276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Leder Games | Root: A Game of Woodland Might & Right | Board Game | Ages 10+ | 2-4 Players | 60-90 Minute Playing Time

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

The Riverfolk Expansion adds two exciting new characters allowing up to six players to play, as well as a solo mode and new Vagabond player board. The forest creatures are not passive bystanders in the war for control of their homeland. They have formed an alliance to fight against the cats, birds, and anyone who wants to control them. Though they start with nothing on the board, they use supporter cards to gain support tokens around the clearings, eventually rising up in violent revolts.

Sometimes the hype over a new release is overdone but I can’t think of a game more deserving than Root. The Riverfolk Expansion is now also available, featuring two new factions and a solo/co-op mode! Bring on more Root; it’s a fantastic game. Root is a game of adventure and war in which 2 to 4 (6 with the 'Riverfolk' expansion) players battle for control of a vast wilderness. I haven’t explored two or three player games as much as I’d like to yet, but the one experience I had of cats vs birds was incredibly close. The game felt competitive all the way through, until my wife beat me with a Dominance card. Had I had one more turn, I would have won, which is how close it was. I wouldn’t hesitate to play at fewer than four again. My problem with the Underworld Expansion is that neither of the new factions is balanced to work in a 2-player game. I was super excited to play the Corvid Conspiracy. Sadly, I will not be able to get a group of friends together to enjoy the full game experience any time soon. Those sneaky looking corvids are calling to me. Along with these exciting new factions the Riverfolk Expansion brings in a second Vagabond player board and three new Vagabond variants, allowing up to two players compete as the wily outcast. As well as this, this expansion comes with a robotic version of the Marquise de Cat, balancing out game play in smaller groups and allowing players to explore new factions.If you and your game group love interaction between players and negotiation then the Riverfolk expansion has to be top of your list. This expansion offers the otter Riverfolk company who are constantly trying to peddle their wares to their fellow woodland creatures. They set the costs of their wares to try and capitalise on the chaos of woodland war. As your opponents scrabble to gain traction in the woods, you can expand your trade operations with the hope to toppling the power tower in your favour. The other faction in this big box expansion is the Lizard Cult, these are the mormons of the Root world, spreading the good word of their leader throughout the land. Enough of that though, how does it feel to play against them? In a 1 v 1 game (playing as Eyrie as recommended), it’s a pleasingly tight affair. The Mechanical Marquise doesn’t use building tokens, so the focus is on taking down hordes of feline warriors. This makes it good practice for an aggressive Eyrie player. You have to work hard to stop clusters of Marquise warriors accumulating (which allow it to score points). There’s a nice ebb and flow to the two player game which I’ve always been fond of.

Root’s designer, Cole Wehrle, has done a great job of tweaking the factions so they still play with the panache they do in the base game. Despite being automated, each one plays like its original counterpart in regular gameplay and there are no sharp edges. Each bot shares an ability which means they can’t have a hand of cards. However, Wehrle has designed a workaround so that the factions can still work and interact with the Vagabond. Factions that require intentional player interaction to score are also virtually useless. The Riverfolk Company will never sell any services, since the Mechanical Marquise never does anything other than those three actions in sequence: battle, move, recruit. Likewise, she won’t be trying to guess plots from the Corvid Conspiracy, although this is easier to excuse, as the Underworld Expansion, which introduced the crows, came after. But I would expect a faction introduced in the same box as the Mechanical Marquise to be somehow fitted to work with or against her. The Lizard Cult is also affected by her gameplay, since one of their most game changing abilities is to Sanctify – that is, replace an enemy building with one of their own. This causes such bombastic effects when used against other factions, possibly immediately forcing the Eyrie Dynasty into turmoil, or destroying one of the Woodland Alliances precious bases, but against an enemy that builds nothing, it’s impossible to use. Who Can Threaten The Marquise? One of the challenges in designing a completely asymmetrical game is balancing it. How do you make sure that every player has a fighting chance when they're all following different rules? I can't answer that question, but it appears that Cole Wehrle can. The games I've played so far have all been close, with no runaway leader. In the base game, four factions battle for supremacy in the woodlands. I’ll introduce them here. I don’t have space to go into their mechanical nuances, but I’ll give you an overview of how they work. The Marquise de CatThe nefarious Marquise de Cat has seized the great woodland, intent on harvesting its riches. Under her rule, the many creatures of the forest have banded together. This Alliance will seek to strengthen its resources and subvert the rule of Cats. In this effort, the Alliance may enlist the help of the wandering Vagabonds who are able to move through the more dangerous woodland paths. Though some may sympathise with the Alliance’s hopes and dreams, these wanderers are old enough to remember the great birds of prey who once controlled the woods.

On opening the box, I was immediately drawn in by incredible artwork and high-quality components. Clearly, there is so much detail and love throughout the entire design of the game. The maps, player boards, and cards each have unique and charming artwork. Praise must be given to artist Kyle Ferrin for illustrating this fantastic world! Root represents the next step in our development of asymmetric design. Like Vast: The Crystal Caverns, each player in Root has unique capabilities and a different victory condition. Now, with the aid of gorgeous, multi-use cards, a truly asymmetric design has never been more accessible. The Elder Treetop adds a new space to any clearing where buildings can be placed. This is a fantastic addition for any factions, like the cats, that need to build as much as possible. Once again, for someone like the Eerie, this will add nothing of use to the game. However, if buildings here are destroyed (in the usual way) then the victor takes two points instead of one. So be careful if you build up there. Soup Kitchen’, (a bird card), allows for your tokens to be counted toward rule. Not just counted, but counted twice. For someone like the Badgers or the Duchy where rule is so important in their scoring, or the Cats that need a route for their wood so they can build, this could be priceless. It would be remiss of me to hide the difficult side of Root. Though I don't think any one faction is very complex, teaching it for the first time to a group at full player count was hard. The teaching takes a while because you need to give different guidelines to every player andmake sure everyone understands the basics.Root has been touted as the spiritual successor to Vast, a popular game released in 2016. Though the games have different designers, both are published by Leder Games, and both feature brilliant art from Kyle Ferrin, whose name quite rightly appears on the front of the box alongside Wehrle. Both Vast and Root share a feature that’s rare in popular board games: complete asymmetry.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment