How to Play Root
Win Conditions
- 30 VP
when someone scores 30vp then game ends immediately and they are the winner.
- Dominance Cards
when someone who has placed a Dominance Card, has the fulfilled the Dominance requirements at the start of their turn, Bird Song, they are the winner.
Clearings
- Each clearing has a suit: Fox, Rabbit or Mouse
- Each clearing has slots for 1 to 3 buildings.
- Ruler of the Clearing
Clearings are ruled by the faction with the most warriors + buildings. Tokens and pawns to not count.
- Slots marked with an “R”, are reserved for ruins,
when a ruin is explored and empty it is removed from the board and it’s vacated slot is available for a new building.
- Adjacency
a clearing is adjacent to any clearing linked by a single path.
Crafting
To craft items, you must use a crafting spot in each requisite clearing, you can only use each crafting spot once per turn.
- Items
an item must be available to craft it.
- Permanent effects
Movement
- a player can move any number of warriors and pawns in a single movement
- a player must rule either the clearing it’s going to or coming from.
Battle
- when battling the player chooses a clearing where it has warriors or a pawn
- the players chooses a faction in the clearing to attack
- Defender may ambush
play an ambush and deal 2 hits
- Attacker may counter-ambush
play an ambush card and cancel ambush
- Roll Dice and Add Extra Hits
the attacker gets the high die, the defender gets the low die. (Exception is Woodland Alliance, they get the high die on defense.)
- Max Rolled Hits
the maximum rolled hits are the number of warriors in the clearing (in vagabonds case it’s number of undamaged swords in his satchel.)
- Defenseless
if attacking defenseless, deal one extra hit. This means no warriors in clearing, just tokens and buildings. The Vagabond is defenseles if he has no undamaged swords.
- Dealing Hits
Hits are simulataneous. Warriors are removed first. The person taking hits selects what to remove but must remove warriors first.
- Score one Victory Points for each buidling and token removed
How to Score Points
- Remove an opponents cardboard (buildings, tokens) 1 vp
- Craft Items 1-3 vp
Each item crafted has an associated vp reward. But they can only be crafted if there is an item available on the board.
- Eyrie
- Score 1 points during evening for each roost, after first, on board
- Marquise
- Score points by building sawmills, recruiters, workshops
- Woodland Alliance
- Score points for placing Sympathy Tokens on the board
Must not be in a clearing that already has a ST, if not only ST placed, must be adjacent to sympathetic clearing.
- Vagabond
- Scores points for completing Quests
- Scores points for removing hostile warriors
Explain Factions
- Marquise, the building empire
- Birdsong
each birdsong your sawmills produce wood. - Daylight: - First you can craft any cards in your hand - You can select 3 moves (do any multiple): battle, move 2x, build, overwork one sawnill - Evening
Draw one card plus bonus draws
- the Eyrie, the rigid decree
- Woodland Alliance
- Vagabond
Must exhaust at least one item per action.