Root is an asymmetric woodland strategy game designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games. I played it on the physical tabletop for about three and a half hours, long enough to play to a winner (Figure 1). Six of us played, two sharing a faction, mostly Stanford design or computer science students plus one alum and one fashion grad. It seems aimed at people who like strategy games and don’t mind a long rules explanation. Game page: Leder Games’ page for Root
Figure 1: Our table during the game, with the board and every faction’s mat.
Root is an area-control war game with engine-building and a lot of negotiation, but each faction plays like a different kind of game. The Eyrie play like a programming puzzle, the Lord of the Hundreds is a warband that loots, and my faction, the Vagabond, is closer to an adventure game with an inventory (Figure 2).
Figure 2: The base game, four expansions, and playmats.
The artwork creates an evocative narrative, with little woodland creatures and their own societies, but the stories came from us. Information structure is how much players can see about the state of the game, and it can be open, hidden, mixed, or dynamic. Root is mixed, and it is dynamic too. Everyone can see the board and the rules on our faction mats, but nobody can see each other’s hands or plans, and what we could see kept changing with turn order and whatever we said at the table. Information decided our game. The Bats went last and saw everything before they moved, and they won. I had one play that would have guaranteed the Eyrie won, and I missed it because I didn’t recheck my options.
Playing Root
In the first round, we went around and shared our goals and weaknesses so everyone started on the same page. We also handed everyone a list of our weak spots, which gave away a lot of the information the game normally hides. Turn order was me (Vagabond), the Corvids, the Eyrie, the Lord of the Hundreds, then the Bats. Going first let me reach a ruin and take an item before the Hundreds could. Items work differently for each of us: they go into my satchel and unlock my actions, while for the Hundreds they go into the Hoard (Figure 3). I knew we would end up enemies, and nothing in the rules said so. We both just needed the same stuff. The need for items was the mechanic, the rivalry was the dynamic it created, and the aesthetic, what it felt like to play, was Challenge.
Figure 3: The Lord of the Hundreds board, with the Hoard’s Command and Prowess tracks.
Lucky for me, the Lord of the Hundreds didn’t notice that the map had an elevated dam. When they tried to reach my clearing, they realized there wasn’t a path to get there, at least not in one turn, so I was safe from them coming to fight me. The information was open on the board. They just didn’t read it. The game progressed as normal, but I was getting all the items while the Eyrie built up their population, the Hundreds expanded, and the Bats and Corvids played elsewhere on the board. Halfway through, the Corvid player had to leave. We kept their pieces on the board (Figure 4), because the Bats had been building around them. Taking them off would have changed what the Bats could do, so even with the player gone, those pieces were still part of the system. This was second-order design: the rules never say what a table should do when someone has to leave, but our decision shaped the rest of the game.
Figure 4: Mid-game, with Corvid pieces (purple) still sharing clearings with the Bats (brown).
With a growing item economy and a target on my back, I played a Dominance card to form a coalition with the Eyrie Dynasties. That meant giving up my own victory condition: if they won, I won. I was also Allied with them through the Vagabond’s Aid action, which let me move and battle alongside their warriors (Figure 5).
Figure 5: My Relationships track, with the Eyrie (blue) marker advanced.
The Eyrie player was one of the least experienced at the table, and I wanted them to do well. I had also played the Eyrie a lot and knew how strong bird cards are for them, so I had a reason to feed them cards, which worked well because I played the Tinker, a character who can take cards from the discard pile. The coalition is an existing rule, so it isn’t emergent, but the story it created was. I started as a wandering Vagabond collecting items for myself and ended up a loyal ally to the Eyrie. That was player expression too: I could have kept chasing my own win, and I chose to help someone instead. The coalition rule was the mechanic, the cooperation that grew out of it was the dynamic, and what I felt playing it was Fellowship and Expression.
Every card the Eyrie add is an action they must perform every turn, and their leader let them recruit two warriors per action. That is a reinforcing loop, because more cards mean more actions, faster expansion, and even more tempting cards.
We grew quickly, but the Eyrie started running low on warriors. Seeing that, I crafted a card that forces factions to fight. I planned to use their warriors to help me in battle and to make another faction attack them, so they would get warriors back to recruit. But in the second round after we teamed up, we were one warrior short, and the Eyrie couldn’t recruit, which triggered turmoil. I understood the Eyrie’s strategy, but I missed one play that would have guaranteed they won because I didn’t recheck my options, and that cost us the game.
They lost points, discarded most of the Decree, and had to replace their leader (Figure 6). Turmoil is the balancing loop that interrupts the growth, much like the discard rule in Catan. Because of our coalition, their setback was mine, and I realized I had tied my win to a plan that had just collapsed.
Figure 6: The Eyrie board, with the Decree and the Turmoil rules.
The Eyrie player went through an interaction loop: they built a mental model of the Decree, acted on it, and got feedback from the rules. The skill chain behind it is long, which felt harsh for a newer player.
While the Eyrie and I fell over together, the Bats stayed out of it. They went last, so they saw every move before making theirs, which meant they had the most information of anyone. The Lord of the Hundreds, acting right before them, tried to team up with the Bats. Lucas, who played the Bats, was more interested in helping himself than anyone else, so the offer went nowhere. Apparently teamwork was a limited-time offer for other people. It paid off for him: he stayed independent, kept developing, and won. In the last photo, his brown pieces cover the map (Figure 7). The bats said “wow, this was the first time I played the bats correctly and won” which is something to say — as previously by playing them wrong he has come in last place.
Figure 7: The late-game board, with the Bats’ brown pieces across the map.
For my own games, I want to try a shared resource that means different things to different roles, so players compete through overlapping goals instead of being told to. I also want failure to push newer players toward a new strategy instead of feeling hopeless, like turmoil can.
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