ROOT

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

ROOT has the cute, kawaii looks, but is actually hardcore inside, kind of like a heavy metal band with K-pop faces (no offense to fans of either genre). Players are major animal factions in a forest teeming with life, fighting for supremacy. The factions are very different, far more different than in other games with factions and different faction abilities. Here in ROOT the factions are so different that it feels like you have multiple sets of rules, one for each faction. Adding to that is another set of basic rules which apply to all factions, e.g. basic combat, card usage. In ROOT you fight, you take control of villages, you construct buildings, and you manufacture tools. These actions are just the basic layer, and they only contribute to part of your score. Your faction has unique abilities and ways of scoring, and you must make use of these to win. You compete with other factions to be first to reach 30 victory points to win the game.

There are 12 villages on the board (well, technically they are called clearings) connected by a road network. Some are connected by a river too. The square boxes in the villages are locations for buildings. Each village has a species majority. E.g. the red village on the left is a fox majority village, while the orange village on the right is a mouse majority village. You can see the fox and mouse icons next to the villages. When you perform an action at a village, usually you need to play a card matching the majority specie.

This is the bird faction player board. The section at the lower left specifies what the faction must do and may do on a turn. The most important feature of the bird faction is the Decree along the top of the board. There are four positions where you can tuck cards, and they correspond to four actions you can take - recruit, move, battle and build. Every turn you must tuck at least one new card, increasing your number of actions per turn. This sounds great, but there's a catch. If at any time you are unable to perform an action, your faction goes into turmoil. You will lose points, you will change leadership (that character at the bottom right), and the Decree will be reset. E.g. you need to recruit but you've run out of game pieces to add to the board; or you need to battle but you've already killed all opponent soldiers at your locations. The Decree of the bird faction is an accelerating train. It keeps building momentum and becomes more and more powerful, but once it crashes, it will be painful.

The most important way for the bird faction to score points is to build roosts (a type of building) - those dark blue square markers. Every turn you score points based on how many roosts you have on the board. You can earn up to 5VP per turn! However the roosts are also a time bomb. When you run out of roosts to build, you will fail your build action, and you will fall into turmoil. The Decree is powerful, but it is a double-edged sword.

The bird faction has four potential leaders. You pick one at the start of the game. Each leader gives a different bonus, and dictates the starting actions on the Decree.

These are the cards in the game. One unique way the bird faction uses cards is to tuck them under the Decree. Cards have their own abilities, which can be used by all factions. Some cards are played during battle, e.g. the Ambush card immediately kills two attackers. Cards come in four suits - the coloured bar at the top. The suit limits where you can use the card. Red (fox) cards can only be used in fox villages. Yellow (rabbit) cards can only be used in rabbit villages. The blue (bird) cards are jokers though, and can be use in any village.

The card back is beautiful. The four suits are represented here - fox, mouse, rabbit and bird.

This is the raccoon faction player board. This faction is called the Vagabond. It's not even really a faction. It's just one lone ranger roaming the forest. The raccoon collects tools, and the actions it can perform depend on the tools it has. One generic action that all factions can take is to craft tools. Normal factions do this for the victory points. After a tool is crafted, it is of no use to the factions. However the raccoon may come to trade these tools with the factions. The raccoon can provide various forms of help to the factions to earn VP's. It can even establish alliances. The raccoon can become enemies with factions too, killing their soldiers and burning their buildings. These give victory points too. Yet another source of VP's is secret personal missions. Similar to the bird faction, at the start of the game you get to pick a character to play (bottom right). This determines your starting tools, your special abilities and eventually your gameplay.

One unique ability of the raccoon is to hide in the forest, out of reach of the other factions.

This is the cat faction, and their style is to build, build, build. They score points by building. They need wood for buildings, and they build sawmills to cut down wood. The more buildings they have, the more wood will be needed for the next ones they build, so they need to keep up in wood production. According to the backstory, the cats are the current rulers of the forest, while the birds are the previous rulers. When we played, we joked that the bird faction was Barisan Nasional, trying to win back the country. Their colour is dark blue too!

Birds and cats - natural born enemies.

The otter faction is from the Riverfolks expansion. These are merchants and mercenaries, and they flourish by trading with other factions. They may recruit at any village along the river. They may move along the river. Their cards are public information, because they may sell their cards to other factions. To be precise, they may not refuse if another faction wants to buy their cards. They can at most set a high price. The ability to move along the river can be bought too, but only for one turn. If you want it next turn, you need to pay again. You may recruit otter mercenaries. They will fight alongside your soldiers, but also for one turn only. When you buy (or rent) stuff from the otter faction, you pay using your unused pawns. They go to the otter faction board. The otter faction uses these pawns to perform actions, and some actions will consume your pawns, thus returning them to your pool. One important source of VP's for the otters is the trading posts (bottom right of photo).

