Root is a board game designed by Cole Wehrle and first released by Leder Games in 2018. It is a fully Asymmetric Multiplayer strategy game simulating burgeoning tension and war that's about to take place in the forest.
Each player takes the role of one of the anthropomorphic animal factions and battle each other for the control of its resources or to spread their ideology.
Games and Expansions
- Root: The base game, which includes four factions (the industrious Marquise de Cat, the imperialist Eyrie Dynasties, the subversive Woodland Alliance and the independent Vagabond) and two maps.
- Root: The Riverfolk Expansion: The first expansion, which adds two new factions (the radical Lizard Cult and the mercantile Riverfolk Company), three new Vagabond characters, and an automated version of the Marquise de Cat.
- Root: The Underworld Expansion: The second expansion, which adds two new factions (the invasive Underground Duchy and the secretive Corvid Conspiracy) and two new maps.
- Root: The Marauder Expansion: The third expansion set which adds two new factions (the devout Keepers in Iron and the militaristic Lord of the Hundreds) and introduces hirelings.
- Root: The Homeland Expansion: The fourth expansion set which adds three new factions (the outsider Lilypad Diaspora, the diplomatic Twilight Council, and the opportunistic Knaves of the Deepwood), three new Vagabond characters, two new maps and three new landmarks.
- Root: The Clockwork Expansion: Four bots based on the base game's factions with a second one based on the first four expansion factions. These are official retoolings of the fan-made Better Bot Project.
- Root: The Exiles and Partisans Deck: An alternative shared deck of cards.
- Root: The Squires and Disciples Deck: A second alternative shared deck of cards.
- Root: Vagabond Pack: Personalized pawns for each possible Vagabond, including three new Vagabond characters.
- Root: Hireling Pack: Adds more hirelings to the mix. From Marauder onward, each major expansion came with a corresponding Hireling Pack.
- Root: Landmark Pack: Adds new pieces called Landmarks to the game with special abilities.
In August 2020, a digital version of the game was released on Steam.
Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game, where players take on the role of Vagabonds navigating the forest, was produced by Magpie Games. See also Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, the next game by the same developers, with similar themes.
Root contains examples of:
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General
- Action Bomb: The Favor cards are powerful one-use items that allow a faction to remove all warriors from other factions in all clearings of a given suit. The Favor of the Rabbits card depicts the rabbits carrying an actual bomb.
- Aggressive Play Incentive: The combat mechanics encourages attacking other players over playing defensively by how combat is resolved: players roll two d12 dice with values from 0 to 3, and the attacker deals the damage equal to the higher roll, while the defender takes the lower (the only exception being the Woodland Alliance faction, Famed in Story as guerilla fighters, who take the higher roll regardless).
- Army Scout: The Mice have a Scouting Party card which allow any faction to prevent Ambushes.
- Arrange Mode: The digital version includes several single-player challenges with modified factions (such as a pacifist Vagabond) or victory conditions (such as destroying the Marquise's Keep).
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: The game is a War Game at its core, but each faction approaches it differently. The Marquise plays a Construction and Management wargame, the Eyrie plays a Programming wargame, the Alliance plays a Political Strategy wargame, and the Vagabond plays an Adventure Board Game with Equipment-Based Progression. Each additional faction plays some other method, sorted into two broad categories:
- Militant factionsnote typically start the game with some established units and infrastructure, and are better at directly fighting against other factions to take control of the board and earn victory points.
- Insurgent factionsnote typically start with little or no board presence, but are better at disrupting other factions, and over time can spread across the board and quickly jump ahead in points if left unchecked.
- Backstory: The rules give an insight into each faction's reason for why they are where they are and why they must do what they do.
- Badass Adorable: You wouldn't think that such adorable visuals and cute colorful meeples are actually waging a violent war.
- Balance Buff: The third printing provided buffs to the Cats and Lizards.
- Originally, the Cat could save one warrior from death by discarding a card matching the battle clearing's suit. After the update, if multiple Cats fall in the same battle, the player can now save all of them by discarding a single matching card.
- The Lizard's Hated Outcast mechanic activated if the same suit was marked as the Outcast two turns in a row. The update made this easier to pull off by allowing the current Outcast to become Hated if it isn't outnumbered by a new suit.
- Bears Are Bad News: The strongest NPC in the RPG, with 5 boxes of injury and exhaustion, 4 morale, and an attack that inflicts 3 injury, is described thus:A bear. Run.
- BFS: The Mouse version of the Ambush! card features a mouse carrying a sword as long as it is tall.
