Ranking All Factions in ROOT! -The BEST will surprise you!

today we are going to be ranking every single faction in my favorite board game root [Music] just a few things to clarify before I really dive into the list this is going to be with Advanced setup in mind therefore there's a slight buff to the Corvette conspiracy in their setup as well as to the lizard cult in their setup and the Marquis De cat so I am going to be having those involved in my decision making for this ranking today and in addition to this ranking this also will sub as a good faction guide helping you to determine what faction would work for you and which one you would like to play so grab that routine off of your stove pour it in your favorite mug and let's dive into the list thank you so we are going to start this list off with the least powerful faction in the game at least currently in my opinion and that is going to be the corvid conspiracy the Corvette conspiracy is a kind of behind the scenes faction they are kind of more terrorist than anything else they're going to be dropping down plots throughout the the clearings of the Woodland and these plots can do any number of things they might be a bomb that will destroy everything in that clearing it might be a snare to keep units kind of stuck inside it might be extortion where they're going to be stealing cards from other players hands or it might even be a raid with a nice kind of random Ambush where all these crows will appear around it when removed and so they have all of these options in the way that they really score these points is going to be placing these plot tokens around the board and then flipping them up scoring a point for that token as well as every other face up token and so they're kind of Point scoring can be really really powerful but it can also be kind kind of hard to pull off because a lot of players will be able to clearly see how much points they can score in any given turn the other thing that makes it a little bit difficult for them to score points is that they actually have to have a corvid warrior in the clearing with that plot token in order to flip it up and so opponents will just have to remove at least the Warriors in order to ensure that they can't flip it up on their next turn they'd have some nice abilities like embedded agents means that when players are attacking them they actually deal a free hit as long as the plot token is face down and then they're also Nimble so they can kind of run around the board without even worrying about rule which makes them very very interesting Unfortunately they are very very easy to learn which is nice but their scoring is just too easy to kind of see the potential of how much points and so oftentimes they just can't close out wins very easily and the thing about it is that really really good corvid players have to convince the table that they are not a threat that they are not going to be dangerous and usually it will be about the turn before other factions are about to win they'll lay down three or so plot tokens and they just have to hold those three in order to jump up quite a bit of points at the end of the game there so they have to really have the opponents not remember and forget about them entirely basically in order for them to win which can be very hard to do so that is why the corvid conspiracy is at the bottom of the list [Music] at spot number nine we have got the lizard coal now the lizard cold is a very defensive faction that essentially has to build up Gardens in certain clearings and they need multiple of those Gardens in order to even score a point they work by revealing cards out of their hands so as they reveal cards they'll be able to do actions like building recruiting and then instead of revealing they can actually spend a card of a certain suit in order to score a certain amount of points based on how many Gardens you have out on the board now their main main gimmick though is really the lost souls pile which is essentially a collection of all the cards that are discarded they all go into the lost souls and see which suit was the most used and most discarded essentially being the Lost Souls of that round and then they are able to perform actions called conspiracies within clearings of that suit and those are really where they can actually do things like converting they can actually do move moving and battling and they can also do sanctifying buildings basically replacing an existing building with one of their own Gardens so really powerful actions but they can only operate in one color at a time unfortunately and that color is decided by every player around the table as they're discarding cards now there are ways for the lizard cult to put cards from their hand discarding down at the end of their turn to add to that lost souls pile and there's definitely a lot of tips and tricks that players have learned that have gotten good at the game with the lizard cult like Dom swapping where they take a wild card and swap it with a dominance card which is suited and they're able to kind of use that in order to be able to further their point scoring but really the reason why this faction is not so good is because of their lack of being able to police they really can't move around the board they can't attack when they want to it's very deterministic and because of that they oftentimes fall behind their point scoring is also very slow in order to keep Pace with other players it is very very difficult and because of that they want the game to go very long and there are just a lot of other factions that don't want the game to go that long and so the lizard cult is basically battling against everyone trying to ensure that they can balance and make sure that no one faction is getting too many points so that they can eventually win a feat that is very hard to pull off which is why they are spot number nine um I I do love the lizard cult but they are definitely very hard to win with and take a very high skill cap now the Marquis De cat is going to be in spot number eight and this faction actually starts with total control of the board because the story goes that they had just gotten to this Woodland and they own the entire land and their whole goal in order to score points is that they actually have to expand their territory and build