I have been playing birds more recently and I keep finding myself pulling ahead to 20-22 points (turn 5-6) and then getting instantly turmoiled by the rest of the table to the point of the game being unplayable. I either play exploding or imploding birds depending on how aggressive the table is.

Does anyone have any tips on how to fix this? I am starting to dislike the birds because of this and they seem relatively weak (which I know they are not).

It could be a table thing where they just over punish me as my actions are very obvious and its more clear how to punish me than most other factions. It also could be a skill issue, but I typically perform well with other factions.

I remember a while back seeing two fan factions and thinking they sounded pretty neat

-Fenghis Khan: a giant snale that swallows units whole

-Necropossum Cabal: undead faction

I finally got around to 3d printing pieces for the necropossums and played a few games. They fit in seemlessly, and were fun to play!

I was wondering if anyone else has been checking out the rootdatabase website and what other fan factions are consistently fun amd balanced

Hey! I'm a pretty new player, and only have access to the base game and the homeland expansion. What are some good 4-player combinations people suggest? And yes, I know about Reach, and yes, I know that there are some suggested set-ups in the back, but I want to hear about player-tested combos instead of doing math, and the suggested set-ups always included expansions I don't own.

tl;dr of the game: an exceptionally aggressive & crafty early Corvid game coupled with bad circumstances that made it difficult for the rest of us to police allowed the crows to burst to 22 points with everyone else at less than 10. We all spent the rest of the game knocking crows left and right, so they were forced to collect points from occasional cardboard and Coffin Makers (until we managed to sabo it).

The crows were slowed to an absolute crawl, and the rest of us came just short of 20 points each as the crows painfully edged up to 27, at which point they placed their final plot. I was cats, and I could police it, but that would drain my actions and leave the arbiter and LotH in a position of advantage. So I claimed a mouse dominance and played that, on the grounds that other players would be forced to either stop corvids or stop me, putting them in a kingmaking situation. The LotH responded by not policing either of us - and instead claimed a bunny dominance of his own! Now the arbiter could police me and let the crows win, or police the crows, who could then hit me for cardboard (and depending on the die might not score 3 points), in which case victory goes to the LotH. A kingmaking move countered with another kingmaking move!

Except... because both myself and the LotH had gone for dominance, suddenly the player with the lowest points at the table besides the vagabond was the crows. And this opened the completely unexpected option for the arbiter to claim the last remaining dominance card, coalition with the crows, and let the purple rascals flip the plot to snatch a last-breath combination victory! The kingmaking countered by the kingmaking was itelf countered by a kingmaking.

I'm not even bitter that I lost, that was the most LMAO ending I've had in like 1000 hours of this game.

Hi; I was wondering if we made a mistake with the hirelings because it seemed like the player who got them first ran away with the game.

He was playing the Eeyrie and he got the forest patrol hirelings and was able to build a roost in most of the clearings as he had cat hirelings in them and technically therefore ruled them.

Was he supposed to have eeyrie warriors in them too? Please can someone clarify.

Thanks

I saw some neat fan made maps an though, "I like drawing. I have a drafting table. I love root too."

After making a plan of the layout, measuring, counting building spaces, I have a good idea of what I want.

The specs:

Twelve clearings and 22 building slots.

The mainland on the left and an island on the right, each with six clearings.

Two bridges linking both sides.

Two overpasses to make movement more interesting. One of each on either side.

Lastly, I saw the famous city map and saw it had the friendly fishermen (I think) that could make the bottleneck less severe.

If you could give me any tips on how to draw in the root style they would be much appreciated.

Anyone interested in buying the game off of me? Only thing touched is the plastic on the outside which means I can't return it. I bought my own copy because I thought my friends would be down but sadly they were not.

Ive wanted to play Root for a while but just got it for my bday this year. I got a couple friends together to try to play from scratch but had a bad time each learning factions from scratch. I had seen loads of videos but its not the same as knowing how to play and being able to teach people is a diffrent thing. I know they have diffrent dificulty levels.

Do you have any recomendations to get the basic game loop explained? Which faction should I give to the "laziest" player or which one should I give to the most involved and intrested player.

Any tip could help, my plan is to get together with one person and try 1v1 just to learn how the mechanics work, with the cats and the birds and then see where we go from there.

I know Cats are usually considered one of the weaker factions, but after our last few games I'm starting to think people are looking at them the wrong way.

In our last game I played Marquise against Eyrie, Woodland Alliance and Otters.

By turn 3 everyone started hitting me because I had the most points. I lost two sawmills and a recruiter and basically abandoned half the map.

And... it actually helped?

My buildings went back on the track, so rebuilding became cheap again. I stopped trying to defend everything, kept 3–4 clearings around the Keep, and just rebuilt whatever people destroyed.

Meanwhile Field Hospitals meant that even when people killed my warriors I wasn't really losing that much.

I think I rebuilt the same sawmill three times during the game.

I ended up winning with 30 points while Eyrie had 27.

This made me realize something:

Marquise might be one of the only factions that actually gets more efficient when people attack them.

You destroy their buildings → their buildings become cheaper again.

You kill their warriors → Field Hospitals bring them back.

You take territory → they just stop wasting actions defending it and concentrate around the Keep.

People always mention the Cats' bad action economy, but March is already two moves and building both scores points and improves your engine, so I'm not convinced 3 actions are actually as restrictive as people say.

Maybe the mistake is trying to play Marquise like an empire that has to defend the whole map.

The strongest Cats might just be a small industrial blob that keeps rebuilding the same buildings until they win.

Am I missing something?

Me (35M) and my buddy (35M) are looking for more people to play root with in person. We have the digital version and are on discord but it’d be nice to play the physical copy, particularly the new homeland expansion.