- Bird People: Two of the factions (the Eyrie Dynasties and the Corvid Conspiracy), their hireling counterparts (the Last Dynasty and the Corvid Spies), and two Vagabonds (the Adventurer and the Gladiator). They're also the fourth suit in the deck representing the common woodlanders — Bird cards can substitute for cards of other suits, and certain factions interact with them in different ways.
- Cat Folk: The Marquise de Cat and her army, and their hireling counterparts (the Forest Patrol).
- Civil War: The forest was once united under the control of the Eyrie before their dynasty collapsed to infighting, which in turn cleared the way for the Marquise's conquest. Now all the factions of the forest are now vying for influence and control.
- Cute Is Evil: All the faction look like cute woodland creatures, but each one is a devious and dangerous foe who will turn on the weak at a good chance.
Word of God is that the cute aesthetic is intentional to offset the negative emotions that cutthroat competitive gameplay evokes in most players — to paraphrase, a backstab does not feel as bad when it is a cute cat, bird, or mouse doing the backstabbing. - Death from Above: The Bird version of Ambush! card depicts a hawk descending from the trees to ambush a rabbit and mouse.
- Draw Extra Cards: Each faction has different criteria that allow them to draw extra cards, usually incentivizing building infrastructure (the Marquise's recruiters, the Eyrie's roosts) or accumulating resources (the Vagabond having coins in their inventory, the Riverfolk spending funds acquired by selling to other factions).
- Everyone Has a Special Move: The whole game is asymmetric, so each player is essentially playing a different game than the others. In addition, specific factions have their own special abilities:
- Each Vagabond has a different special move and a different set of starting items.note
- Each of the Eyrie Dynasties' Leaders have a different passive ability and their Loyal Viziers start in different positions.
- Each of the Underground Duchy's Ministers gives you a different ability, with the power of each ability increasing with rank.
- Exact Words: Like many complex board games, the rules deliberately use similar but different terms that have different game play implications. As such, the rules must be read closely, as they rely on these differing terms and spend little time on pointing out the differences. For instance, most factions have "warriors" which can be killed and removed from the board, while the Vagabond's piece is a "pawn" which can fight like a warrior, but isn't removed from the board in the same way. "Buildings" take up an available spot in a clearing, but "tokens" do not, even if they represent a building (like the Marquise's Keep, the Riverfolk's Trade Post, or the Twilight Council's Assembly).
- Fan Game: Several fan-made factions can be found on BoardGameGeek.
- Fantastic Racism:
- The base game mainly pits the feline Marquise de Cat against the bird Eyrie Dynasties, with a brewing revolution planned by the Woodland Alliance of mice, foxes, and rabbits.
- The Eyrie Dynasties think birds are superior to other species. They also discriminate against crows, which led to the formation of the Corvid Conspiracy.
- Certain factions have unique interactions with Bird cards — the Marquise can exploit them for bonus actions, while the Lizard Cult harbors a deep distrust of birds and can't use them as wild cards in their rituals.
- The Lilypad Diaspora fell victim to this generations ago, being scattered and driven out of the forest. The faction must navigate relations with the other factions on the board, as well as the frogs' own demands for reconciliation or reprisal.
- Fantasy Americana: Despite the apparently Medieval European Fantasy trappings, the woodland folk are mostly species native to North America such as raccoons and opossums. Every member of the Eyrie Dynasties is a bird species found only in the Americas. The Marquise de Cat, a power from a far-off overcrowded French-themed territory, is portrayed as a colonizing outsider.
- Flavor Text: Most factions have one on their boards and in the rules.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Each faction's mechanics deliberately tie into its theme and backstory.
- The game begins just after a successful incursion by the Marquise de Cat, which is why she starts the game with a warrior in every clearing. Her main path to victory, industrialization, depends on her securing supply lines and exerting military control over the board.
- The Eyrie Dynasties were the original rulers of the forest, and after suffering a handy defeat by the Cats, only have one base left at the furthest point from the Cat's fortress. However, they have a better claim to legitimacy among the forest-dwellers, which is why they are able to control a clearing by matching other factions' numbers instead of outnumbering them. This is also reflected in the fact that the 30 victory point win condition is meant to represent a tipping point of legitimacy — and the Eyrie passively gains points each turn. Bird cards can also be played in any clearing, because the birds live in the treetops instead of alongside the commoner animals matching the clearing's suit. The Decree also represents the strain of leading a large government with multiple factions to please.
- The Woodland Alliance represents a popular revolution, and any action against them by other factions only makes them more popular; opposing players must pay cards to the Alliance player that they can use as "supporters" to fuel their own actions. As guerilla fighters, the Alliance also always takes the higher die roll in battles. Finally, their actions mostly occur at night, as opposed to during the day like the other factions.