The card on the right is a Dominance card. This is a special card and there are only four such cards in the deck. It gives you an alternate path to victory. If you play a Dominance card, you can win by fulfilling the stated condition and then maintaining it for one full round, i.e. from your current turn to the start of your next turn. The tradeoff is your victory points are forfeit. You are switching to a different route. This particular Dominance card requires controlling three mouse villages. Controlling means having more soldiers and buildings than others.

Combat is simple. The attacker rolls two dice (which have numbers ranging from 0 to 3). The bigger number will be kills dealt by the attacker, and the smaller number the kills dealt by the defender. To deal a certain number of kills, you need to have at least that many soldiers. If the attacker has only two soldiers but rolls a 3 for himself, then he only gets to kill two defending soldiers. This combat mechanism favours the attacker, since the attacker always gets the bigger number.

The Play

We did a four player game. Ivan played the raccoon (white), Tim the cats (orange), Dith the otters (light blue) and I the birds (dark blue). This photo was taken in the early game. Cats were everywhere, but were spread thinly. The birds started with a large force at the bottom right corner.

Playing the bird faction, my plan was to expand aggressively and steadily. The leader I picked doubled my recruits. I wanted to push outwards from the southeast corner. Playing the bird faction required much computing power. I had to think ahead a few turns, to make sure my Decree did not break down and reset. Every time I tucked a new card, I needed to assess whether I would be able to perform this specific action at specific villages for the next few turns. I needed to build roosts to score points. I only tucked one card for the build action. Tucking two would be too risky. Even having just one was not easy. I had to make sure I gained control of at least one more village every turn, so that I could build one more roost. I tucked two cards for the recruit action, which meant four new recruits every turn. Having a healthy stream of new soldiers sounded great, but this came with great risk too. I was frequently at risk of running short of pawns. In addition to having already deployed pawns onto the board, I also bought stuff from Dith, thus placing pawns on his player board. Thankfully Dith and I came to a form of mutual agreement. I bought stuff from him to help him get more actions, while he tried to use my pawns quickly so that he could return them to my pool. We kept our words and did not backstab each other.

Dith struggled from the early game, due to a lack of customers. I was his only more-or-less regular customer. Ivan's raccoon could not spare pawns for him, since Ivan only had one pawn. Tim's cat faction had the most pawns, but Tim never found anything on sale particularly attractive. He just focused on building sawmills, chopping wood and constructing more and more buildings. Dith didn't have many actions, and could not deploy many soldiers onto the board. Those which were deployed did not last long either. Sometimes I was the one killing his soldiers. Not that I did so to hurt his position or to improve mine. I simply needed to fulfill my destiny - the Decree. When the Decree said battle, I had to plan to do battle. Sometimes I went into battle hoping more of my soldiers would die, because I needed those pawns for my recruit actions next turn. There aren't many games where you tell your soldiers please just die.

Tim (cat faction) made steady progress with woodcutting and building. Tim and I started with our HQ's at opposite ends of the board, so it would take some time for us to build up to any major conflict. In the early game I did kill off many of his small garrisons. It was almost impossible for him to defend them and he didn't even bother. He just concentrated on building up his infrastructure and gaining VP's. In a way, we were cooperating. I did what I did because that was how my faction worked and how I scored points. My expansion did not really prevent him from scoring points. He didn't try to stop me and just focused on his own way of scoring. We both prospered.

Ivan's raccoon kept busy with its own scoring too. He started with exploring ruins and digging for relics. Once done with all the exploration, he came trading with us for tools. He amassed an impressive set of tools. His score, Tim's and mine grew steadily and we were not far from one another. Only Dith gradually fell behind due to the lack of actions.

My bird faction (dark blue) now dominated about half the forest. Dith's otters (light blue) had an expedition force on the left which broke through into Tim's cat kingdom (orange), but it seemed a little pointless. It didn't seem to help with Dith's scoring much, and eventually Dith did not follow up with any reinforcements. Tim later recaptured that village.

