We played the ROOT pretty extensively over last months – starting with two-player games, then playing with expansion or even familiarizing with Mechanical Marquize. However, we never used the Winter map! During our New Years convent we decided it is high time to check that variant – although designer clearly warns, that may lead to unexpected or unbalanced set-up!

What follows is short photo-report from one of the best ROOT games I have ever played. Very tense, balanced with all four sides at the verge of victory in the last turn. By the way, we played with home rule that if one faction reaches 30 points, we finish the round so everybody has the same amount of moves in the game.

Session report

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If you click on above image and see in more details, you would notice that indeed, the random set-up can be biased 🙂 My birds had three foxes nearby, while three mouses where near to the Jarek’s cats. Kuba and his cult was well positioned between us and Agnieszka’s Vagabond took a safe spot far from the congested area.
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And so the expansion begun – birds took a leader who allows for faster recruitment, Agnieszka once the ruins were discovered started to shoot indiscriminately – gaining a lot of points for this. Jarek’s cats as always were able to gain tons of points for buildings and Kuba was slowly developing his cult.
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In the end, my birds did a long, 3 clearings raid on Cat’s estates, burning and pillaging in the process. At the same time Agnieszka took Kuba by surprise as his main target and simply vaporized his forces and buildings in two clearings!
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The last round was very exciting. Lizards scored all three garden types and crafted some items, achieving 30 pts. Other tried to stand up to the challenge but I just got my government overthrown, losing 5 VPs, Vagabond was lacking targets and Cats simply did not have opportunities for more points. Final results: Kuba (Lizards) 30, Agnieszka (Vagabond) 26, Jarek (Cats) 25, Michal (Birds) 23
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Such a tense game – with three strong, area-control factions (Birds, Lizards, Cats) and one king maker – Vagabond 🙂

Summary

I always enjoy the ROOT immensely. That wargame in the form of colorful euro is brutal, fast, exciting and with experienced people – very tense! I am really looking forward to the newest expansion bringing two new factions!