- Crafting a card is meant to represent exploiting the animals of that card's suit. The Lizard Cult recruits these alienated commoners to their cause, which manifests as the Lizard player gaining advantages in clearings matching the most numerous suit in the discard pile.
- The Underground Duchy's leadership prefers to stay underground and let their warriors do the fighting. Swaying a Minister to add their abilities to the war effort requires convincing them that everything is going according to plan (represented by revealing cards from your hand that match territories you control), and should you lose a foothold on the surface, you'll lose a Minister's support as well.
- The otters of the Riverfolk Company and the frogs of the Lilypad Diaspora, being adept swimmers, can take river paths that other factions can't use. The Company can provide river access to other players... for a price.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: Few of the factions can really be described as "good", but none are explicitly "evil" either. Several factions' motivations are left up to interpretation, and even when the leaders of a faction are unambiguously corrupt (like the Lord of the Hundreds), most of the rank and file are normal folk following orders.
- The Marquise is an Evil Colonialist, specifically she wants to acquire as much lumber as possible without care for the consequences deforestation may have on the valley, but also genuinely wants to modernize the lands she conquered and improve the lives of her subjects (if only to have a prosperous secure domain). It's even stated that the more time passes, the more the Cats become attached to the lands.
- The Eyrie Dynasties are the legitimate rulers and maintained some sort of order during most of their rule, before their bloody civil war. However, they're also a retrograde and racist remnant led by a Feudal Overlord.
- The Woodland Alliance are divided at best as to ideology, and while they all have the same end goal to liberate the Forest, some accept civilian losses as an acceptable price.
- The Lizard Cult are a Cult that needs radicalized followers to fight for it, but also genuinely want to improve the lives of the commoners.
- The Riverfolk Company are seeking to exploit the conflict for profit, but as pragmatic businessmen they don't revel in pointless villainy.
- The Underground Duchy is The Empire, but offers a stable rule.
- The Corvid Conspiracy are The Syndicate, but use their criminal activities to protect their people from Fantastic Racism.
- The Knaves of the Deepwood are a Bandit Clan, but it's left ambiguous whether they're Robin Hood-esque noble thieves or opportunistic hoarders.
- Great Offscreen War: The events of the game take place in the aftermath of the invasion of the Forest by the army of the Marquise de Cat, an ambitious aristocrat from a foreign empire. Said invasion happens shortly after a bloody civil war put an end to the rule of the Eyrie dunasty, and left most clearings without a protector.
- Kill It with Fire: The Favor of the Fox card depicts hooded arsonist foxes wielding a torch.
- Lizard Folk: The Lizard Cult and their hireling counterpart, the Warm Sun Prophets.
- Loads and Loads of Rules: Each faction has their own ruleset, some of them are more complex than the other. On top of that, each faction from the expansions comes with even more complex rules, yet again faction-specific. When there are six or more players (as a result of expansion), just keeping track on what others are doing, why and how they gain points starts to become a burden.
- Low Fantasy: While the game appears to be set in a fictional world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, no other explicitly fantastical element is involved - there's no confirmed instance of magic, gods, superpowers, monsters, etc.
- Luck-Based Mission: The combat system is a simple roll of two dice numbered 0-3, with the aggressor taking the higher roll (unless you're fighting the Alliance, who always gets the higher number).
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Attacking means you will always get the better dice roll, meaning the worst result you can get is a tie. Additionally, whether on attack or defense, various item and faction abilities allow you to tilt the result in your favor.
- Magikarp Power:
- Certain factions like the Woodland Alliance and the Corvid Conspiracy start with little or no presence on the board, but become harder and harder for the other factions to contain as the game progresses.
- The Eyrie Dynasty is built around slowly building up their Decree, which dictates what actions they can take per-turn. Starting with just three or four actions, they have the potential to grow into possessing an unbeatable action economy... as long as you can manage the risk that failing to honor just one action within your Decree will send it crashing down and forcing you to start all over.
- Nerf: The third printing nerfed the Woodland Alliance and Vagabond.
- The Alliance's point track for spreading sympathy was slightly weakened, limiting their late-game power somewhat.
- Under the original rules, the Vagabond becomes basically invincible in the lategame. They gain points from killing enemy warriors in battle, even including when the Vagabond was attacked. Since the they had pretty good odds of at least killing a few of their attackers anyone attacking the Vagabond to try and slow them down was likely to just be feeding them points instead. The new rule is that the Vagabond only gains points from battles during their own turn.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Most warriors, buildings, and tokens represent a single hit point in battle. One point of damage removes one unit.
- Pit Trap: The one-use Sappers card, which allows a defender to deal an extra hit in battle.
