this leader also, when you choose, it requires you to place your viziers in specific actions for your decree. And that's what we're going to talk about next. This is the way that the area's set up that I find really interesting. They have something called a decree system. These are all the different actions that they can take. But they're also all the actions that they are required to take every single turn. So we mentioned previously, that each of the cards and clearings are given a specific suit either foxes, mice or bunnies. And you're going to be using cards from your hand to Dino take what actions in what clearings you're going to take. So you start with two they're called loyal visitors. And these are your two starting actions. So one of them starts with a build and move. One of them starts with a move and fight. There's a few different combinations that you start with that you can choose from for your leaders. You take those visitors and put them in the required actions have to have your four slots to determine what you're going to be taking each turn each When you take, you are going to be putting a new action in there using cards from your hand. Those actions are recruit, move, battle and build. And as I said previously, the card suits that you take from your hand, that is going to determine where you are going to take these actions. For example, if I took a fox card and put it in the recruit slot, that would mean I need to recruit on this turn in a fox clearing. So for birdsong for this faction, this is when you're adding to that decree, you're going to add one to two cards in any of those two degree columns that you choose. And there are bird suit cards. And these are considered wild. If you put a bird card into one of those decree slots, you wouldn't have to do that in any specific location, it just has to be done. So when you add those in, you can only add one bird card in if you're adding multiple cards during the decree phase. So during daylight, you are able to craft using your wrists. So your roofs that you have built are what acts as your workshops, if you will. So the marquee gets these workshops that they build throughout the forest, your roofs or your workshops. And as part of playing the Eyrie you have what's called a disdain for trade. With the exception of one leader, every time you craft regardless of whether or not that card is worth multiple victory points, you will only get one, unless you have that specific leader chosen, then you'll get the appropriate number. So the second step in daylight is literally to just resolve your decree moving from left to right, recruit, move, battle and build. Once again, you must do those actions in that order in the specific clearings matching the card suits in the decree slots.
Rachel:And so all of this is complicated by the other rules of the game, right? You can't move unless you are moving from or to a clearing that you have control of you can't build, unless you have control of the clearing, you can't battle unless there's something there to fight. So you have all these specifications of where you need to perform these actions. And you need to beat these conditions in order to actually perform the actions.
Jake:Yes. Now, if you cannot complete any one of these things, any one in the order that they take place, the recruit, move, battle build, if you cannot do any one of those actions in that order, because of the suits not matching, or you're not having troops appropriately. Or even if you've built all of your roosts, and you no longer have a place to build or the actual roost itself to build, you go into turmoil. So what will happen is you will lose victory points equal to the number of burned cards you have in the decree remember birds being wild, you will discard all the cards in the decree except for the visitors, you'll keep those because you'll have to choose a new leader and set the visitors up in the new decreased spots, daylight ends and you go to evening, at the end of the evening, you will score victory points based on how many roosts you have placed, you'll draw cards based on how many rows do you have placed. And if you have more than five in your hand, you will discard down to five.
Rachel:The other interesting thing about the eyrie is they gain victory points much faster than any other faction in the base game, because they are also at risk of losing a significant number of victory points from going into turmoil. There's the kind of this risk balance that you have to find of putting bird cards in your decree, which allows you the flexibility to actually perform these actions wherever you need to, and then still going into turmoil at some point. And losing all those victory points for each of those Bert cards.
Jake:Yes, it is a very interesting balance. Because you don't want to just throw all the bird cards in if you think that you're not going to be able to do anything, you're going to lose a bunch of points. But if you can maintain all those word cards, you'll be fine. Yeah, as long as you don't go into turmoil or the other counterpoint is if you have a dominance card that you're working on. Victory points don't matter anymore. So if you go into turmoil doesn't really matter.