buildings they can expand and build more buildings by generating Sawmills and these Sawmills are able to generate wood which they can use to build more buildings now they have some really cool abilities for example they have the keep which is kind of a stronghold of sorts no pieces can be placed within the keep which makes it a nice defensible position players can move in there but anything that would be placed into that clearing it can't be so it's a nice defensible position and then their other ability kind of works in conjunction with the keep which is called field hospitals where when any number of your Marquis the cat Warriors would be removed you can spend a card that matches the clearing in order to put all of those cats back at your keep so so you can kind of keep a lot of your cats on the board which is really really important with this faction now the Marquis De cat really has a tough job because they start with full control of the board but they will find themselves losing ground quickly as every faction in the game is going to be attacking from all four corners while they're just trying to Rally up their troops and try to expand their territory and you'll find really quickly that you're going to be running out of building slot spaces so you have to attack your opponents the other thing is that they are very good at going for a dominance Victory once in a while you can see a really good Marquis the cat dominance Victory going in right at 10 points and so they have all these options but all in all they are just a very hard faction to win the game with because the lack of building spots and really that that right there is kind of the hardest thing good players will have to hoard bird cards in order to just have the extra actions at certain points in the game in order to win with the Marquis the cat and that is why they are going to be taking spot number eight and in spot number seven we have the war profiteering River folk company these otters that came down the river into this Woodland and decided that they wanted to make a couple of sales now they work very differently they have an open hand of cards which is very interesting and so other players can actually purchase these cards from their hand at the beginning of their own turns and the other thing is that they actually treat Rivers as paths meaning that they can actually move along the rivers in the Woodland and they can do so regardless of who rules those clearings now the cool thing about it is that when people buy their services they'll start getting payments into their payments box and during the game they'll use all those payments they'll go down to a funds pool and on their turn they'll be using these funds in order to perform actions certain actions only require that you commit the funds moving them from one box down below to another and other actions require you to spend them meaning that they leave the circulation entirely therefore this faction kind of works well if you start investing your payments so that you can make more and more so that you can pull off a lot of crazy actions and the most common way to win with this faction is called kind of the otter ball strategy where you'll just kind of build up this really large pile of Warriors and because every time you lay down a Trade Post which you score two points per you'll actually be able to gain a warrior every time you do that and so you'll be jumping around the board laying down trade posts gaining Warriors and you're able to police the table now with their Trade Post they're able to score a total of 18 victory points meaning that they still need to get 12 victory points in some other way and oftentimes because they are such good Crafters they can really get a lot of items because they can just keep drawing and trying to basically craft all the items into their crafted items box but also another way is just to police the board and get those extra points that way unfortunately the biggest problem with this faction is that sometimes you just don't get bought from and that can really slow down this faction's potential throughout the game making them kind of hard to win with and a little bit slower than some other factions the river folk actually got knocked down a little bit in my last ranking because with Advanced setup players actually have more control of their opening hand therefore they don't have as much need to buy from the river folk right out of the gate and that is the reason why they are seventh place in total for power ranking [Music] now next up we have spot number six which is going to be the Eerie dynasties a group of birds that are essentially squabbling around trying to complete a decree that is generated by you every turn and good players of the Eerie have to be good at programming because you're basically determining what you can do on your turn before you do it and then you have to actually do that on the board and you have to keep doing that over and over again until you can't do it and then when your decree cannot be completed you go into turmoil and must switch your leader they are Lords of the forest meaning that they actually rule a clearing even if they are tied for the same number of ruling pieces which is really really good and super handy as them the other thing is though that they have disdain for trade which makes their crafting potential really weak so they will craft a card but they'll only ever get one point for it so those poor coins will not really be helpful unless unless they choose the Builder as their leader but that's arguably the worst one to choose so not very good Crafters now the Erie gets points by laying down roosts and they lay down roosts by adding build cards to their decree and so as you can see their entire Action System is really determined by you and your hand of cards and where you really want to go around the board and what you want to do the only sad thing about this fashion really is that when they go into turmoil they actually lose victory points per every bird card in their decree this is the only faction in the game that can lose victory points which can be really really tough to recover from unless you're very good at well timing a turmoil this can be a faction that can be really really fun to play very very bursty uh kind of a slow start but then it starts