Leder Games | Root: The Exiles and Partisans Deck

First of all, Root is a phenomenal board game. As asymmetrical strategy games go, it’s tough to beat. I’ll be honest, it’s complexity is on the higher side (3.81/5 BGG weight rating) so if you’re inexperienced with hobbyist board games and are simply reading Amazon reviews to decide whether you’ll like it, Root might not be the best place to start. For more on Root’s fundamental merits as a board game, visit its page on BoardGameGeek. If you’re coming from BGG and wondering about this box as a physical product: man this game is a pleasure to interact with. Everything about it is endlessly charming. The artwork is superb - maybe my favorite of any game, ever. The print quality is extremely high across the board (no pun intended). Just opening the box feels luxurious. This game has excellent replay ability value due to the asymmetrical factions (which also make it more difficult to learn, but the payoff is worth it), which just makes you want to interact with all the lovely little bits even more. As you move your army of cats through the forest bent on extinguishing the critter rebellion, you’ll see the adorable vagabond exploring caves and collecting cute little items and you’ll think “Gee I want to do that” and you’ll be excited about your second playthrough before your first is even complete. This is a staple of my board game group for a good reason. If you’re a seasoned board game hobbyist, or a new gamer ready for a challenge, I highly recommend Root.

Root is a truly original game design. It's part area-control, part card/action selection and part war game with an amazing set of four totally different factions, and I do mean TOTALLY different factions! Each factions is almost playing an entirely different mini-game with the larger game! I kid you not. And as strange as that sounds, it all works...brilliantly! In principle, Root is simple: the first faction to gain 30 victory points wins. The board is a giant forest with several clearings marked by a 'suit' (fox, mouse, bunny, birds). Players compete to control these clearings. Players play suited cards to do actions in said clearings that match the suit of the card they're playing (i.e. need to play a bunny suited card to do an action in a clearing with a bunny suit.). Some cards also can be 'crafted' to gain a special ability, again matching suit of the card to the suit of the clearing where you want to do the action! Movement is based on area control. You can only move into or from a clearing you control (i.e. having the most units/buildings). Combat is super simple: the attacker rolls two dice and takes the higher total, eliminating that many of the defenders units; the defender does the same with the lower numbered dice. However, the attacker/defender can never eliminate more units then the size of his attacking/defending force. For example-attacking with 4 units and rolling a '5'. You only get to kill 4 units, not five. The same applies to the defender. Furthermore, there are cards and various faction abilities that can modify battle results in interesting ways. That in essence is how root plays....simple....but....the factions turn all this on it's head! At its heart, Root is a war game between the ruthless denezins of a fairy tale-like forest setting: THE CATS: The Cats run the forest as a vast labor camp. They score victory points by developing structures within the forest clearings and keeping the 'status quo.' THE BIRDS (EYRIE): The Eyrie used to run things until the cats came along, and they want their power and control back. They're fast, ruthless and are the strongest military power! They gain VPs by expanding their influence! They can spread like wildfire and crush the mightiest of foes! BUT....they have one great flaw: Their government is highly unstable! One wrong move can bring down their entire power structure and thwarting their plans! THE WOODLAND ALLIANCE: The Alliance represents all the other woodland creatures suffering under the yoke of the cats. They're the rebels! They want the Cats overthrown, and they want the Birds gone too! POWER TO THE PEOPLE! The Woodland alliance fights a guerilla war to free the forest of tyranny! They get VPs by overthrowing the Cats and the Birds. THE VAGABOND: The shifty Vagabond are the allegedly "neutral" raccoons. They've decided to become the merchants of death and profit from the growing war in the woodlands! They can 'aid' and/or hinder each faction for their own selfish reasons, hoping to become wealthy from the chaos! They can gain VPs by helping the various factions at crucial moments, and even side with a faction and ride their coat tales to victory! To win, you HAVE to be ruthless! There's no room in this game for care bears! The first faction to get a VP engine going can run away with game if the other players are not careful! Such VP leaders must be crushed! And the asymmetricral design of the game really brings this to life. The factions really to play that differently and have their own special way to victory. No two are even remotely similar! The game has only two downsides. 1) It's MEAN as heck. You can show no mercy in this game. 2) It's incredibly hard to teach because it is so different. Watching videos is pretty much mandatory.

Excellent game, and the expansions not only add more players but mroe variants, a must for Root