- Planet of Hats: Each faction represents a different kind of political movement or group.
- Playing Both Sides:
- The Vagabond is encouraged to aid as many other players as possible to earn resources before making a move for victory, and benefits from turning the other factions against each other (the Vagrant even has an ability to instigate fights between other factions' units).
- The Riverfolk Company are merchants and mercenaries who benefit from trading resources with other factions. If one player makes a deal with the Company they'll have an advantage, but if everyone makes a deal the Company will surge to the top.
- Plunder: Crafting items earns Victory Points and adds the item to that faction's inventory, which can be acquired by the Vagabond via trade... or looted in battle by the Lord of the Hundreds or the Knaves of the Deepwood to add to their own treasure hoards. The Knaves can also capture defeated units and hold them prisoner.
- Political Strategy Game: Downplayed. Unlike Leder Games' next release, Oath, Root is still firmly a War Game focusing on conflict over territory and resource, rather than over ideology and influence. However, like in political strategies, its players have different scoring criteria that reflect the underlying political ideology of their respective factions: the Marquise represents colonialism and capitalism, so she earns points by exploiting the environment and expanding her enterprises; Eyrie Dynasties, meanwhile, are a traditional militarist aristocracy, so they gain points by backing up their historical legitimacy claims with conquest; the Woodland Alliance is a populist reaction of the exploited working class, so they earn points by nurturing sympathy among the general populace for a popular uprising (the Alliance gameplay actually comes closest to that of typical political strategies, thanks to its influence and popular sympathy mechanics); finally, the Vagabond stands for opportunistic individualism and gains points by doing favors for the highest bidder, whether it's other players or the general populace (via quests). On that note, while the Vagabond also appears to stand for a dismissal of any sociopolitical agenda, the Coalition mechanic makes him the only faction who can join another's ideology and win together with them.
- Shown Their Work: The designers posted a lot of Designer Diaries on BoardGameGeek through the development of the base game and each expansion, giving insights into their thought process and motivations.
- Slave Race: The forest folks can be freely exploited by any of the factions. Serves as a reason for revolution to the Woodland Alliance, while others may be pulled into the Lizard Cult.
- Take Me Instead: The one-use Armorers card negates an instance of damage in battle, representing the forest folk protecting you.
- Tree Cover: The Fox version of the Ambush! card depicts a fox hiding behind a tree, dagger at the ready.
- Variable Player Goals: The first player to get to 30 Victory Points wins, but how each player gains those points varies vastly from one faction to another. Later in the game, a player can commit to an alternate victory condition (achieving Dominance over specific sections of the map, or the Vagabond forming a Coalition with another faction and helping them win).
- War for Fun and Profit: Not all of the factions are out to rule the woodland; the Vagabond, the Riverfolk Company, and the Knaves of the Deepwood seek to acquire some form of profit or prestige.
- War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Root sure makes war look adorable.
- Zerg Rush: Certain factions (the Lizard Cult, the Underground Duchy, the Lord of the Hundreds, the Eyrie Dynasties if the Charismatic leader is in charge) can field units much faster than others, letting them overrun the board.
Base game
- The Alliance: The Woodland Alliance is trying to form a coalition among the normally-neutral foxes, mice and rabbits who inhabit the forest.
- Aristocrats Are Evil:
- The Eyrie's Despot leader (a vulture, natch). Under his reign, you are incentivized to destroy other players' buildings and tokens.
- While not cartoonishly evil, the Marquise de Cat is still an ambitious aristocrat who invaded the Forest to serve her own interests. She genuinely tries to modernize the conquered lands, improving the lives of her subjects, but it's out of pragmatism: She wants a prosperous domain with a loyal population.
- Armies Are Evil: Once the inhabitants of a clearing are sympathetic to the cause of the Woodland Alliance, it will spark great outrage if any enemy army marches into their homes or if an enemy removes the sympathizers to prevent a potential revolt.
- Awesome, but Impractical: A new Eyrie player may look at their leaders and choose the most powerful looking ability to start with. However, without careful planning, this is a fast track to turmoil:
- The Commander Leader deals an extra hit in battle, potentially giving the Eyrie the strongest offensive capability in the game, but this is contingent on having a strong army in the first place, as well as a good hand of cards to create well-rounded and flexible decrees. Starting the game with a Commander is very likely way more firepower than you can conceivably need at that point in the game, and you are immediately mandated to begin battling possibly before you can even start recruiting warriors and building roosts, risking either slow momentum or turmoil.
