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What disgustingly cute animals are you ROOTing?

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28 Jan 2019 22:47 #290839 by Jackwraith
OK. Let's talk fer reals. Strategies? Favorite factions? Rules issues? Balance?

The list of complaints on the balance front over on BGG is long but, amusingly, about even between the four base factions. In other words, everyone thinks at least one of them is unbalanced, so everyone is pretty much wrong. I've tossed in my opinion that the Vagabond is mildly out of whack because he can just play his own game and ignore everyone else. As long as he has quests to pursue and complete, he'll win regardless of what anyone else does and can feed off the crafting tendencies of anyone else ("You didn't need that item, did you? Here. Have a maybe useful card.") But I'm open to being corrected.

The one conclusion that everyone seems to have drifted to is that the Lizards suck. I haven't had the chance to play with them, so I have no opinion. I am mildly confused about one thing regarding the Riverfolk, though. When it says "Move all warriors on your board to your Funds box", that includes Commitments, right? So Committing warriors is basically just using them as placeholders until next turn when you sweep them back into Funds, right? That means that if you don't spend them, you can essentially hold opposing warriors for quite a number of turns. That would mean that the Woodland Alliance will basically never want to do business with you, since they can't really spare warriors that would otherwise become officers or actually see use on the map. I really feel like I'm missing something with the Riverfolk but, again, just like with the Lizards, I haven't had a chance to play with them so I probably am.

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29 Jan 2019 08:41 #290855 by charlest
They've issued official errata on balance, tweaking a couple of things to make the Lizards better. The Woodland Alliance also lost a VP point on their sympathy track. Cats can hospital for free I think.

We've found the WA strongest, with Birds and Vagabond and Riverfolk next, followed by the Cats and Lizards.
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29 Jan 2019 09:12 #290859 by Disgustipater
Field Hospitals aren't free, but you get to save all killed warriors with a single card, instead of one card per warrior.

Vagabond also got toned down a bit.

Changes can be found here .
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29 Jan 2019 10:00 - 29 Jan 2019 13:24 #290866 by Vysetron
I'm all about this thread. Got a lot of thoughts on faction strength. I haven't played with the updated rules yet. Just a lot of games with RAW.

My tier list goes like this:

Tier 1: Alliance, Vagabond
Tier 2: Eyrie
Tier 3: Riverfolk
Tier 3.5: Cult
Tier 4: Marquis

The Alliance is effectively the game's timer. You need to be able to outpace them, which means winning before they explode into VPs. A good alliance player, moreso than any other faction in Root, can function regardless of board state. Smart placement of sympathy to leech tons of cards goes an incredibly long way and fighting them is a horrible slog. Still has to be done, and a WA casualty is worth a lot more than most due to their low unit count, but painful. The changes to their VP track aren't going to stop them from being able to burst, they'll just do it slightly slower.

Vagabond isn't busted, just much easier to play well than the other factions. You play your game, pick up your items, do your quests, game over. What people seem to forget is how reliant the Vagabond is on other people making them items. Early on crafting is often done with little thought because points are good, only to have the items they made give the Vagabond the means to ruin them a few turns later. It becomes much more even when you keep the Vagabond poor, only making items when it benefits you more or you come to a deal. A loaded Vagabond is a winning Vagabond.

Eyrie is the strongest "normal" faction, which is to say they play the closest to a traditional dudes-on-a-map game. Their weakness is point generation. This is meant to be supplemented by being the best at destroying other people's buildings, which they excel at. The correct way to play them is to drop 2 cards as often as possible, haul ass, be a wrecking ball, then go into turmoil in your last step when you intend to. It's very fun once you get a feel for it.

I put the Riverfolk here because they can swing wildly depending on how trade-happy people are. They function rich or poor but the playstyle is dramatically different. Rich otters are looking to play defensive, keep their posts safe, and score dividends by not burning through their coins. Poor otters are basically playing the Eyrie, only they get to move freely and along the river. Where they struggle is getting enough units out to punch through stronger fighters. Because they're the most reliant on negotiation they're the hardest to get a consistent rating on. Loads of fun though.