Rachel:The other thing that's really interesting about the Eyrie is the way that you're building up this decree means that you can perform more and more actions per turn. But then once you go into turmoil, you're back down to just two actions. And so you know, you get to this like sweet spot where Oh yeah, I'm able to move and I'm able to battle and I can do all these things. And then you're knocked down as like, Oh, now you can only do two things and you have to build that back up. Right. All right, so the next faction is the woodland Alliance. These are represented by mice. I'm not sure I'm not sure they're green. They are green, interestingly, but they are the ones who are trying to liberate the forests basically from the control of the cat and the birds. So with the woodland Mala ANC will start with what's called a supporters deck. This is five cards that goes into a deck that separate from your hand, you will use the cards in that deck for their suits to spread sympathy and revolt in matching clearings. So during birdsong as the woodland Alliance, you have the option to first revolt, which would be spending to have your supporter cards matching a clearing that has sympathy in it already, right? Doing that will remove all enemies and place a matching base. If you still have one available, you only have one base per type of clearing, and then you can place a number of warriors that are equal to the number of sympathetic clearings matching that suit. And it's really important to note that revolt happens first. And then it goes on to spread sympathy. So you can't in the same turn, spread sympathy to a clearing and then revolt in it. So after you're done revolting, you can spread sympathy to new clearings. This starts out only taking a single supporter from your support deck in the matching clearing, but it gets more expensive, the more sympathy that you spread. And so there's a little track at the bottom of your board that tells you how many cards that costs. So you will have to spend that many according to the track plus an additional supporter if the clearing has three or more enemy units in it. So you'll place a sympathy token in one of those matching clearings, it doesn't have to be anywhere where your warriors exist, it doesn't have to be anywhere in particular, literally anywhere on the board with a matching clearing. And the tokens for the sympathy look kind of like little zombie hands because they're green. And so it like it looks like little zombie hands kind of rising out of the ground and like you know, in the form of a fist. That's just what it makes me think of. So that's your birdsong. And then in daylight, you're going to use cards from your hand instead of the supporter deck like we've been talking about. That's where you can craft and your sympathy tokens act as your a little crafting stations. So wherever you have those, that's where you can craft, you can mobilize, which will take cards from your hand and add it to the supporter deck, you can train, which you will spend a card matching the suit of a clearing where you have a base, and then that allows you to basically train an officer and puts one of your warrior units into the officers box on your board. So unlike any of the other factions, so far, not a whole lot is actually happening in daylight, the majority of your work happens in birdsong and an evening, which I think is also very fitting for the style of like war that these type of characters would be playing. Right, it says that they're masters of guerrilla war, which is why they always take the dice with the larger number on it. But I just think that that's an interesting thing that, you know, they were able to kind of capture the essence of that through the mechanics of this game.
Jake:Yeah, I really liked that. And honestly, these guys are dangerous, because you could just pop up anywhere.
Rachel:Okay, so then an evening, this is where you're doing stuff based on the officers that you have trained. So for each officer in your officers box, you can do one of the following actions, you can move your warriors on the board, you can battle, you can recruit in clearings with a base organize, this is my favorite of their abilities, you can remove a warrior of your own, from an unsympathetic clearing to place a sympathy card there. So it's almost kind of like their martyrs. Yeah, is what it sounds like. But that's my favorite action of theirs to do with the officers. And then at the end of the evening, you will draw cards based on the number of sympathy tokens that you've placed, not like a one for one, but it's the same kind of thing where like a number of cards are revealed as you're placing more simply tokens, and that determines how many cards you draw. And then as always, you discard down to five. Yes. So yeah, my favorite thing to do is organize in the evening, and then I can revolt on my next turn in Birdsong, right. And the Organize actually doesn't take cards from your supporters deck. And that's how you can avoid paying these more and more expensive prices for spreading sympathy.
Jake:Right? I really liked these guys, because like I said, they could just pop up out of nowhere. And if they are taken care of very quickly, they get very strong very fast, because it's hard to kill them in combat because they always take the higher die. Yep. That being said, the number of warriors that they have available to them is very limited.
Rachel:Very, I got to a point where I had almost all of my warriors in the officers box. And there's no mechanic for taking them out of that and like being able to put them back on the board.
Jake:There is is there Yes, but it's not you who does Was it it's your opponent? Oh, sure, they have to do a specific action that hurts you in order to take half of your officers away.
Rachel:Yeah. So I wouldn't opt for that. No, yeah. It's bad.