getting really really powerful towards the end game but then they have that chance of just falling apart if they go into turmoil and starting over with a very small action economy where they just can't catch up to other players and that is why it's in spot number six and why the other factions above it are just a little bit better overall but still the Erie dynasties of very very powerful faction and a blast to play [Music] and in spot number five we have got the lord of the hundreds this is a faction that essentially is all about attacking opponents they're all about making sure that uh your opponents do not get powered up and get their engine going they essentially score for oppressed clearings in an oppressed clearing is where they are the only ones with pieces and so their whole goal of the game is to fight fight fight battle battle and they'll have this warlord piece it's kind of a sense of inspiration for these rats where they will actually switch a mood card every turn and this hand of mood cards has tons of little abilities but they start getting limited with the amounts of moods that they can choose from based on how many items they have in their horde that's actually another cool thing about this faction is that they actually collect items like the Vagabond they can actually interact with the ruins like the Vagabond which is really cool they care so much about the items that they have have an ability called looters where they can actually choose to instead of deal damage they can actually collect and steal an item from an opponent's crafting box and that's a really cool optional use to where they can kind of build up their action economy now since this faction's whole goal is to just go around the board punching everybody and making sure that they are the only rulers in a clearing the faction's ability to score points becomes more and more difficult the more players there are and the types of players there are and so this faction has a lot of great potential but oftentimes it's still a very hard puzzle in order to ensure that you can actually score regularly and there are just some other factions that don't really have that problem and because of that they are higher than the lord of the hundreds still a very fun fashion to play especially if you like to attack other players foreign next up we have got the underground duchy at spot number four now the underground duchy is kind of a society that lives underground in their burrow and they have this whole empire and eventually this Empire decided that they want to start an expedition to the Overworld and what they are trying to do is they're trying to sway ministers to their cause in order to basically show that it was worth it for them to be above ground their biggest weakness though is that they have a price of failure meaning that whenever their buildings are destroyed some of those ministers that they were able to sway start losing hope that this Expedition might not be such a great idea to be up here and they'll start leaving the moles and so this whole faction is about a balance of swaying ministers trying to keep your buildings protected so that you can show that it's worth for your ministers to stick around and in the meantime they have a ton of different options on how to play the game now they have a clearing that is off the board called the burrow and it's connect to all of their tunnels on the board and that right there adds a ton of options for movement they have this dig action where they can essentially put a tunnel and then move troops from the burrow to that tunnel and so they can kind of flank opponents and surprise attack them and the biggest perk of this faction is really those Minister cards getting those Minister cards you can kind of determine your strategy and that's really why this faction is so good is that you can kind of play differently based on what factions are at the table but depending on what ministers you take you can be more risky you can be less risky you don't even have to build buildings in order to be completely successful with them and so you can kind of hold back your buildings that way you don't have to worry about losing any ministers and only bring out the buildings when you know it's safe so they can be very very defensible but they are also extremely versatile with all of their different ways of scoring points and so the underground duchy is Rank 4 in best faction a really really good all-around fashion very versatile you should definitely check them out and now we are here at what I believe to be the top three factions in Roots starting with ranked number three the Woodland Alliance now the Woodland Alliance is a rebellion faction that essentially doesn't even start the game on the board their whole goal is to spread sympathy throughout the land attempting to gain support for their Rebellion to eventually Revolt removing everything inside of a clearing starting a base and then they're finally able to do evening nighttime operations so they're going to be playing a hand management game essentially they're going to be having a hand of cards and they're going to be trying to decide which one should go into their supporters to spread more sympathy around the board and which ones they should use to train officers in order to get more nighttime actions and do more nighttime abilities it's kind of a really really fun balance the thing about them that makes them so hard to stop throughout the game is the fact that opponents when they attack their sympathy tokens they're actually giving support because it kind of grows the anger of the whole society that the the people are getting more Angry the more that they're being attacked and because of that more support is added to their campaign throughout the Woodland the other thing is that if no other fashion wins the game eventually it's like the Woodland Alliance will always end up winning because of their potential to burst in score they're the kind of faction that will score very slowly all the way up to about 15 to about 20 victory points and then right about there they can just jump up to 30 points and win the game and a lot of players just don't really know how to deal with that they've also got guerrilla warfare which is one of their special abilities where essentially they always get the