The Lizard Cult really isn't bad. They were designed to be wonky and slow because Cole likes playing the underdog faction, but they're super dangerous and have a pretty easy time taking over areas thanks to being able to show up anywhere with ease. Where they struggle, and why they're slow, is that they can't really score points until about mid-game on. This means they're directly competing with the Alliance and the Alliance is better at it. They're getting a laundry list of buffs, most notably being able to flip to hated outcast WAY more easily, so I'm confident they'll bridge the gap pretty easily going forward.

Now we dig into some painful stuff. The Marquis isn't particularly good at anything. They're really easy to play but also easy to kneecap, and once you do so they don't really have any way to regain momentum. Their starting position inevitably puts them on the back foot and forces them to play defensive, and defending is just bad in Root. I'm VERY excited to play them with the new field hospital rules. Being able to save 3 cats at a time is a big damn deal and makes them way more resilient. Unlike the Lizard buffs though, I'm hesitant to say that it'll bring them up to parity.
Last edit: 29 Jan 2019 13:24 by Vysetron.
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29 Jan 2019 10:17 #290870 by Gary Sax
I should look into printing some of the board changes. I doubt leder is going to do an update sticker kit but I haven't looked.

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29 Jan 2019 10:18 #290871 by Jackwraith
Cool. Am I right about the Riverfolk Funds/Commitments thing? When you commit funds, you just sweep them back into the Funds box on the following turn, right? So if someone paid me 3 warriors for a card they wanted, I could effectively keep those warriors for most of the game by committing them and not spending them for trade posts, right?

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29 Jan 2019 10:23 #290872 by Gary Sax
Incidentally, here is the old thread on Root, a few of us wrote some things about it there too:

therewillbe.games/forum/15-games-catchal...root?start=60#285665

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29 Jan 2019 10:39 #290875 by Vysetron

Gary Sax wrote: I should look into printing some of the board changes. I doubt leder is going to do an update sticker kit but I haven't looked.


They said they're going to reprint the boards with the upcoming expansion. Possibly a sticker set, but not sure.

Jackwraith wrote: Cool. Am I right about the Riverfolk Funds/Commitments thing? When you commit funds, you just sweep them back into the Funds box on the following turn, right? So if someone paid me 3 warriors for a card they wanted, I could effectively keep those warriors for most of the game by committing them and not spending them for trade posts, right?


Yeah, you don't lose commitments. You can lose them when your posts are destroyed IIRC, so you need to be careful if you're going to float a bunch of funds. There are a couple ways to keep warriors in limbo. To touch on what you mentioned earlier, a smart WA player will almost never hand you their precious pieces. They don't have a hard time getting cards anyway.

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29 Jan 2019 10:42 #290876 by Jackwraith
Yeah, sorry, Gary. I went searching for a prior Root thread and probably didn't look hard enough, so I just made a new one.

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29 Jan 2019 14:11 #290897 by Gary Sax
You're all good, keep creating new posts, it's good for the boards! I just want to make sure no one loses accumulated knowledge from previous posts.

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29 Jan 2019 18:05 #291030 by Jackwraith
That's actually part of the reason I titled it that way...
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17 Mar 2019 21:37 #293959 by hotseatgames
The base game and Riverfolk expansion got delivered today. I'll learn the system with hopes of having it hit the table next weekend.
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17 Mar 2019 21:44 #293960 by Gary Sax
I found it a very easy rules lift. It mainly requires a number of plays because the game can tip toward one player very quickly past the early game with mistakes. One of those games ideally everyone is the same skill level or at least has had 2-3 games under their belt.
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18 Mar 2019 15:19 #293997 by hotseatgames
I set up a 4 player game with the base factions, per the included tutorial. They walk you through the first 2 turns, and from there I have been continuing, trying to do the best job each faction could do on its turn. Several turns in, the Woodland Alliance has a decent lead. The Eyrie was doing well until they lost a key battle against the alliance, and fucked up their decree. That made them lose 7 points, which really stung.

Experienced players.... does the Eyrie ever stand a chance if they go into Turmoil even once? Their faction seems very fragile in that regard.
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