Jake:Yeah, but they're very strong. But this leads us to the final playable faction in the base game, my personal favorite, the vagabond. Now, the Vagabond is very different than these other factions. It starts with one pond placed in any forest base, not a clearing, so it goes into a place that nobody else in the game can go to the Vagabond is given a special deck of cards, called a quest deck unique to their faction is shuffled. And you take four specially marked items that belong in those ruins that we mentioned earlier, shuffle them, and place them underneath the ruin tiles at each of the ruined locations. So there's one person there's four on the board. The Vagabond also starts with three to four items, depending on their archetypes that they choose. In the base game, there are only three archetypes that are available. But those items are what you're going to be using during daylight to complete different actions. So during Birdsong, you will refresh three items, plus two per the number of Tea items that you have crafted and available to you which, at this time, you would only have the one or you won't have any, you'll be able to do what's called slip which allows you to move to a clearing or forest at no cost. So if you're in a forest space, you can move to another forest base or a clearing doesn't cost you anything. But it has to be done in birdsong. And once you move into daylight, you are now going to be completing a bunch of different actions depending on the items that you have available to you. So in order to move from clearing to clearing, you'll need a boot item each movement cost one boot, you cannot use these to move back into the forest, you can use them to move out of into the clearings, but not back into the forest battle which will cost you a sword and you are able to deal hits equal to the number of undamaged swords you have in your satchel. So if I have two undamaged swords, I can actually do two hits and battle. Because I only have the one pawn it's not even technically a warrior in this game. So when anything says to remove warriors that does not apply to the vagabond, the only time that the Vagabond can be affected as far as being removed. If any effect says to remove all warriors from a location, the Vagabond would actually just damage three items instead, they don't actually get moved. So the Explorer action this allows you to take one of those hidden items from the ruins if you are in a clearing with a ruin. Doing so will score you one victory point, this caustic torch, which is the other item that you would start with on all the archetypes quest allows you to take three of those quest cards, look at them and determine whether or not you're able to complete one if you're able to complete one. These will also cost you items, you'll be able to gain the victory points or draw cards depending on what you'd like to do for that quest. The quest however, are also suit based, so they have to be completed in a specific type of clearing either a bunny of mouse or a fox depending on the quest themselves. The next action is strike, you will be able to remove a piece in your clearing starting if there are any with warriors. This cost you a crossbow. And you'll also be able to repair or craft using hammers. When crafting all your undamaged hammers match your clearing. So you'll be able to use those to craft small items, even for yourself or for some of those long term effects throughout the game, you'll be able to make those as well. And the last action that is available to you is aid give a card matching, you're clearing to a player there, you may take an item from them. This cost you any item, you just have to exhaust one item. So when I say cost for all the above actions, what you'll do is you'll actually take the title of the item title that you have and turn it over to the dark gray side, showing that it's now been exhausted. So you cannot use that again until it's been refreshed, which is the first action you take during birdsong. So Also unique to this faction is a relationship tracker. With all the other factions playing the game, you actually start as indifferent with all other factions at the beginning of the game. And when you take the eighth action for the first time with a specific faction, you move their token up on the relationship tracker and gain a victory point. There are four slots in different two, three and four which is allied. In order to move them from one to two. You'll actually need to aid them twice during the same turn and then from two to three three times and then from three to four you'll need to aid them four times. So once you have completed that and got them all the way up. Each time you aid them moving forward you will gain two victory points. If you attack a faction or remove one of their warriors with the crossbow or the battling, you are now hostile towards them, there is no way to regain relationship with them unless you form a coalition which can only be done in a four player game. If you are hostile towards the character, each time you remove one of those factions pieces in battle, during your turn, you will gain a victory point. So those are all the actions that the Vagabond can take during their turn. During the evening, you can rest if you are in a forest, you will repair all your items, you will draw one card plus one per coin stack item that you have available to you, you will discard your cards down to five if you have more than that. And then if you have more than six items, you will remove items down to six plus two for each satchel item you have. And that is the last of it for the factions. This is why we wanted to go into detail because we've been recorded for almost an hour now. And we're just done with.
