I spent 4 hours trying to teach my group the rules to Root and still had to look up stuff mid-game

Everyone raves about Root being this amazing asymmetric game. I finally got a copy and spent a whole Saturday afternoon reading the rulebook and watching a playthrough video. Thought I had it down. We sat down at 7pm, by 9:30 we were still flipping through the law of Root every other turn trying to figure out what lizards could do or how the vagabond could move. We didn't even finish a full game. Are there actual quick guides that work better or does everyone just suffer through the first few games like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_jana1mo ago

Started off thinking people were overreacting with how hard Root is, but after our first game I totally get it now. Honestly I was the same way, thought I could just skim the rulebook and we'd be fine. Nope. The lizards alone have like three different rule exceptions that change depending on what turn it is. We had to print out player reference sheets from the BGG files section and that helped a ton. Still messed up the vagabond's movement like three times though.

-1

hugo_cooper1mo ago

Gotta say, the real hidden complexity nobody talks about is how the factions don't just have different rules, they have different win conditions that interact in really weird ways. Like the lizards can win by building gardens but also by using their acolytes to do specific stuff, and the vagabond is out here trying to max out their reputation while also completing quests that might help or hurt everyone else depending on what they picked. The first time we played, the vagabond actually won by accident because nobody was paying attention to his quest progress. We were all too busy fighting over clearings and he just snuck through. The rulebook really doesn't prepare you for that kind of thing because it treats each faction like they're playing their own separate game until suddenly they're not.

lane.drew1mo ago

Hard disagree on the vagabond thing though @the_jana, after a couple games the movement clicks pretty easy cause it's basically just like any other wargame's unit rules. I actually think the complexity gets overstated a lot once you've got one game under your belt.