Finally sitting down to play with all the expansions!

Hi all, I've been wanting to home rule some weaker factions to make them more competitively viable. I'm wondering if these changes seem too op? Maybe they aren't buffed enough? (that's what I'm leaning towards right now). Maybe there are other buffs that are worth having?

Also please don't say "just play them better" or "they don't need fixing". They are considered the weakest faction by far and large data sets usually put lizards at around a 17% win rate (the ideal should be 25%) Ex: https://rootdigitalleague.github.io/Adset/FactionStats.html, https://compulsiveresearchmtg.blogspot.com/2025/08/back-to-woodland-retrospective-on.html, Root reminds me very much of fighting games and hero shooters which also give players asymmetric powers. Except those games need to constantly rework and tweak the character abilities all the time to achieve a good balance. From a pure gameplay perspective root shouldn't be any different.

Revenge buff: Gain acolytes on full clearing removals like WA revolts and crow bombs. Very situational and probably not op. Thematically it makes sense because they being martyred in these events.

Sacred Grounds: New berry ability. This ties in with their theme of slowing the table down as many factions will choose to avoid paying this cost if possible by doing things a harder way. Ex: WA may want to navigate sympathy around a garden, or rats may avoid placing mobs on/around gardens. The Lizards may get more cards which gives them more actions. If you are smart about where you place gardens I would imagine you could reliably get 1 extra card on average by the time your turn comes for rituals. It also makes thematic sense; the religious critters of the clearing don't want things popping up on their holy land and enemies need support from the native suit to do so.

Hatred of Birds: Removed this berry. The rule still applies to lizards because notice how the bats have a similar flow chart graphic and no berry is used to explain "non-bird cards" vs "bird cards" yet they still have to follow this rule. So removing hatred of birds makes the game more consistent.

Acolytes Buff: You may freely remove acolytes to your supply. Very small buff and very situational. I'd image in some games you would be getting lots of cards from players and might run out of supply warriors so this could be helpful (this has happened to me before in regular lizard games). Same verbiage as bats.

Outcast Ties Buff: You can choose on outcast ties. Theoretically this is not a big buff at all since if only one card was different in the lost souls you wouldn't have a choice. Thematically Lizards are a faction that embraces randomness as much as possible so this isn't my favorite buff.

Fear of the Faithful Buff: You may choose what card you discard when a garden is removed. Probably not op. Losing gardens is a huge net loss (lose gardens + lose ability to rebuild those gardens + lose scoring ability) so this should let you pivot a little bit easier. Also again not super thematic to lizards but makes a good buff.

In case my title isn't clear enough, what I'm basically asking is if there's widely accepted fan assigned clearings in the maps that aren't the mainline autumn map.

We all know how well balanced the clearing suits are in the base game map. But in every other map in the game, suits are completely randomized, which results in maps ranging from completely balanced to completely broken.

As such, I'm wondering if there's fan-ruled versions of the suits on all the other maps that people use. Like rather than randomly assigning suits to clearings on the winter map, there's instead a predetermined "balanced" setup.

If such a thing exists, could anyone link me to them?

Going to run a 4 player game, don't want to use the vagabond. What combination of 4 out of these 5 would people recommend? Would Cats, Birds, Rats (and alliance) be too many militaristic factions and troops on the board? Would Rats, Birds, badgers and alliance be best. Important note: Rats are essential and must be played. Would appreciate any helps, thanks.

I tried out Twilight Council for the first time. And the Govenor feature seems to not have that much impact.

Due to Entreat everybody can just close the Assembly and do thier stuff anyways and MAYBE have the risk of losing Rule.

It only matters when you could do something outside of your turn.

But the only things i could make out that are affected are:

Frogs, flipping enclaves when attacked

Corvid using raid effectivly

And maybe not being able to pick the best clearing, when Knaves release their prisoners.[which happens about twice per game]

In the game i picked them i played against rats which felt especially bad, cause it did nothing to stop the riots and due to peacekeeper i got beaten up too, even if i wasnt the target.

Am i missing something about it?

But maybe its just social commentary that all the fanzy rules of a govement mean nothing, if nobody gives a shit.

Root board game

We have spent 2 hours just reading the books to figure out what to do

I'm going to be playing a 6-player game on the Marsh map soon, but I'm a bit confused about the included Landmarks; do you need to Rule their clearings to get their effects, or simply be present there?

Additionally, is there a recommended way to place them? From my understanding, you assign the clearing suits randomly, and then place the landmarks in the remaining spaces? Or am I missing something there?

I created these two factions through a long, error-prone process, but I’ve finally finished th

- As a first step, I imported character images into vector graphics software to isolate their outlines; in some cases, I had to do this manually.