Rachel:Yeah, yeah. And the reason we didn't want to like brush over each of the factions more is. So this is going to get into our experiences section. Because each one is so different, it feels like almost a completely different game that you're playing when you choose a different faction than you've played before. It's totally different, totally different style technique, strategy. So I like that. However, it also seems like there's really only one right way to play each faction, we've played a couple of games now, where I've been the marquee to cat and one of those games, I started out really aggressively because I had a bunch of warriors, you have a warrior that starts out in every clearing, except for one on the board, I felt like I had a huge army, maybe I should come in and start trying to just take out the eyrie, and just reduce them, not let them start to gain control of the map. It didn't work out well. For me, I actually almost got eliminated from the game, the cat is the only faction that can be eliminated. Every other faction has a way of like spawning back in. But if you lose the keep, and you lose all your warriors and your recruitment centers, you are actually out of the game. Yes. And that almost happened to me. The second game that I played as the cat went much better. And I kind of followed more of what it describes on the back of the board, it really kind of tells you what their goals are and how they're meant to be played. So I just focus more on building. And I did fight in some cases, especially to prevent one of the players from meeting the conditions for a dominance card. But most of my actions were actually focused on building and gaining victory points that way. And that was a much closer game, I was one turn away from winning by the end of that. And so it's a little disappointing that it really seems like there's only one right way to play each faction. But the fact that there's so many different factions, you know, you've got four in the base game, and then there's a bunch of expansions. There's so many different factions. I feel like that kind of makes up for it.
Jake:Yeah, I agree. So I also don't like the fact that it really feels like there's only one real way to play each faction effectively, with the exception of a couple, there's not a whole lot of different strategies that each one brings. But there are 10 playable factions available right now. So with that you have a lot of different variety on normally what faction you're going to play. But then the combinations of factions in each game will make very different games each time. The rules in this game are horrible and terrible. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later. But they're bad. Really, really, really bad.
Rachel:Not that the rules are bad like the game plays well. It's the rule book is written poorly.
Jake:Both of the rule books are written. Because this game comes with two, depending on how you want to learn, and they're both bad. Horrible.
Rachel:Yeah, so I would definitely recommend, I mean, obviously, you're listening to this podcast. So hopefully, our explanation of the rules is helpful. You may also need to watch a video, I would recommend it and or reach out to forums on like Board Game Geek to answer specific questions that are simply not in the rulebook.
Jake:That being said, so the game Rachel was talking about where she was one turn away from winning, that game came down to all three players playing down to one turn whether or not they would win. I was playing the vagabond. And so the goal is to get to 30 points I went from, I think 16 or 18 to 29 in one turn, just basically by becoming a trainer and deciding that Okay, well I'm not going to be friends with this person anymore, and I'm just going to eliminate everything I can from them. Yeah, and complete a bunch of different quests.
Rachel:Up until that point, Jake had been playing as friendly to both me as the cat and then our friend who was playing the Eyrie. And so he was like helping us out and giving us cards and trading items with us up until that point, and then that last turn, he betrayed both of us. He like swept across the board and destroyed a ton of eyrie warriors took out a bunch of my stuff completely cleared a clearing that I had took on all my worries, and all my buildings, like the flip of a switch all of a sudden were enemies.
Jake:Yep. And I needed it. I was literally one card away from winning just one card. Or if Rachel had stopped the other player from gaining control of the clearing that they were going for a dominance victory on if she just moved one more person in there. One more.
Rachel:Yeah. So it basically got to a point where I was also at 29 points, and I couldn't find a way to gain that one last victory point.
Jake:So of course, because she could, I couldn't win,
Rachel:I decided to allow our friend to claim his dominance victory, rather than stopping him and then letting Jake win on his next term.
Jake:It's not okay. Right.
Rachel:That's why I can't let you win.
Jake:So I really liked this game. I've had a lot of fun playing it. There are some small gripes about it, like the factions only having one real way to play them. The rulebook being horrible. It's actually not super long either, which I was pretty impressed with, I think, yeah, we played a three player game in like, an hour, hour and 15 minutes, I think, yeah,
Rachel:maybe an hour and a half. But for like an area control game, I was expecting it to take longer. Yeah, our two player game that we played definitely only took an hour. Yeah. But speaking of two player game, so this is one of those games, it's honestly not great at only two players. And at three players, it's okay. It's really optimized for four or more, I think, just because of the way that the different factions play. There are certain combinations of factions that you can't have in a two player game. Like if you played a two player game with the woodland Alliance and the vagabond. I don't even know what that would look like. It wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't. No, it wouldn't. The game does have in the back of the rulebook, like recommendations for setup for different player levels. So that is nice. But it does limit you and what you're allowed to play or what really will be effective to play in smaller games.
Jake:Right. So, I mean, let's talk about some of the expansions because as we said, there are a bunch and the expansions add up to six more playable factions. The first released one was the river folk expansion that was released in 2018. It does add two new factions, the river folk company and the cult of the lizard, I have not played with either of these, I do know that the river folk company has an open hand and they have a function where you are able to as another player, not them purchased cards from their hand, so that if you see something that oh, I need that you can take it from them at a cost and use it. You can also pay them to be able to travel using the river instead of the forest paths, they can travel for free, but you as another player need to pay them to do so. I don't know hardly anything about the color of the lizard, other than they sacrifice something to get more warriors. I know that much. This expansion does allow for up to six players per game. It adds another Vagabond token. And I'm not sure why it adds another token. I don't know if you get to or what's going on with that. This also introduces some Co Op scenarios so you can turn the game into a cooperative experience instead of a completely competitive. This also adds three new Vagabond archetypes that you can choose from from the beginning, the underworld expansion was released in 2020. This adds two new factions, the great underground duchy and the corvid conspiracy. This adds two new playable maps as well. We have this expansion. We have not played with it yet. But that's something next time we play I think we will be busting out to play with the clockwork expansion. This was also released in 2020. We also have this expansion. This adds an ability to add NPC factions to the game so that as Rachel was saying earlier, this game was not great with two people. This will allow you to put NPC factions into the game for a four player game with only two actual players. This also adds some Co Op scenarios as well.
Rachel:Yeah, so we have those expansions or we're you know, we have a couple of expansions but happening had the opportunity to play them yet, but honestly, I'm super excited to. And I really, really want to get the river folk expansion, not only because it advances the game to a six player game, but I've heard that the river folk are just awesome and pick them every time is what I've heard. There is
Jake:actually an expansion that was released this year in 2022. This adds two new factions, the Lord of the hundreds and the keepers in iron, the Lord of the hundreds from what I read, likes to burn down the clearings. And so you can actually clear out clearings by setting them on fire. And the keepers and iron are kind of like a vagabond, in the sense that you are going to be working and making alliances with other factions in order to find specific relics. But they are also difficult to kill it says because they're, they're an armor. So I'm very interested in this expansion. This also introduces hirelings. And these are units that can be used in any player count game. So I'm not entirely sure what they do. I wasn't able to find a lot of information on that. But
Rachel:I would imagine that that's like extra units, essentially, that you can hire cost something obviously.
Jake:So Can my Vagabond hire an army? Maybe that could be interested? If that's the case? That would be awesome. Or I
Rachel:was thinking like the woodland Alliance, can you send in a hired goon to be a martyr for your organized stability in the evening?
Jake:I don't know. I'm not sure. All right.
Rachel:So let's talk about ratings real quick. On Board Game Geek. You know, we already mentioned in the beginning that this is a game that's pretty consistently on the hotness list on BGG. And as such is reflected in the ratings. So the base game is rated at 8.1 was 34,000 reviews, that solid, the river folk expansion is 8.45 with 5300 Reviews, the underworld expansion is 8.76 with 2700 Reviews. Now, yes, that's less reviews. But that is a really high rating. Yeah, I'm very interested to see what that plays like and why people think that the clockwork expansion is 8.03 with 1300 Reviews. And then this Murata expansion that just came out only has 134 reviews so far. But it has a rating of 8.7. I'm guessing that the number of reviews is gonna go up. It just hasn't been out for very long yet.
Jake:Yeah, I agree. This is only been out a couple months, I anticipate that number to come down as far as the overall review. But I don't anticipate it to drop below eight just based on everything else like this is?
Rachel:Yeah, every single one of these is above eight. Yeah. Which is really good. I mean, it's a little impressive that they haven't released a single expansion. That was like, kind of a flop.
Jake:Yeah, this is a very highly rated game people like it, it seems
Rachel:I do for sure. Mm. Hmm. Yes. Okay. All right. So let's move on to our rating section. First, easy versus difficult. This is talking about how easy is it to understand how well is the rulebook written?
Jake:horrible, terrible, one of the worst I've ever experienced? You don't even read the rulebook? Nope. And that's telling you something.
Rachel:So I wouldn't say that. It's horrible. The rules are in there. Mostly. The thing is, is that the game presents you with two rule books. And they make it seem like it's a choice. Do you want to read this one that's got like pictures and diagrams and stuff? Or do you want to read this one that's literally just text in everything is written out. And they make it seem like based on your learning style, you can pick one of these to read, you need to read both. And there are mostly the same. But there are things in one rule book that don't exist in the other, and vice versa. So I can't recommend one particular rule book to read. You got
Jake:to read both of them. Yeah, unfortunately, they do be that way.
