About the Clockwork

Have you tried the Clockwork expansion of Root? As we mainly play 2p and realized we absolutely love Root, the logical next step was to buy the Clockwork expansion, which allows you to fill up games with bots. 😁 Each of the 4 factions have an automated version you can add. Let’s look under the hood to see how they work!

⚙️ First you have to add numbered tokens to the 12 clearings of the game board. These are priorities sometimes referenced by bots if their decision would be ambiguous. Other than that you just use the new bot-boards instead of the usual player boards and set up with the tokens that you’d otherwise use too. The boards are full with text (just like the usual boards), so after learning to play you shouldn’t really have to reference the rulebook anymore. 

During a bot’s turn you just draw a card from the standard deck to see what they do. 🧐 The suit of the card is important here. Bot factions are very similar to their human counterparts, but with many things streamlined of course. They each come in 4 difficulty ratings, so you can fine-tune the challenge. Additionally, each has 4 trait cards that lend them unique abilities - to make games even harder, or to raise variability.

I have heard people say in the past that these Clockworks are difficult to operate and not necessarily worth the effort. I think if you want to play solo or 2p, they are absolutely amazing! 🥰 However they aren’t super simple either, so they add quite a bit to the playtime. I love how they use standard cards though, so you don’t need many new things for the setup and operation. Sometimes it takes a while to find their target by checking every tiebreaker for the decision - the bot-boards do a great job of giving you all the info needed, but I wish there was more iconography so you didn’t have to re-read every line all the time. 

They do offer a great competition and you can also customize them if they prove to be too simple. There is also the possibility to play co-op against bots, which we have yet to try. 😮

Even though we are quite new to the world of Root, I already can’t wait to see and try every faction of the game. 🤩