What disgustingly cute animals are you ROOTing?

The Eyrie became my favorite core faction after I heard Cole explain how he plays them. They require a very un-boardgamey playstyle because you're going to aim for a few controlled turmoils instead of building the world's biggest tableau. I'm sure you -can- win that way, but I found the opposite much easier.

Drop 2 cards every turn unless it'll just kill you. Go into turmoil late in the turn, ideally on the build phase. Use non-birds when possible to minimize point loss. Get into lots of small fights instead of a couple major engagements using your tie-winning rule to haul ass around the map.

Eyrie will be fine going into turmoil. If they don't, they'll almost certainly win in a very short game. Sometimes they even manage to win the turn after turmoil, just because all those Roosts are still out there generating VP, and the birds are sitting there protecting them.

The main thing about turmoil is that it robs them of actions. If they don't have that massive decree (and when carefully played it can get really big) they're stuck down in three-action land like the Marquise and Alliance.

So it's totally normal for them to surge as much as they can, fail and stall, take some lumps through their inability to react, and then be right back where they started.

7VP is a pretty big loss, decree-wise. You must have had a lot of bird cards to put 5 of them into the decree. That's sort of a gamble, because it makes the decree more flexible and harder to fail, but cost more when you eventually do.

(I once failed the decree because I was out of roosts to place, so even if you're kicking ass, you can still trigger it).

Oh hell... I was reading your posts and thinking... "bird cards"? I then saw that I had lost a point for every card, not just the birds. Wow. That makes a huge difference.

Haha. Yep, misplaying will definitely hurt your chances as any faction.

5VP or so isn't unusual for a decree fumble, but 7 seemed high, especially in a starter game. Don't forget your two weaselly Viziers always count for VP loss.

There is a slim chance (hopefully not) that I may actually end up with 5 players this weekend for the debut of Root. Usually I struggle to get 4. Anyway, in preparation of the worst case scenario, I soloed a 3 player game of Cats vs Lizard Cult vs Riverfolk.

This was a really interesting game, and I am currently very impressed at how all of the gears interlock. The 2 expansion factions are quite a bit more complex than the base game factions. Lizard Cult took the lead around mid game and kept it all the way through. The Otters got all of their trading posts built, but I didn't realize quickly enough that they should have been loading up on good crafting cards, and they had no chance to close the gap. I really dug their mercenary ability.

At this point I think winning a game with the Marquise de Cat seems to be a tall order. But that is based on 2 solo games. I really look forward to showing this game to the group; I think it will be their jam. I am a bit concerned about glazing their eyes over when I try to explain how to play it, though.

I would love to get another game of this in. I think the cat win is a tall order, but I think part of that is because they immediately seem the most powerful. But they aren't, because there's a huge action economy in the game and the cats are spread out everywhere which is HUGE problem.

They did get a small boost in recent rules to be able to Field Hospitals more cheaply, which helps them keep their numbers up without recruiting quite so much.

The wall of cats is super important, because while rebuilding is a good source of VP, battling to reclaim the space to rebuild is not action-effective. Double-march makes them pretty mobile, especially in a big wave.

Root: Underworld KS Print and Plays are Available .
If Root was my GOTY, I'd be all over printing them out and reviewing them. (nudge, nudge).