Rachel:And also, unfortunately, there are still questions on top of that things that need clarification that are just really not thoroughly explained. Crafting, for example, we ended up having to go to a Board Game Geek forum to figure out what the heck is crafting about. Because it doesn't really make sense in the one sentence when they're explaining that the sympathy tokens also act as your crafting stations for the woodland Alliance. And also those tokens need to be in matching clearings based on what's at the bottom of the card. And what you see at the bottom of the card may be different than the suit on the card. And it's just like there's not exact tuples of how the crafting works, it's not thoroughly explained, it's not it's pretty bad. Other things that we had to go to BoardGameGeek about or the woodland Alliance bases, because it tells you that every time you revolt, you should place a base in the clearing. That makes it sound like either you should have multiple bases that will fit in multiple clearings. Or maybe you're supposed to move the base from its previous clearing into the one you just revolted in. Yeah, I couldn't find an answer on that. I think we're going with you do that the first time in place the base, and then it stays there. And you kind of just ignore that sentence after you revolt again, in a same clearing
Jake:to see I'm okay playing either way, as long as it's clearly defined. Yeah, at the beginning of the game. But yeah, there's no clear rule in the book that says whether or not it moves or not. So
Rachel:yeah. And then one of the other big things that we were confused about is what happens to buildings that get removed or destroyed. Does that go back on your board? Because in some cases, that affects how many victory points that you gain that affects how many cards that you draw at the end of your turn? Are they like destroyed and removed from the game? Or do they go back on your board? And you have the opportunity to build them again, essentially?
Jake:Or are they off your board, and you just play them, and you've already progressed to the point where you get X number of victory points per turn,
Rachel:right? Because for the cat, you gain at least one victory point for every building that you build. If it goes back on your board, then you're double gaining victory points for building the same building. You know, if I build a recruitment station, and that gets me two victory points, and then you come destroy my recruitment station, and then I build it again, that's another two victory points.
Jake:Right. That's not very clearly defined in the rules.
Rachel:Yeah, I think what we've gone with for that, again, we didn't get a super clear answer from Board Game Geek. But what we're going with is yes, it goes back to your board, because it'll cover up additional cards that you might get to draw that might have been revealed previously, but you do get to gain those victory points again. So that's kinda what we're going with, we don't know for sure if that's the answer.
Jake:So how easy or difficult would you rate this,
Rachel:because of also just the difficulty of like, every faction playing differently, and it being difficult to like, assist a new player, if you haven't played that faction before? I'm gonna read this, like, eight, I think on the difficulty scale.
Jake:Yeah, I'm just trying to decide between seven or eight, I'm gonna go seven.
Rachel:Okay, that's fair. All right. So next, we'd like to talk about simple versus complex. So if that's confusing when compared to easy versus difficult, this is more talking about the strategy of the game. Are you able to employ a variety of strategies to win? Is there multiple ways of going about it? What are the mechanics you use for that, etc. So, again, if that's confusing, think about chess. Chess is an easy game, in that you have all the pieces at the beginning, each piece has its own specific moves that you do. And that's it. But it's very complex, in that you can employ a wide variety of strategies to go about winning and using those moves. So that's the difference. For simple versus complex, I'm going to say that this is a decently complex game. Also, because of the fact that each faction plays so differently. It was difficult in the beginning, when we got together with my sister and her husband, my sister wanted to play the vagabond. And that was not a faction that we had played yet. And so we didn't completely understand it. And there was a period of time where we were reading the rule book about the vagabond, looking up a video about the vagabond, and going to Board Game Geek to Google some things about the vagabond, just so we could figure out how she should play it.
Jake:Exactly. That being said, now that I've played it, it's legitimately my favorite faction.
Rachel:Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's just it's difficult to get started. And it is, I think, complex, the fact that each faction plays so differently, but with that said, you know, we already mentioned that there really is only one right way to play a faction, it seems, maybe I'm just not imaginative and seeing outside the box, but it's described on each of the faction boards, like how they're meant to be played. So I think I'm gonna give it like a six on the complexity scale.
Jake:Yeah, I think I'm gonna give it a five only because we kind of talked about this previously, that each faction only has a specific way that they're designed to play it feels like so I'm gonna give it a five because they don't feel like each faction has multiple strategies or Hmm, many viable strategies.