It's about the empire of the Marquess de Cat, which has just taken over the forest, doing battle with the Eyrie Clans of birds who're trying to restore their power while facing internal collapse. Except it's also about the Woodland Alliance which is starting a revolution against them both. And about the Vagabond who's wandering around doing odd jobs and helping the other factions. And with the (first) expansion, it's also about a Lizard Cult and the capitalist otters of the River Company. It's Gambit Pileup, the Game, where everybody's schemes collide. Every faction plays differently and has different ways to get victory points, and it's possible to claim certain special goals. I did pretty badly as the Alliance, spreading unrest throughout the forest and launching one successful uprising and a raid but never establishing a second base or building items besides a crossbow. Meanwhile there were giant armies of cats and birds fighting each other. The Vagabond was absent (3-player game), so we didn't get to see his gameplay, but it involves collecting items made by the other players and then using them to complete quests like "give a speech" or "fight some bandits". The cats rely on building structures to get more stuff, while the birds make increasingly bold Decrees to take more and more actions but inevitably crash at some point. In a second playthrough I was the Vagabond playing against the cats and birds, finding myself playing kingmaker and attacking both to stop either from winning. I finally gained enough gadgets to invoke a devastating one-beaver uprising that someone on BoardGameGeek compared to that supervillain with the doom gauntlet. So I've had two very different experiences already, and bought the game. It's a little intimidating to get started, but the current edition comes with not just a rulebook and a How To Play booklet but an extra sheet that walks you through two full turns. I see that BGG has a printable rulesheet to let you play solo against the cats even without owning the expansion. Seemed like fun despite the tricky intro process. Because there are asymmetric goals, I don't greatly mind that it's focused on an abstract notion of VPs. I can kind of feel like I'm doing something interesting and creating some sort of story, even if I'm not winning. The fact that each side has different rules isn't too hard to understand, because there are common features like crafting and movement that can help you understand other factions, and cards to remind you what the others are trying to do. The board and pieces are well made and pleasant, I should add. Deceptively cute for what is potentially a brutal game. Would I recommend this to people new to modern board games, ie. people who've never heard of Settlers or Pandemic or Dominion or Splendor? No, I'd probably start them off with something a bit simpler. If someone like that does want to play, I suggest starting them off with the cats. It's definitely worth playing if you're familiar with modern gaming though!

Root has been on my radar since its first Kickstarter. I finally picked this up, along with the first expansion. The second expansion should be releasing later this month in fact. There is a genre of games known as asymmetric. In these games, each player is effectively playing an entirely different game from one another, but together. Probably the best example would be Android: Netrunner where one player plays the corporation and the other plays a hacker. They are effectively fighting against each other, but even the very nature of their turns have no resemblance to one another. While some games claim to be asymmetric, they really just give each player a unique power or ability. This is not the same thing at all. Root is a truly asymmetric game, much like its predecessor: "Vast: The Crystal Caverns". Each player takes on one of four different factions (more with expansions) to either vie for control of the forest, or to meet their own personal goals (as is the case with the Vagabond character). Our family has really taken to this game within a few plays. This include my wife and our 8, 10 and 13 year olds. While our 8 year old does need help even with the faction that is labeled as having the lowest complexity (the cats), she still really enjoys it. My 10 year old has no issues at all and was giving us some pretty heavy competition. Still, the game is not light-weight and does come with a pretty steep learning curve. That said, once you have one of the factions down, it is VERY easy to break out the game and have everyone grab the same faction they played with last time, and get down to business quickly. If you are looking for a game that has great production value, is unbelievably well balanced, offers solid replay-ability and is guaranteed to provide many fun evenings of making your friends and family hate you (in love, of course), Root is definitely a solid option.

Quality cards

Root is a fully asymmetric territory control wargame. The idea is that each of the factions is a different type of army looking to take over the woodlands for their own purposes. (Something of a Redwall-esque theme, if you happen to know the series.) To give an idea of how asymmetric this really is, there's a set of common rules that are shared by all the factions, and then each faction also has their own rules section that's roughly as long as the common rules. There's a few basic concepts shared by all the factions, but each faction is a very different playing experience. Speaking of the factions, you have the Marquise Cat, who plays most similar to a standard wargame. They've got a ton of flexibility, but not enough actions to both manage the board and score a ton of points at the same time. There's the Eyrie Dynasty, who build up a decree that continually gives them more actions to take but also demands they take those actions. Prevent them from fulfilling it, and you knock them into turmoil and force them to rebuild from scratch. There's the Woodland Alliance, the plucky guerrilla fighters. They harass the other factions by placing sympathy, and the very act of stamping it out means giving them cards to place more sympathy on their next turn. Or you could leave it there, but then they have the action to revolt and take over the entire clearing. And finally there's the Vagabond, a solo wanderer who's looking for his own place. Instead of fighting for control of the board, he's actually just exploring ruins, getting items that other factions have crafted, completing quests, and occasionally knocking other factions down a peg to balance things out a little. Overall, the game is incredibly well designed, the art and the theme is great, and if you have the time to put into it, the gameplay is incredibly rewarding. It'll take a couple of plays for everyone to really understand all the options of all the factions. On the one hand, that is a major investment, but those learning games are still fun, and the depth of the options that open up afterwards is amazing. And this is even before the expansions come into play. However, I do have one complaint regarding the game, and that's the component quality. The actual pieces themselves are fine. The meeples and the cards are great, and the various small cardboard tokens and such are serviceable. However, the faction boards and the actual main board itself have started bending slightly. This is despite being stored in a dry, non-humid place, and being put flat on the bottom of the box beneath the weight of everything else. When it comes out for play, it's an irritating exercise trying to get the main board to lay flat, and the faction boards need to be bent a little by hand to undo the curve they've acquired while being stored. Overall, I consider this a minor complaint for a brilliant game, but it is an annoyance, and if there's another seller or source without these problems, it'd be worth considering.

Root is a pretty fun game, after you learn how to play it. It's not as complicated as first glance may suggest but there is a small jump to get over when you first start it. Add to the fact that each faction has its own set of rules as to how they interact with the board and it again, seems extra complicated. But if you focus down on just one faction and not worry about how the other work at the start while still learning it. You will quickly realize that they are all actually very strait forward in how they work. Once you learn one move on to the next, and the next, and the next. The nice part is that while at their core every faction has the same basic stuff, move, battle, build, and craft. The nuance comes in faction specific abilities or rules that makes playing as other factions like a fresh game. That said while the box says 2 players and it's technically true, it's not really that fun with only 2 players unless you also buy at least one of the hirelings packs.