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. The Lost City turns a clearing wild. Throughout the game it can be counted as a fox, mouse or rabbit clearing for all purposes. This will be incredibly powerful for certain factions in the game and relatively useless to others. The vagabond could run away with Quest points just by sitting here turn after turn. On paper, this all sounds rather grand and, frankly, Wehrle’s execution is nothing short of genius. The services up for grabs consist of buying cards from the Riverfolk’s public hand, hiring their otter mercenaries for use on your turn or getting the chance to temporarily utilise the Riverfolk’s unique ability to travel along the map’s river. Instead of bundling the Riverfolk with some arbitrary currency, the Company exchange their services for each faction’s spare warriors.

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. Compared to other factions, the Duchy are slow to gain victory points at first. Don’t let this discourage you! By the mid-point of the game I found myself darting between my tunnels and creating almost unstoppable point scoring plays. 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.Say the first card you reveal for the Marquise is a fox card with a crafting cost of two foxes. At the end of that turn, you will add 2 warriors to every fox clearing in the board, each of which already started with 1 warrior during setup. In her next turn, if you haven’t taken out any of her warriors, she will score 8 points. Plus one per human player playing, so 1 in a solo game. She will go from 1 to 10 points before you’ve had your second turn. And she will recruit every single time. If she recruits at rabbit or mouse clearings next, the game can end in 3 or 4 turns. Your Ways To Score Are Slashed The 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. However, Leder Games have four shiny new mechanical factions for us, and it’s a marked improvement. They slot into regular games of Root neatly, freeing players up to choose the smaller factions. Now, groups of two or three are no longer confined to the same factions. You can play as the Lizard Cult, or the Woodland Alliance, or whichever takes your fancy. 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. With other faction combinations, it’s always going to be a limited solo experience. The smaller, insurgent factions of Root such as the Woodland Alliance always work better when they have several players to bounce off, so I can’t really recommend the bot for solo play if your favourite faction isn’t the Eyrie Dynasty. As an addition to a two or three player game, I tend to just pass on it. Root is such a political game that it just feels weird playing with a mix of people and the bot. The Marquise have such a crucial role in Root as the forest policewomen that leaving it to a bot gives the game a slightly empty feeling. Final Thoughts

All factions can also gain victory points in a couple of ways to help them get to the winning total of 30. Removing an opponent’s buildings in battle will always earn you points, as will crafting certain items. As well as these methods, each faction has unique abilities that grant them other, more effective ways to gain points. The Ronin, a racoon, however, is faster, starting with two boots as well as a sword. His torch action allows him to exhaust a sword to do an extra hit, being one of the more violent vagabonds. The strongest in the set for me is the Adventure. A wise old owl, the Adventure starts with a boot and hammer and is able to damage an item to use it as any other one. This makes him much more adaptable. However, with so much care and design in the rest of the aesthetics, it always feels sadly dissatisfying to be playing a character that doesn’t look like the meeple in front of you. Well not any more! A Myriad Of Meeples Root: The Riverfolk Expansion is the first expansion of the base game Root. Now, up to six players can fight it out to see who is the strongest in all the woodland. The expansion brings two brand new factions to the mix: the Riverfolk Company, a trading band of otters, and the Lizard Cult, fanatical acolytes who build gardens to control the board. Point scoring ministers may generate points every round per particular type of building on the board,or by discarding any number of cards of the same suit to score that many victory points.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. If you’re teaching people Root for the first time, make sure they know what to expect. If they can read the rules beforehand, even just for a single chosen faction, even better. The game gives you two rule books – one ‘Learning to Play’ walk through and one complete rules guide, the ‘Law of Root’. It even gives you a walk-through to follow on your first two turns. Even so, you won’t work out all the rules until you see them in action and that first play through is likely to go wrong. If you accept that and press on, you’ll find that this game is truly excellent. Components And Art 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 Cat