- The Charismatic Leader allows the Eyrie to amass a large army incredibly fast, and is a tempting choice to allow the player to very quickly build momentum and snowball out of control. However, the Charismatic Leader begins with Recruit and Battle viziers, which means they require immediate aggression but lack the ability to move or build roosts straight out the gate — having the biggest army won't save you from turmoil if you can't send them anywhere to do battle.
- Badass Army: The Woodland Alliance. After a Revolt, you'll find them extremely difficult to dislodge since they are experts in guerilla tactics.
- Blind Obedience: Once your faction is allied with the Vagabond, he can move your troops, battle with them and assign damage however he wants without your consent at all.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Woodland Alliance's whole strategy is to spread Sympathy and create explosive revolts.
- Boring, but Practical: Beginning an Eyrie game with the Despot. Their only unique ability is earning an extra point from destroying tokens, which is harder to take advantage of. They begin with the Move and Build Viziers, which means they likely won't be seeing battle right away and might not even be able to begin recruiting warriors right out the gate. However, those same viziers make the Despot arguably the most practical starting leader. Instead of fighting or even being able to take advantage of their unique ability, the Despot guarantees the player the ability to build roosts as soon as possible, which is necessary to quickly draw more cards and earn more points every turn. Plus, having no Battle decree right out the gate can even be a boon, as it means the Despot has very little risk of entering turmoil early and has the luxury of choosing to play defensively until they have a larger, more spread out army with a good hand of cards to add decrees with.
- Cat Stereotype: The Marquise is a Siamese, and while not mean to her own troops, is an Evil Colonialist and extremely ambitious to boot.
- Disc-One Nuke: The Royal Claim card nets a player one Victory Point for each clearing they control. In the base game, the Marquise starts with control of nearly the entire map; if they have the Royal Claim in their opening hand, this nets them eleven points. Powerful on its own, but this also puts them over the threshold to play a Dominance card if they have one available, letting them potentially win on their next turn.
- Equipment-Based Progression: The Vagabond grows in power by collecting items.
- Evil Colonialist: The Marquise de Cat. While the Marquise herself may not think so, she is exploiting the forest for its wood while trying to maintain military control over as many clearings as possible.
- Failure Is the Only Option: The Eyrie Dynasties are destined to enter Turmoil at some point, simply because of the way the Decree snowballs with each turn. Eventually, your resources are simply going to be spread too thin to be able to fulfill the myriad requirements of a late-stage Decree. Bird cards make the Decree easier to fulfill, but will cause you to lose more points when Turmoil happens, creating a goal to either stave off Turmoil as long as possible (and hope you win before it comes crashing down) or to mitigate the inevitable penalty.
- Fetch Quest: One of the available methods for the Vagabond to score points, completing quests represented by bringing various items to certain clearings.
- Folk Hero: What the Vagabond wants to become by accomplishing the various quests.
- Full-Circle Revolution: Depending on how you interpret their actions, a Woodland Alliance victory can result in a populist regime basically identical to that of the Marquise's or Eyries' in terms of the smallfolk still having to work for someone.
- Gadgeteer Genius: The Tinker Vagabond is one of only two Vagabonds who can get three hammers and craft most of the cards.
- Gotta Catch Them All: The Vagabond needs to collect as many items as possible. The more he has, the more things he can do.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Mostly averted since the Vagabond has a carry limit. As to why he can still move "nimbly" with 12 objects stored in 3 bags while separately carrying 3 teapots and 3 stacks of coins, well...
- Impoverished Patrician: The Eyrie Dynasties lost everything and start in a single clearing.
- Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The Woodland Alliance is supposed to be an alliance between the foxes, the mice and the rabbits. They were originally intended to have a mix of fox, mouse and rabbit meeples as their warriors, but for simplicity's sake, they are all represented as mouse meeples.
- Made of Explodium: The Alliance's Sympathy tokens are, in effect, remote-controlled bombs that may go off any time, removing any non-Alliance pieces from the clearing in one go.
- Mêlée à Trois: The conflict between the Marquise de Cat, the Eyrie Dynasties, and the Woodland Alliance, with the Vagabond as a potential Spanner in the Works.
- Neutral No Longer: In four-player games, the Vagabond is allowed to form a binding coalition with the lowest-scoring faction and, if it does achieve victory, wins alongside it.
- No-Sell: The Vagabond can move by ignoring who rules the clearings.
- One-Man Army: The Vagabond is a single-individual faction and still has the potential to take down armies.
- Police State: The Marquise de Cat. Ruling clearings is very important to her if she wants to build, which is her main way of gaining points.
- The Power of Friendship: If the Vagabond makes a coalition with another faction, they'll have to help them win the game.
- The Power of Hate: The Vagabond earns more points when attacking hostile factions.
