Root has captured me unlike many other games. When playing, it’s fine, and sometimes the processes can feel a touch mechanical. You handle your faction within a rather circumscribed set of rules; following the flow provided by the three divisions of your turn (birdsong, daylight, and evening), ever feeling a touch constrained by the options. Most turns, you cannot quite accomplish all of your goals. Though, when you do manage to get everything done, it feels magical, like completing any formidable to-do list that might apply to any facet of your daily grind. You manage your cards, you survey the board, and you try to figure out the path toward that breakout moment ahead where you surge on the victory track to become everyone’s punching target.
However, once the game completes, I feel entranced. I want to play again, often immediately. Damned be responsibilities. Sleep, another thing to forbear. Give me some woodland hostilities and a happy man you’ll see. The asymmetry is what creates this allure. It beguiles me. That a game can contain multiple experiences, and then their interplay can further set options ablaze intrigues me. Possibilities as wildfire can spread across the forest landscape, and each of them beckon me inward. The flames light my torch, allowing me to illuminate the unknowns of this charming game.
Together, my coplayers and I discover ways to maintain balance, discovering how each faction best accrues points while trying to pinpoint when to focus on a particular player to prevent that person from surging too far ahead, for it seems each faction becomes near unstoppable upon reaching a particular board state. That the balance derives from the rules as much as the in-game dynamics provides for a nuanced game, especially considering each faction conducts its own operations with unique goals that meet directly in the form of victory points.
I love how each faction represents a common gaming mechanic. The Eyrie function via preprogrammed movement, like a minigame version of Colt Express, Roborally, Mechs vs. Minions, or any of their ilk. The Marquise serve as the typical euro where you manipulate resources and build structures, while maintaining some area control to ensure the flow of wood used for building.
The Woodland Alliance at first glance don’t seem to be as easy to analogize, though their use of sympathy and revolts remind me of realignments/coups from Twilight Struggle and the spreading of sympathy is an engine builder for the more sympathy you place the more cards will be added to your supports stack. The more you spread, the more you obtain. Further, there’s a hand management aspect to this faction in terms of balancing between maintaining the supporters stack and your hand.
The Vagabond is the weirdo that has no warriors, and is conducting a limited Merchants and Marauders experience, in that you’re completing quests and basically moving from clearing to clearing to, in a sense, deliver goods as you might do in Star Wars: Outer Rim. Other factions have little incentive to attack the Vagabond, which is good given that attacks can completely cripple the rascal; however, at some point he must be contained for, like the Alliance, he can launch his points forward dramatically, especially if he has become well-armed.
The base deck provides life-path options, as you tend to craft different powers from game-to-game, and the accrual of points via these cards versus the other benefits they can provide (e.g., decree or supporter) can provide a nice side hustle to manage. It’ll be interesting to see how the Exiles & Parisians deck alters their feel. Same idea with the maps, especially given the ferry being another means to move around the board, and the mountain map with the closed paths and ability to score points via the pass location. Even the winter board, with the randomized suits for clearings would alter the feel and rhythms of the game. Dispersing suits across a changed distribution will vary how the Alliance spreads, the Eyrie move, and the Marquise craft. Overall, I love that I feel a tension between wanting to dive deeper into what I know against blowing up what I’ve learned by springing forth variations. Slowly, factions, maps, and cards will enter my experience of this game’s saga.
I suppose, in the end, it’s that everything together feels bubbly. Scythe, a game I enjoy, feels somewhat repetitive, even if the puzzle maintains its allure for me. Root, even with ten plays under my belt, feels fresh, for I’m eager to try each of the factions another time, and probably another time following this next go. This desire to invent, reinvent, experience, and re-experience continually churns within me. Bubbling up in me asking my friends to play again, and again. And, that a group of us once played three times in a night, switching up our roles each time verifies that my ardor for this game isn’t unique to me alone.