Rachel:Yes. So you can try other strategies, it just doesn't seem like it's effective
Jake:right there there, I'm sure. But there's nothing that immediately jumps out that says this is a viable strategy to do as well. So I'm gonna give it a five. Now, the last category we like to write is our wrote versus random, what game mechanics make each play a unique experience. And I feel like this is a pretty random game, because there are 10 playable factions available, there are only four to six slots available in the game itself. So you have a lot of mixing and matching that you can do as far as combinations of what is being played in the game. Not to mention there is some dice rolling involved, there's a shuffled deck of cards, I do feel like this is a pretty random game,
Rachel:I kind of disagree, there is a decent number of factions if you go get the expansions. But that's not randomized. It does add variety, I would say. But I think this is actually quite low. On the randomness scale. We've talked about how each faction has its specific way of being set up. Marki is always going to start with a warrior in every clearing, the area is always going to start with six warriors in that one opposite clearing, the cards are shuffled, but I don't know.
Jake:But the way that the different factions will interact with each other. For example, the marquee doesn't have to be in the game at all, and then immediately changes the setting of the game. If you don't have that faction, you have something else, that game is entirely different. It is a different game at this point. That's true, not to mention the fact that all those abilities are going to interact differently. Yes, with the base game, you are kind of limited. I agree. But if you have even just one expansion that adds two factions, it can change it drastically.
Rachel:Yeah, I guess I just don't know if I agree that that's randomness. So I'm gonna give it a three on the random skill. I'm gonna give it six. Okay. You're perfectly welcome to have your opinion. Yeah,
Jake:I'm allowed to have my opinions. I'll allow it.
Rachel:Okay, so that's our rating section. So it's time to answer the question, Jake, would you rather play this game over trying to keep sweat off your computer while planning for your next podcast episode and a 90 degree house because the AC repair company already came and broke it five days ago? And they can't come and replace it for another five to seven days?
Jake:Yeah, that was miserable. I'd rather do pretty much anything than that.
Rachel:Yeah, I agree. But in all seriousness, this is a very fun game, I highly recommend it. It is a little bit of a learning curve. And the rulebook does not help with that. But if you can get past that, it's a ton of fun.
Jake:I really agree. Like, give it a chance. The rules are terrible. Ask somebody who's played it before to to explain it. Give it a chance, though. It's so good. Yeah.
Rachel:All right. There you have it. That's Root. So thank you all so much for listening. As usual, hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at so bored podcast. That's S O B o ar D podcast. And hey, you can go check us out on Twitch now to Sam handle twitch.tv/snowboard podcast, we love hearing from you interacting with you hearing about your fun experiences playing this game or house rules that you have. You will also be able to find pictures and short stories from the games that we've been playing recently, and interact with us all things, tabletop gaming. If you don't want to do it on social media, you can also email us at We are so bored. That's w e a r e s o b o a r d@gmail.com. And make sure that you subscribe to us, wherever you're listening to this, that will make sure that you get notified whenever we release new episodes. And if you go ahead and leave us a rating that would be super helpful as well. You can do it on Spotify now. And it takes two seconds and you can help other people find our podcasts. Also, by the way, hey, tell a friend about this podcast if you really enjoy it, just a thought maybe
Jake:that'd be great. Actually, word of mouth is awesome. Really appreciate it. We also want to give a shout out to the people who knew we were reviewing Root based on the picture we posted last week. So congrats to David Rathbun. David Patrick Harris, Eric giome. David, Greg black and white, Frank Ortiz and grand abolish are on Twitter. Awesome. Thank you for participating. We appreciate that. We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of our art he is currently accepting commissions. So go ahead and check him out at M I M S C O SAR a on Instagram or on his website Michel Mims. That's mi ch e l mi m s dot c AR ar d.co We are going to be on Twitch tomorrow can check us out at so bored podcast. I am on Twitch on a semi regular basis as well. I'm naughty Doc 541 and a new gh t YDOC 541. We'd love it if you guys came to hang out with us. That'd be great.
Rachel:Yeah, especially can play board games of this course, like video games or whatever. But come play board games with us.
Jake:I mean, we have also been streaming together on my channel, so it's true. Well, that's it. Thank you all so much for listening and we will see you next time.
Rachel:Bye bye