- Programming Game: The Eyrie Dynasties' Decree. Each turn the Eyrie player must add one or two cards to the Decree under certain actions, and they must execute the entire set in order. If it isn't possible, their government temporarily falls apart.
- Properly Paranoid: Other players should be wary of the Sympathy tokens. At any time, the Alliance player can set them off like a bomb and destroy any warriors or infrastructure in the clearing and place an Alliance base.
- Quickly-Demoted Leader: Whenever the Eyrie Dynasties go into turmoil, the current Leader is immediately deposed.
- Randomly Generated Levels: The Winter map has all of its clearings' suits shuffled at the start of the game.
- La Résistance: The Woodland Alliance is a group of rebels who wants to liberate the inhabitants of the Forest from any tyrannical rule - whether it's the old tyranny of Eyrie Dynasties or the new one by Marquise de Cat.
- Resources Management Gameplay: The Marquise de Cat has to generate wood and guard supply lines in order to use it, while the Vagabond has various tools that have to be refreshed after use.
- Rugged Scar: The Ranger Vagabond has one over his left blind eye.
- Shamed by a Mob: When the Eyrie Dynasties go into turmoil, they are publicly humiliated and lose victory points, their current decree is torn apart and their current leader is sacked.
- Stone Wall: The Woodland Alliance's Guerrilla War makes their armies incredibly hard to fight against.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Female characters have one to three eyelashes, but it's subtle enough that it might not be noticeable if they weren't on the Marquise, who is unambiguously female.
- Time to Unlock More True Potential: When the Woodland Alliance triggers a Revolt, they're able to establish a base and a powerful defensive military.
- Unwanted Assistance: Vagabond is not a benevolent third-party to help your faction. The "alliance" with him means he takes control of the faction's units and does whatever he pleases with them, without any input or consent of the player who's actually running said faction.
- Vestigial Empire: The Eyrie Dynasties used to rule the entire Forest. A bloody civil war, and then the invasion of the Marquise de Cat, made them lose most of their domains. They can become a Resurgent Empire under some circumstances.
- We Have Reserves: Subtly encouraged by the Eyrie's playstyle. Every faction has a finite number of warriors in their supply, but the Eyrie's Decree demands Recruiting every turn, which can lead to Turmoil at the start of their turn if their demands exceed their reserves. Depending on the situation, it's actually a good thing to lose warriors in fights so that they can be Recruited again and stave off Turmoil longer.
- We Help the Helpless: The Vagabond's quests are these.
- Wild Card: The Vagabond starts off with no allegiances and can switch sides at any moment.
The Riverfolk Expansion
- Arms Dealer: The Riverfolk Company are mercenaries and set prices for various goods and services that the other factions can buy.
- Attack on One Is an Attack on All: The Lizard Cult gains Acolytes if they are attacked by the other factions. This in turn allows them to foment conspiracies, their strongest abilities.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Scoundrel Vagabond can drop their Torch and start a forest fire, removing all enemy pieces there and rendering that clearing useless for the rest of the game.
- Brainwashed: Lizard Cult's Convert action allows them to convert any enemy warrior to their faith.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: A co-op mode against the Mechanical Marquise, which would later be refined in The Clockwork Expansion.
- Cult: The Lizard Cult's goal is to spread the gospel of the Great Dragon to the creatures of the woodland.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: The Lizard Cult gains new Acolytes after one of their kinds dies while defending in combat.
- Hired Guns: The Riverfolk Company's Mercenaries and the Arbiter Vagabond can all be hired for combat.
- Let's You and Him Fight: The Vagrant Vagabond can start a battle between two other factions.
- Mind Manipulation: Lizard Cult's Convert action is essentially this, converting a warrior to their faith.
- No-Sell: The Lizard Cult's Gardens supplants the Eyrie Dynasties's rule.
- One-Man Army: The Arbiter Vagabond is the only Vagabond who can get five swords, enabling him to fight up to five times with maximum damage.
- The Power of Hate: The Lizard Cult's Acolytes allow them to do conspiracies based on who are the outcast creatures. Those conspiracies get even better if the outcast is hated.
- Resources Management Gameplay:
- The Lizard Cult has to a draft a hand.
- The Riverfolk Company has to cleverly manage their funds.
- Warrior Monk: The Lizard Cult, especially after gaining some Acolytes.
The Underworld Expansion
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Bomb Plot destroys all enemy units in that clearing.
- Caught in a Snare: The Snare Plot prevents enemy units from being placed in or moved out of that clearing until it's removed.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: Other players can attempt to Expose a face-down Plot by guessing which type it is... but are you sure you have the right one?