higher role no matter if they're the attacker or Defender in combat which is extremely extremely good the Woodland Alliance have a lot of things to do on their end and a lot of planning that they need to make sure in order to try and win the game but really your opponents have to strategically set up martial law around the alliance in order to stop them and oftentimes players just aren't willing to make that sacrifice in their formations and because of that the Woodland Alliance takes spot number three thank you [Music] and spot number two is one of the most unique factions in any war game ever essentially while every single other player of the game is going to be playing a a army faction where they're actually being you know kind of controlling a society or a group of people this faction just controls One Piece One Pawn one little animal and that is going to be the Vagabond everyone else is playing a war game while the Vagabond is playing an RPG game exploring ruins collecting items they can trade with all the other factions in fact they have a lot of options they can be friends with other factions but simultaneously they can be really really large enemies a menace to society they can get into the backlines really really easy because they are Nimble they can just move around the board without any fear of rule and the other thing is that as other players are going to be crafting item cards they can actually go up to those factions and Aid them in order to get those items into their Satchel giving them more actions now the reason why I gave them spot number two the the second best faction in root is that if you learn to play this faction you will quickly realize just how many options they have it doesn't matter at what stage in the game they can either attack players they can Aid they even have questing they'll get their early game kind of figured out because of ruins but they can do so many different things to score points at any point in the game they have more options than any other faction more different ways to score victory points and the other reason why they are the second best faction in the game is the fact that when you're attacking other factions there's usually a chance to score victory points by taking their tokens or their buildings but since the Vagabond doesn't have buildings doesn't have tokens if players attack the Vagabond they get nothing in return and if the Vagabond isn't attacked enough they will win they have to be sent to the forest at least once but they should be sent to the forest at least twice every game and that's just hard for players to take a turn off to attack the Vagabond and not gain as many points as they would if they hadn't and so it really takes a lot of teamwork around the table in order to kind of slow down the Vagabonds engine and the Vagabond is just completely Carefree there's gonna be skipping around the board attacking wood here going over here trading for you know some of the items that they want and then they might go on a quest randomly and fend off a bear in a clearing but there is one faction one faction that I believe to be more powerful than even the vagabond foreign number one the best faction in root is going to be the keepers in Iron now the keepers and iron are essentially these Knights that are looking for lost relics and trophies within the forest they're gonna have all of these Relic tokens that are going to be set up at the beginning of the game and they actually have to venture and delve into those forests collecting those relics and scoring points based off of their value now there are differing values of these relics so you don't really know exactly what value they are until you delve for them which kind of makes them an interesting faction their action economy kind of works like the Erie dynasties where you're going to be adding cards and doing things except that you don't actually have to do any of these actions you're adding them for a potential to do these things and as you start adding more and more cars to this your action economy becomes very very strong now they are also extremely defensible due to their devout Knights ability in battle you ignore the first hit you take if any of your warriors are protecting a relic and a clearing their crafting ability is also really good because they'll be laying down these waste stations which they're able to kind of pick up and put back down with their Warriors which is a really cool concept and really the reason why I believe them to be the most powerful faction in the game is that they are the fastest scorers in the game the first Relic that they can find could give them three points just right off the bat and that could be turn one per se this is the type of faction where you can just score so many points right in a row it's the type of faction that you actually want to hold back how much you score and how fast you do it in order to make sure that you can win because if players see that you're scoring quite a bit you're gonna be a really big threat and so they're actually a faction that actually has to hold back their power in order to close out games but if it comes down to them racing against another faction there is no faction that is as fast of a score as the keepers in Iron which is why if you want to learn this very complex very very difficult faction to learn you will have a very powerful force in the game and players will definitely fear you that is going to be it for my ranking of every faction in the board game of root if you were really wanting more root content I've got some other videos here like my top five general root strategy tips as well as I've got videos of every single faction I've got strategy tips for each of them definitely check those videos Out Below but that is it thank you so much for watching let's go ahead and drop the beat [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Lord of the Board

Views: 91,534

Keywords: Ranking, Root Board Game, lord of the board Root, Best faction in Root, leder games, boardgames, tabletop, tabletopgames, kickstarter, howtoplay, gameplay, game, overview, review, preview, Root, The best faction in root, factions, play, player, root board game review, Ranking All Factions in ROOT, board games

Id: euZKyAXs0oM

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023