Finally trying the asymmetric masterpiece

⚔️Root⚔️ was on our radar for the longest time. Finally we have also played it! And what can I say… it’s awesome! 🥳 The main selling point of the game is that it is fully asymmetric, and @ledergames indeed did a great job with this. All factions play and feel entirely different! As we were playing 2p, I will focus on the Marquise de Cat and Eyrie Dynasty factions, as those are mainly recommended for 2.

🐈The cats are the most straightforward. Their sawmills produce wood, which is used to build more sawmills, workshops and recruiters. They recruit warriors to fight anyone who intimidates their growing empire. As they get more buildings down, their actions get stronger - and building is their way to earn victory points too. They are limited to 3 actions though, so you always have to think hard about what to prioritize.

🐦The birds on the other hand are more complex. I absolutely love the card system they utilize! 😍 Each turn cards get added to their “decree”, which define actions that must be performed each turn. They can recruit, move, battle and build on certain spaces of the board that match the cards’ suit - as their decree gets bigger, they get to do more actions, however whenever a single action cannot be completed, their dynasty crumbles and they have to start building the decree all over. It’s delightfully difficult to manage, but really powerful if the ball gets rolling.

Each turn you have so many things to consider, and the toolset you have for interacting with the game is very fun and interesting. 🥰

It plays surprisingly great at 2p, however one faction can snowball out of control easily, then the game gets pretty one-sided. A lot also depends on early card draw - the wild bird suit on cards is very useful for both factions, so if someone gets too many of those, they get a huge advantage over the other. 😶

However we do see insane potential in Root - we have already ordered the Clockwork expansion to fill the game with some bots! We also heard the Hirelings are an awesome addition too, so we will look into trying those as well! 🙃
I’m pretty sure with 4p this would be an amazing experience - can’t wait to try that too!