- No-Sell: Much like the Vagabond, the Corvid Conspiracy can freely move to any adjacent clearing regardless of who rules which clearing.
- Properly Paranoid: Because you don't know what the Conspiracy's Plots are until you've either guessed it correctly or it's been removed from play, and they can be activated at the start of the Conspiracy's turn as long as the clearing has a Corvid warrior in it, players should be wary of moving into clearings with face-down Plots.
- Schmuck Bait: Part and parcel of the Conspiracy's game plan. A common tactic is to place a Plot in a vulnerable position, goading other players to either expose it (potentially guessing wrong and giving up cards) or destroy it (potentially triggering a Raid Plot and swarming the map with crows).
- Shamed by a Mob: If the Underground Duchy loses a building in battle, the Price of Failure forces them to deactivate their highest-ranking Minister and remove their crown from the game permanently, effectively reducing the number of ministers they can activate for the rest of the game.
- Shell Game: The Corvid Conspiracy can swap Plot tokens to confuse the other players.
- Teleporters and Transporters: The Underground Duchy have the Burrow, a home base that none of the other factions can access, connected to the map via tunnels that allow them to send troops across the map very quickly.
- Trap Master: The Corvid Conspiracy's path to victory involves seeding the map with Plot tokens. Different Plots can benefit the Conspiracy via extra cards and units (Extort, Raid), or by hindering other factions (Bomb, Snare).
The Marauder Expansion
- Church Militant: The Keepers in Iron.
- Base on Wheels: Instead of creating buildings as bases, the Keepers in Iron put down Waystations instead, which can be moved again afterward.
- Foil: The two factions introduced are nearly opposite in every way. The rats follow a bloodthirsty warlord who washes over the woodlands ravaging everything standing in their way. The badgers are knights returning from exile, living with the land and doing battles only to reclaim lost holy relics. The rats favor amassing a large army to overwhelm the other factions through sheer numbers and aggression alone. The badgers are discouraged from having too large an army but instead are much more powerful while their warriors are defending a relic. The Lord of the Hundreds is moody, with eight different abilities depending on their current whim, and is also the only faction leader who is also a warrior token. The Keepers in Iron appear to be perpetually stoic, and are seemingly without a leader.
- Frontline General: The Lord of the Hundreds is a Warlord who gets his own warrior piece and is encouraged to be in the thick of things.
- MacGuffin: The Keepers' goal. They collect lost relics to bring back to their Waystations to earn points and win.
- Quantity vs. Quality: The Lord of the Hundreds is able to amass the largest army of any faction alarmingly fast. The Keepers in Iron are heavily discouraged from having too great a number in one place, living off the land self-sufficiently (losing one warrior per turn for every stack with more than three warriors), with the upside being that with the help of relics and their own playstyle, their warriors are much more durable and can rack up more actions per turn.
- Red Is Violent: The rats are the red faction, and their playstyle is the most aggressive by far. The game does not mince words about how their Warlord is a violent and despotic menace.
- Swarm of Rats: Since the Hundreds' playstyle boils down to amassing lots and lots of warriors and destroying everything nearby, sooner or later, they will turn into a gigantic swarm of red warriors rolling over everything unfortunate enough to be in their path.
- Too Awesome to Use: Relics for the Keepers in Iron. Their Devout Knights ability makes the badgers incredibly powerful while they are fighting with a relic: they freely ignore a single damage every battle, meaning they can very well walk away from many fights they start with little to no loss to their own numbers. However, doing so means they hold off on turning in their relics for score, necessary to actually win the game, and the relics paint a giant target for every other player to try to snatch (which both denies points from the Keepers, and nets the other player twice the number of points they normally get from destroying tokens).
The Homeland Expansion
- Ability Rewrite: The Lilypad Diaspora introduces a fifth suit to the board (Frogs), with a corresponding set of cards shuffled into the deck at the start of the game. The Diaspora can build a Frog enclave in each clearing, which can either coexist with the native Fox, Mouse, and Rabbit suits, or override them entirely and deny access to other factions who might need those suits.
- Cardboard Prison: The Knaves of the Deepwood can capture other factions' warriors and hold them prisoner in the forest, but every few turns a group of prisoners will be able to escape.
- Con Man: Once per turn, the Cheat Vagabond can fake one of their quests, completing it with any two items and ignoring other requirements — but afterwards, the quest is shuffled back into its deck and won't count towards future rewards.
- Escalating Brawl: How the Diaspora defends its territory. If another faction tries to fight the frogs at a Peaceful enclave, every enclave that faction shares space with turns Militant and brings in reinforcements.
