Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right is a delightful asymmetric strategy game, where each player takes control of a different faction of small furry animals with beautiful art and woodcut pieces to brutally subjugate everyone else and declare your Rule over the woodland. In light of the upcoming Root Homeland Expansion, I think it’s a good time to make a ranking of each of the ten factions currently in the game, rating them on how easy they are to play, their strength at fighting and controlling the board, and most importantly their ability to win games.
#10 – Keepers in Iron
The Keepers in Iron, an order of devout badger knights from the Root Marauder Expansion, score points by collecting Relics hidden in the woods and bringing them back to their Waystation buildings, and as a result they can play through the game without interacting much with the other factions at all. Unfortunately the Relics are often difficult to acquire and your opponents score additional points for destroying your Relics, incentivizing them to attack you.
Easiness of Play: 3/10 — The unreliableness of action and relics, and an unorthodox strategy makes this a punishing faction for newcomers and a confusing one for more established players.
Combat and Board Control: 2/10 — Losing one warrior down to a minimum of four every turn thanks to the Live Off the Land ability and your non-combat victory conditions heavily limit your options here.
Winability: 3/10 — With all the downsides of not being able to interact with other factions much but none of the upsides, you’re going to have to be very lucky or very skilled to pull off a win with the Keepers in Iron.
Shininess: 10/10 — With your silver Warriors being the only metallic pieces around, you’re sure to be the envy of the woodland.
#9 – Corvid Conspiracy
The Corvid Conspiracy, a scheming group of ravens and crows from the Root Underworld Expansion, get their points through placing face-down Plots and later revealing them to cause trouble. It can be very fun to keep the other players on their toes with this (is it a bomb? or is it just extortion?), but it can become quite frustrating if the other players work together to remove them which they can do as a free action by guessing what the token is and giving you a card if they’re wrong.
Easiness of Play: 3/10 — With no buildings, a unique scoring mechanism, and abilities designed to specifically make other players dislike you, I would strongly recommend against playing this faction until you’re very familiar with the game.
Combat and Board Control: 3/10 — Having your pieces thinly spread out, combined with having to balance the use of your battles with placing plots, makes this quite difficult for you. At least you can blow stuff up.
Winability: 3/10 — To win as the Corvid Conspiracy you’re going to have to try to stay under the radar and get ignored.
Chaoticness: 10/10 — Your pieces are the epitome of no thoughts head empty, and they’ve also got explosives.
#8 – Marquise de Cat
The Marquise de Cat, a military industrial powerhouse run by felines from the Root Base Game, scores points via building in clearings they Rule. You have access to the most Warriors out of any faction and your Field Hospitals ability lets you return defeated Warriors to your starting clearing. Although this faction has a very strong start, quickly you’ll start to be outpaced by your opponents with no way to reliably have more than three actions per turn.
Easiness of Play: 9/10 — This is definitely the easiest faction to play, the only difficulty comes from balancing your various buildings and making good use of your limited actions.
Combat and Board Control: 9/10 — You have lots of Warriors to fight with, start with major board control, and get to move twice per action.
Winability: 4/10 — Your poor action economy will lead to you getting overtaken very quickly, and losing your specialised buildings forces you to rebuild before continuing.
Evil Schemes: 10/10 — Just one look at the mischievous expression on the faces of the Marquis pieces will immediately tell you that they’re up to no good.
#7 Riverfolk Company
The Riverfolk Company, capitalist otters (or are they beavers? I’m not entirely sure) from the Root Riverfolk Expansion, score both by having leftover funds after their turn and by building Trade Posts which allow people to buy things from them, such as cards and Warriors. Although they’re not particularly powerful in a traditional sense their power comes from the fact that they can easily act as a neutral party and sell things to everyone. The result is profit. Specifically for you.
Easiness of Play: 7/10 — Not particularly difficult, but if you try to play them like any other faction you have no chance of winning. You need to focus on having things to sell and making them desirable.
Combat and Board Control: 5/10 — You don’t have conventional board control, but you do have absolute control over the river. As for combat ability, each fund you acquire can be spent to either recruit or battle, so if sales are good so is your military strength.
Winability: 6/10 — Once people start buying from you they’ll find it difficult to stop relying on you, and for as long as that happens you’ll have plenty of funds.
Cold Hard Cash: 10/10 — You’re gonna be rolling in it. And by it I mean money.
#6 Eyrie Dynasties
The Eyrie Dynasties, a kingdom of royal birds from the Root Base Game, gain points each turn based on the number of buildings you have. This means that unlike other factions who have to relentlessly expand to score, after a point you just need to hold onto what you already have. Your actions come from the Decree to which you add cards every round, giving you way more actions than anyone else but forcing you to take each one or else fall into Turmoil, reset your Decree, and lose some points.
Easiness of Play: 5/10 — The Decree can take quite a while to figure out and is more of a hindrance than a help if you’re not specifically building a long term engine around it.
Combat and Board Control: 8/10 — Many actions means many recruits, moves and battles. Just be careful not to fall into Turmoil and lose them all.
Winability: 6/10 — The Decree will lead you to victory very easily, but if your opponents keep close enough track of it they can try to force you into Turmoil when it suits them.