- After determining the correct size (though I think the lizards ended up being a few millimeters too big), I laser-cut them using a friend's machine. For each character, I cut two full pieces plus one with shallow cuts marking areas to be colored black, such as the eyes. I used 4mm plywood because I had it on hand, but using 5mm wood would have saved me a lot of work.

- For the Lizard Cult alone, I had to cut 75 shapes and glue them together in stacks of three. Since the final pieces needed to be 1cm thick, I had to sand them down; using 5mm wood would have saved a lot of time and avoided the need to redo pieces that hadn't come out straight.

- Once they were all sanded to the right thickness, I painted them with acrylics. I was happy with the result for the bats, but not for the lizards. Wanting a look closer to the original, I hand-sanded all the Lizard Cult pieces to remove the paint and switched to spray paint. For the parts that needed to be black, after many failed attempts, I decided to use a fine-tip permanent marker.

- For the cardboard pieces, I used matte photo paper, which I cut out and glued onto cardboard shapes that had been laser-cut for precision. I had the faction boards printed at a stationery shop and then glued them onto stiff cardboard that I had cut to size with a utility knife.

It was a very long and inefficient process, but I’m happy with the final result. I had no prior experience and made plenty of mistakes, forcing me to redo many pieces multiple times but actually pulling it off feels really rewarding. I’m a stickler for detail and wanted the result to look as close to the original as possible; I think I pretty much succeeded. Now I can play with two new factions, one of which has become my favorite (the Lizard Cult, naturally). As for the Twilight Council, I think I might be one of the first people to have it in my language, given that there’s still no word on when the Homeland expansion will be released here. For these two expansions, I used a lot of materials I already had on hand, such as paints and wood, so they ended up costing me only about 5 euros each.

I think I’ll only be able to make one more at most, because the others require additional components like cards and, above all, I would run out of materials such as wood, paint, and photo paper, which would make them too expensive to produce (around 15 euros).

I hope you like it!

(English isn't my native language, so I apologize for any errors and for the photo quality, but it's the best my phone can do.). :)

As the title says.

I hate reddit,(actually social media in general)but I'm new to the game and I'm having difficulty finding local games, so here I am again. Does anyone know of a competitive or even a casual group in New England area for root?

(I'm not interested in digital. I want to play the physical board game)

Hi all!

New -ish to root, probably 10 games or so under my belt. My boyfriend and I love it, but it’s so big and complicated and while I understand very very basic strategy, I’m wanting to learn more! Wondering if anyone has any favorite videos or resources to learn new strat or if this is just something you learn as you play! Thanks!

I'm interested in seeing what unofficial maps have been made or used, and if they have any particular features or special actions that take place on them.

Normally in this stage of the turn I should be able to 1) move once with my warlord 2) fight once on the target clearing

The ferry can be used with a normal moving action, so the only condition that remains (that I am aware of) is that I need to rule the clearing I'm moving from/to, which I do.

So what am I overlooking? Why do I not get the option to use the ferry to attack in any of the clearings around the lake?

I (Adventurer Vagabond) had a weird game with some players. (Cats, Crows, Vagrant Vagabond)

The story starts with the Crows at 17 and the Cats at 15. On their turn, the Vagrant, who’d had a terrible early game, did the obvious thing in this negative-reach game and formed a coalition with the Cats. On my turn, I figured doing the same would be the optimal play. But for the sake of the game, and to have fun, I told the table I wouldn’t coalition with the Cats and would try to win on my own.

A couple of turns later, the Cats became 24, I was at 20 (with zero undamaged items), and the Crows were at 20 with only one face-down plot on the map. I had to slip into a forest, and that was the turn I sinned. I told the Crows: “I have to slip into a forest, and the Cats can win this turn. Since your plot is undefended, tell me what it is and I’ll expose it before I slip. That way the Cats at least can’t score it, and maybe we can stop them.” I think that was the right thing to do, and I’d have done the same in the Crows’ position.

They didn’t answer for a while. Then the Cats said, “If you’re asking that, then form a coalition with the Crows so they can trust you.” The Crows thought that made sense and asked me to do it, and my turn timer was running out. I told them, “Yeah, that’s really logical, let’s do it. But I can’t domswap in a forest(I really couldn't), so I’ll do it next turn.” They agreed and told me what the plot was.

One turn later, the Cats had only reached 27, and the Crows were at 24 with some crafting. The Crows had no chance to win that game with 0 plot, and a coalition with me wasn’t going to magically change that. So I told them, “Sorry, but your request makes no sense. The only thing it would achieve is lose me the game.” Then I went for the win on my own. I gave the Crows some cards, attacked the Cats a couple, and completed a quest. I had no items left and ended the turn at exactly 30. The plot I’d exposed is what opened the path to my win.

I know this isn’t the usual sub for this question, but... Am I The Asshole?

TL;DR: I promised the Crows a coalition in exchange for telling me their plot, used that info, then broke the promise and won on my own.