I made one critical mistake with that unprotected village on the right. I was expecting the eventual clash with Tim along the river, which was my front line. I positioned my soldiers such that he couldn't break through to harass my villages behind the front line. What I forgot to consider was Ivan's raccoon. He easily slipped by and set fire to my unguarded roost. I didn't even have any eyewitness to prove his guilt and I couldn't declare him public enemy and arsonist. This was a major blow to me. When my turn came again, I could not do recruitment at any fox village. The roost which was destroyed was the only roost I had in a fox village. The Decree failed, and my bird faction fell into turmoil.

At the top left I had a red fox card, which meant I must perform recruitment at a fox village every turn. At this point I had 8 cards in my Decree, which meant 8 actions every turn. This was very powerful. In contrast, the cat faction had a fixed number of actions every turn - three.

I had a feeling that a turmoil was coming soon, but this still caught me off guard. I knew turmoil was coming because I already had 6 roosts built, and thus only one left on my player board. Once the last one was built, I was going to head for turmoil. At that time I had a Dominance card in hand, and two Ambush cards. That Dominance card required controlling three mouse villages, and I happened to have strong forces in three such villages (photo above, orange villages with blue birds). Ambush cards can be used when being attacked. I had a mouse Ambush card and a bird Ambush card, which meant both could be used to defend my mouse villages. It felt like the stars were aligned for me to play this Dominance card. However I knew I was making a gamble. By playing the Dominance card, I was forgoing my victory points. Despite the turmoil and the VP penalty, I wasn't doing too badly. If I failed to maintain control over the three mouse villages, I knew it would be difficult to regain control. The rest of the players would gang up on me. Eventually I could not resist the temptation and decided to go for broke.

Aaaaand broke I went. Despite all geared up to defend my mouse villages, in the end it wasn't any attack from Tim that stopped me. It was Dith's recruitment drive which stopped me. Tim didn't even bother to attack me, and left the job of stopping me to Dith. I forgot that Dith could recruit at any village next to the river. He only needed to recruit a bunch of otters, and they would overcrowd the village and become the controlling faction. They didn't even need to fight me. They just stood about and shook hands with my soldiers. I could not play my Ambush cards on these freshies! Everything went downhill from there for me. I even had yet another turmoil. In hindsight, after the turmoil I should have just regrouped and continued to work on VP. My situation was not that dire to call for such a gamble. I was impetuous.

The remaining contenders were Tim and Ivan. Dith and I had been messing with Tim a little here and there, since he was everywhere and we couldn't resist taking some jabs. Ivan looked harmless enough, and nobody bothered to attack him. He was the last thing we associated with a threat. By the time we realised he was getting stronger and stronger, it was too late. He had built a massive repertoire of tools. Even if we robbed him of some, he still had plenty, and he still had many ways to score points. The raccoon has many small ways of scoring points, none of which looked particularly threatening in itself, but they all add up. Eventually Ivan charged ahead and hit 30VP to win the game. Lesson learnt - everyone needs to watch and rein in everyone else. You cannot afford to ignore anyone.

The Thoughts

ROOT is a rare game which after playing I wanted to know who designed it. Cole Wehrle did not ring a bell, and I had to do some research to find out that he designed Pax Pamir and John Company, both heavy games. ROOT is certainly a complex game. Some of the rules, e.g. the generic ones applicable to all factions, are simple and succinct, but the whole package is an intricate network of interlocking mechanisms and rich player interactions. It is a complex ecosystem. Many games have multiple factions and unique faction powers, but not many have factions as wildly different as those in ROOT. We are not talking about having a generic faction template from which you apply advantages and weaknesses to create different factions. We are talking about factions built almost from the ground up. It is an impressive feat to get these different factions to work as a coherent game.

I have read a comment that playing ROOT is multiplayer solitaire, because of how each faction just focuses on its own way of scoring. You don't want to get distracted with spending effort slowing others down. In my opinion this is a player problem. It is true that you do need to make good use of your faction abilities and keep up with the scoring to stay in contention. However messing with others is an effective tool you should not neglect. You may not have the luxury to attack every other opponent, but at least make sure everybody is being reined in by somebody. In ROOT you have a delicate balance of power. Players can easily gang up on an apparent leading player. The board situation is fluid due to how effective attacks are, and how alliances can shift.

The game mechanisms in ROOT can easily be applied to a much more serious setting, or a historical setting. The forest can be a nation undergoing revolution, with many factions vying for power and plotting against one another. By choosing a Disney-like setting and such cute artwork, the publisher tones down the seriousness and the tension. This may be a good thing. I certainly like the artwork and the components. Just make no mistake, this is a complex multiplayer strategy game.