Number of Cards in Front of You: 10/10 — In a good Eyrie game the other players should start getting confused as to why the deck is so small.
#5 Vagabond
The Vagabond, a sole woodland traveller from the Root Base Game, is somewhat of an oddity. Rather than a whole faction, the Vagabond is just a single traveller who completes quests for victory points and trades with other players to get items which grant more actions. Because they don’t have any buildings to rely on and can quickly repair items that get damaged in battle, it’s very difficult to stop the Vagabond once they get the ball rolling, as each completed quest grants more victory points than the last.
Easiness of Play: 8/10 — Because you only have one piece on the board to worry about and can ignore your opponents 90% of the time, this is actually a really good option for new players and people who struggle with the game.
Combat and Board Control: 2/10 — You have quite literally no board control, and your combat is extremely limited. Attacking typically is bad as it blocks you from benefiting from trading.
Winability: 7/10 — Once you’ve gotten set up with the items you need and start completing quests, there’s very little anyone can do to stop you.
Just a Little Guy: 10/10 — He’s so little. And such a guy.
#4 Lord of the Hundreds
The Lord of the Hundreds, a horde of rats with an all powerful rat lord from the Root Marauder Expansion, score points depending on the number clearings they rule with no enemy pieces in them. To assist them with their scorched earth policy they have a large army with actions that scale depending on how many items they’ve collected, and can place Mob tokens that remove all enemy pieces from the clearing their in if they’re not dealt with.
Easiness of Play: 7/10 — You have a very straightforward win condition and significant resources to back it up. The only complexity is balancing the items you have collected as they will limit which actions you can take.
Combat and Board Control: 10/10 — With a large army that can make multiple moves and battles a turn, Stronghold buildings to recruit and hold clearings, and Mob tokens to clear away swathes of enemies, the Lord of the Hundreds is easily the most aggressive faction.
Winability: 8/10 — Your strategy is straightforward and your military strength is unmatched. The only way to beat you is to have strong defenses and a reliable source of victory points.
Hoarding: 10/10 — At collecting items you’re the best, even better than the Vagabond.
#3 Lizard Cult
The Lizard Cult, a group of dragon worshipping reptiles from Root Riverfolk Expansion, score by building Gardens and revealing cards from their hand that match the Gardens’ suits. The fact that your cards are revealed rather than discarded makes it very easy for this faction to build a reliable hand and guarantee a steady flow of victory points.
Easiness of Play: 3/10 — The Lizard Cult is one of the most complex factions to play, as your actions are limited by the cards discarded throughout the last turn but you yourself discard very few making it difficult to manipulate.
Combat and Board Control: 5/10 — You have to lose pieces in battle (or sacrifice them) to gain attack actions, and your attacks are limited by the most discarded suit. On the plus side, your gardens can be built at low cost and you always rule their clearings even when you wouldn’t otherwise.
Winability: 9/10 — Although hard to master, this faction is notorious for being very powerful and a reliable point scorer once you’ve understood its complexities, something I unfortunately can’t claim to have done yet, but good luck!
Cultiness: 10/10 — I mean it’s right there in the name, plus these guys sure get up to some suspicious activities.
#2 Woodland Alliance
The Woodland Alliance, an array of mice, foxes, rabbits, and other oppressed woodland animals from the Base Game, score points through spreading Sympathy tokens throughout the woodland, initially by discarding cards and later by sacrificing Warriors, which they can later use to trigger Revolts to remove all enemy pieces in the clearing.
Easiness of Play: 6/10 — The Alliance has a very simple early game as they do not unlock any Warriors until they’ve Revolted. Unfortunately this does mean skilled opponents can lock you out of playing by removing your Sympathy before you can Revolt.
Combat and Board Control: 7/10 — You have the strongest defense of any faction as you get to take the higher die roll when attacking and defending. You do have very few Warriors though, so you won’t be able to be on the offensive very much.
Winability: 9/10 — Once you get the hang of sacrificing Warriors to spread Sympathy you can quite easily gain as many as twelve points in a turn. You do have to rely on your opponents removing your existing Sympathy for you to replay it, but the threat of a Revolt typically makes this quite simple.
Edibility: 10/10 — The mice pieces look like little slices of bread and I want to eat them so bad.
#1 Underground Duchy
The Underground Duchy, invading moles from beneath the ground from Root Underworld Expansion, score through Ministers which they sway to their cause and gain extra actions from each turn. The Duchy can hide off the board in their special Burrow clearing where no other faction can place pieces, and from where they can launch attacks by tunnelling to any clearing on the board.
Easiness of Play: 8/10 — Much of the gameplay is similar to the Marquis de Cat, except your buildings are multipurpose rather than specialised and although you start with only two actions you can quickly gain more. The only complexity comes from deciding which Ministers to sway.
Combat and Board Control: 10/10 — By mid game you’ll be recruiting at least six Warriors per turn to your Burrow, who can easily get anywhere on the map with your Tunnel tokens. Furthermore, your Ministers can give you plenty of extra battles, and if you’re ever in a bad situation you can always retreat to your Burrow to regroup.
Winability: 10/10 — A strong military force combined with consistent point scoring makes this faction the easiest to win reliably with.
Smugness: 10/10 — The faces of the moles do not hide their smugness at achieving the top spot on this list.