- Frontline General: The Knaves of the Deepwood are led by three different Captains, who can move through the forests and bring their soldiers with them. Which Captain is in charge alternates each turn.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: The Knaves use the same pieces as the Vagabond, and the two factions cannot be used in the same game.
- Threatening Mediator: The Twilight Council can establish assemblies at clearings, which let them limit actions other players can take. If a battle occurs at an active assembly, the bats can join the fight on the defender's side.
- Throwing Down the Gauntlet: The Gladiator Vagabond can challenge an enemy warrior to a duel, removing them from the board and drawing a card. Uniquely, this does not trigger hostility with the enemy faction.
The Clockwork Expansion 1 and 2
- Co-Op Multiplayer: The bots are a Tabletop Game A.I. opponent for other players to work together against.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: The bot versions of the various factions are stylized as robots that wield weapons, wear clothing, and greatly resemble their biological counterparts. For example, the bot's version of the Eyrie warrior has triangular metal pieces that imitate head feathers and a beak with a visible hinge and rivets. It also wears a long jacket and carries an axe. The first expansion includes the Mechanical Marquise 2.0, the Electric Eyrie, the Automated Alliance, and the Vagabot; the second adds the Logical Lizards, the Riverfolk Robots, the Cogwheel Corvids, and the Drillbit Duchy.
- Tabletop Game A.I.: Root received two expansions adding automated players to it, with the first being the Mechanical Marquise from The Riverfolk Expansion, which automated one of the asymmetrical factions of the game (Marquise de Cat). The original Mechanical Marquise was, however, widely considered unplayable, so a fan-driven Better Bot Project
produced a complete overhaul of it, as well as automating the other three OG factions. All four of these were then made official by Leder Games in The Clockwork Expansion.
Other expansions
- All Your Powers Combined:
- Some hirelings are associated with specific factions, and grant a version of that faction's ability to whoever hires them — for instance, the Feline Physicians work like the Marquise's Field Hospital, and the Rabbit Scouts grant the Alliance's Guerrilla War.
- The "exiles" in the Exiles and Partisans deck are cards that grant abilities from other factions — the Propaganda Bureau converts enemy units like the Lizard Cult, False Orders moves an enemy unit like the Vagabond, Boat Builders let you traverse rivers like the Riverfolk Company, Tunnels let you move across the map like the Duchy, Corvid Planners let you ignore rule when moving like the Conspiracy.
- Black Market: One of the available landmarks in the Landmark Pack, allowing players to trade cards in their hand without revealing them to other players.
- Everything's Better with Samurai: The Ronin Vagabond, who can use their swords to deal more damage in combat.
- Gadgeteer Genius: The Adventurer Vagabond is one of only two Vagabonds who can get three hammers and craft most of the cards.
- MacGyvering: Once per turn, the Adventurer Vagabond can use any item for a quest in place of the requested one (but breaks it in the process).
- The Marvelous Deer: The Furious Protector hireling is a giant deer that towers over the other denizens of the woodland, fighting anything in its path; the player that hires them isn't immune to their wrath, but can point it in useful directions. Its passive counterpart, the Stoic Protector, instead prevents their pieces from being battled or removed.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Each hireling has a passive "demoted" version and a more powerful "promoted" version, and you can only use one version per game. Additionally, most hirelings are associated with playable factions and can only be added to the game if their corresponding faction is not — for instance, if the Woodland Alliance is in play, you won't be able to hire the Rabbit Scouts nor the Spring Uprising.
- Power at a Price: The Exiles and Partisans deck's Mouse Partisans, Fox Partisans, and Rabbit Partisans each grant a reusable bonus when fighting in a clearing of their respective suit, but at the cost of discarding any cards not in that suit when used. The bird equivalent is the Eyrie Émigré, which grants you an extra move and battle at the start of your turn, but similar to the Eyrie's decree, if you're unable to use both actions, the Émigré will leave.
- Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: Certain landmarks give additional abilities or bonuses to whoever controls the clearing they're in. The Underworld Expansion's two maps each introduced a landmark (the Ferry, the Tower); the Landmark Pack reworked them to be usable on any map and added four more (the Black Market, the Legendary Forge, the Elder Treetop, the Lost City), with The Homeland Expansion adding another three (Mousehold, Rabbit-town, Foxburrow).
- Teleporters and Transporters: The Harrier Vagabond is adept at climbing trees, and their special ability lets them glide directly to any clearing on the map.
- We Have Reserves: The Squires and Disciples deck's Mouse Squires, Fox Squires, and Rabbit Squires (and their bird counterpart, the Silver-Tongue) can each be spent for extra actions, but also give you the option to spend another card of their suit in their stead. All three cards depict nervous-looking squires being dragged off into dangerous situations.