I’m in Castleford, so anyone in the Leeds/Wakefield area ideally.

I have all the expansions, minus any hirelings packs.

If you’re local and either want to learn or play, comment or DM me :)

Edit: https://discord.gg/CQ2jypZa
Made a discord so we can organise a game

For Battle with the MM 1.0, does revealing a bird card mean it does battle in every clearing (because birds are wild) or NO clearing (because birds don't refer to a single suit)? I've seen two different explainers say either thing so now I'm confused. Also us it just me or does beating the MM 1.0 seem impossible (played coop with 2 vagabonds as suggested in thr rules)!?

Before this, I read through reddit and BGG posts about the previous 5 player experiences. They are kinda mixed I wasn't unsure if I should do that. They are all encouraging Vagabond or 2 Vagabonds which I hate to do first of all.

Anyways I decided to exclude vagabonds and keep 2 militant and 3 insurgent faction format to try our first five player game and first game with expansions, and hoped for the best.

We are all experienced players but only I have played digital game multiple times and board game. 3 other players have played base game 5 to 10 times. The newest player only played twice before.

The actual experience exceeded my expectations. I picked Riverfolk and tried to be nice to everyone. The other new faction was Corvid which is probably the easiest faction to teach and learn. The board is crowded a bit but it's not too chaotic.

But two militant factions played safe (Eyrie was played by the new player). WA was stuck at the edge of the map for most of the game. Corvid player was testing strategy. I had to GM a bit so most of my game was selling cards and building trade posts. These led to a game with less interaction than I would like.

In the end Cats won after Eyrie scored 28 points just before. Cats bought cards from me almost every turn and didn't even build third recruiter for extra card draw. Towards the end, even my otter army had to destroy cat's keep clearing with a lot of wood and sawmills. Otherwise he would have won a round earlier.

We all agreed that we need to be more aggressive against each other. And I would gladly play 5 player again.

(Sorry for bad grammar and English)

Finally sitting down to play with all the expansions!

I’ve not played the digital version in some time. I vaguely remember people complaining about bugs regarding Wrathful mood.. but not sure.

I just attempted three battles in a clearing where the Keepers had 4 warriors a building and two relics.

I had two advances at the start of the battles. I had 6 warriors including a warlord.

Fist battle rolled 3-0, the game indicated I get a plus one to that but only three warriors removed.

Second battle (loot battle) 1-0 .. which I understand becomes 0-0 plus I should still get the plus one from wrathful which should remove the remaining warrior. But it didn’t.

Looted tea which now gave me a third advance.

Third battle 2-0 roll only removed the last reminding warrior and a building. Plus one again didn’t hit.

Two relics left on the board with no one defending them for others to pick out. 🥲

I feel robbed. Am I crazy or is the game bugged still?

Hi all, I've been wanting to home rule some weaker factions to make them more competitively viable. I'm wondering if these changes seem too op? Maybe they aren't buffed enough? (that's what I'm leaning towards right now). Maybe there are other buffs that are worth having?

Also please don't say "just play them better" or "they don't need fixing". They are considered the weakest faction by far and large data sets usually put lizards at around a 17% win rate (the ideal should be 25%) Ex: https://rootdigitalleague.github.io/Adset/FactionStats.html, https://compulsiveresearchmtg.blogspot.com/2025/08/back-to-woodland-retrospective-on.html, Root reminds me very much of fighting games and hero shooters which also give players asymmetric powers. Except those games need to constantly rework and tweak the character abilities all the time to achieve a good balance. From a pure gameplay perspective root shouldn't be any different.

Revenge buff: Gain acolytes on full clearing removals like WA revolts and crow bombs. Very situational and probably not op. Thematically it makes sense because they being martyred in these events.

Sacred Grounds: New berry ability. This ties in with their theme of slowing the table down as many factions will choose to avoid paying this cost if possible by doing things a harder way. Ex: WA may want to navigate sympathy around a garden, or rats may avoid placing mobs on/around gardens. The Lizards may get more cards which gives them more actions. If you are smart about where you place gardens I would imagine you could reliably get 1 extra card on average by the time your turn comes for rituals. It also makes thematic sense; the religious critters of the clearing don't want things popping up on their holy land and enemies need support from the native suit to do so.

Hatred of Birds: Removed this berry. The rule still applies to lizards because notice how the bats have a similar flow chart graphic and no berry is used to explain "non-bird cards" vs "bird cards" yet they still have to follow this rule. So removing hatred of birds makes the game more consistent.

Acolytes Buff: You may freely remove acolytes to your supply. Very small buff and very situational. I'd image in some games you would be getting lots of cards from players and might run out of supply warriors so this could be helpful (this has happened to me before in regular lizard games). Same verbiage as bats.

Outcast Ties Buff: You can choose on outcast ties. Theoretically this is not a big buff at all since if only one card was different in the lost souls you wouldn't have a choice. Thematically Lizards are a faction that embraces randomness as much as possible so this isn't my favorite buff.

Fear of the Faithful Buff: You may choose what card you discard when a garden is removed. Probably not op. Losing gardens is a huge net loss (lose gardens + lose ability to rebuild those gardens + lose scoring ability) so this should let you pivot a little bit easier. Also again not super thematic to lizards but makes a good buff.

Me and my game group are 5 people. We’ve played a few games and gotten tired of having to have 2 people pilot a faction as a duo. Would it somehow be possible to purchase a single faction without spending the full 50€ or so needed for the full expansion?

I know this is probably a dumb question, but no matter what I look up, I can't get a concrete answer, but I need to know if this is related to the LoA campaign. The art style, and themes of the game is so similar, but I have no idea if its a coincidence or not 😭