Root (and the Riverfolk Expansion) - Shut Up & Sit Down Review

inside this box is a war game that in 2018 captured the hearts and minds of board gamers like no other would you like to take a look inside route you'll find a double-sided map of a forest a pack of cards with truly delightful illustrations by artist Kyle Ferran a clutch of charming screen-printed animals and a manual and a learn to play book and an example of play and exhaustive references for every player and a stack of reference cards so you can read about the animals you're going up against I have owned cars with less documentation than this but this paperwork is here for a browsing reason you see root tells the story of different groups of animals battling for control of the forest and while all players will be dispatching soldiers around different clearings all of these animals play by their own rules figuratively but also literally it's probably best if I just show you at the start of route the board is filled with the unflagging felines of the marquis de cat a pleasingly feeble pun on my kitty cat who conquered this forest while the birds weren't paying attention if you're playing these guys your lot is the most likely normal strategic video game at the start of your turn all of your sawmills spew out lumber you can then transport that lumber to build new buildings you can recruit new cats you can move them you can battle by building a variety of buildings you'll be very strong but through building a lot of one kind of building you'll get the most victory points that will ultimately win you the game now these cats already have more rules than some board games shut up and sit down recommends so if this looks like your preferred level of complexity I can only apologise because by the time we're done going through all of routes factions you might be you're dead but don't worry cuz I've got some granola bars you just have them and keep blood sugar up see what happens at the start of the game you're also gonna gather the last remnants of the proud I read dynasty and bond them in a corner but nobody puts Ferdie in the corner the bird player cries I'm sorry Birds we did it happened now as the birds to simulate your capricious government you've got something called the decree and you must add cards to this medieval command line every turn so at the start of the game you might say I'm gonna recruit then move then battle but by turn through you might say uh-huh I'm gonna recruit twice then move twice once out of a fox clearing then battle twice then build in a fox caring and if you ever can't execute the entirety of this line your government collapses this is just me giving you the briefest of rules explanations by the way all the factions also need to know about crafting cards and battles and ambushes but if you want to know more than PDFs of roots manual sorry manuals are available online me I'm just gonna continue pulling you through the thicket of what route is so we can get to the review I'm getting a bit peckish Ashley you have one of them granola bars you ate them both already a third player can control the woodland alliance a band of scrappy rebels made up of the bunnies and foxes and mice that actually live here and want to take the wood back from these two tyrants don't be fooled by these cute little mouse soldiers these guys are the scariest Muppet blockers in town the woodland Alliance build up animals that are supporters and they can spend supporters making clearings sympathetic to the cause and these little green tokens are traps any animal that moves into a sympathetic clearing or strings up those animals makes more and more animals outraged eventually triggering murderous rebellions that set up little headquarters in that area think of the commonplace green of the woodland Alliance as the first telltale signs of an infectious disease that can and will kill everybody finally a player can step into the supple leather boots of the vagabond who's not an army but a roguish wanderer and while the forest is alive with war the vagabond plays something like a private role-playing game traveling around tidying up quests and dragging swords out of caves and if they so choose perhaps helping to stop any players that get too powerful by committing some light arson now soldiers can't kill the vagabond but instead damage his items perhaps sending him limping back into the forest to lick his wounds and get the dents out of his teakettle with a little hammer and I thought we could actually end the rules explanation there and move more on to the review yeah well dude stop and what I was thinking is that run will cover the expansion later but for now I really want to do is just review the base game and make sure people know whether they should buy it okay listen if you love the Hobby of board gaming then one of the things you love is sitting down with a group of your friends or family and agreeing to shared rules and behaviors that together create an experience that's bigger than any of you and within that process is warmth and respect and a little bit of magic and root in offering everybody their own unique game to play offers that joy of board gaming but multiplied writ large whether you're playing the birds or the rebels you just have one role in the gaming equivalent of a theatrical production and in addition to roots fireside magnetism if you enjoy learning games and systems root is such a treat on a cerebral level each time you play you and your friends will incubate and share observations about this puzzle to the degree that passengers in an airplane cabin exchanged germs oh my gosh you'll say as the cat the game is all about controlling these spaces where you can build and so on and so forth is your brute gradually works their way through the different layers of an entertainment onion and this is why roots sweet animal aesthetic is so perfect a lot of people have been saying that the cutesiness is misleading because root is a harsh war game but it's not a war game where the most savvy general will win the game of root is an ecosystem and studying how these animals interact is as engaging and surprising as what a nature documentary you can see the Vagabond watching a bloody battle from an alleyway wondering which fraction they'll team up with you can see the cat's halt their advance fearful that a rabbit rebellion will spring up and tear down their sawmills and in the manner of the very best board games these little vignettes aren't written down anywhere but emerge fully formed in your imagination from a masterful pairing of rules and art as an expedition into never-before-seen game ideas root is a blinding success the first group that I played it with we arranged to meet up and play it again the very next night and then again the week after that like we were kids who discovered Narnia and just wanted to explore it some more so it's really simple if you want to own the most successful asymmetric game the world has ever seen or if you just want to own this game with all of this fabulous art you should buy roof without a second thought but if you just want a great game that you can pull off the shelf and have a good time with we should talk and you should know that now I'm done playing route for review I don't know when I'm next going to play it you see what you're paying for with route is an idea and to quote Alan Moore's V for Vendetta ideas are sometimes bad let's start here on the victory point track because there's different as the factions in route are you all win the same way and that's why being the first to reach 30 victory points but to keep the game tense and full of possibility victory points of score exponentially so placing your first building might get you Bob one point but placing your fourth building of the same type of later turn might get you bump a bow bow bow bow five victory points similarly as the cats doing a recruit action might get you one proud Kitty combatant at the start of the game but later on when you've got all your recruiting centers on the board a recruiting action might get you BAM five warriors but what this means is that every player has to watch all the other players in case any of you are about to escape route gravity perhaps spending in action or your entire turn pulling someone else back down the ladder have the birds built up a decree so massive that they're killing everything like the killer in the popular Alfred Hitchcock movie psycho well then someone needs to take control of a clearing that their decree relies on collapsing their government like a house of cards similarly should the Vagabond collect enough items that they no longer resemble the cute raccoon Ronin but a one-man womble warlord well then someone needs to go and send some soldiers to beat them up breaking their sword and ripping their bag like you're a school bully in other words to win root you need to get points but to not lose root you have to know when and where to attack your friends but you remember how I said it was so fun to watch me play out like a nature documentary well that's just it when you start playing this game you are tourists in this forest who make for woefully ill-equipped Park Rangers when one of these factions threatens to turn into a forest fire all too often the player who wins root is the one who simply isn't attacked when they reveal themselves as strong but they're not so strong that they can't be stopped which produces a runaway leader and that player they're not having fun because they don't feel they earned the win and for everybody else they are at best disappointed and this is when you have three or four players of equal skill levels heaven forbid you have just one player who knows how to spin up momentum with their faction because that player can lock the game down with another half an hour left to play and this emphasis on momentum also means that if a player has a rocky start perhaps because they left an important building undefended and it got torched well that can make the whole back half of the game feel literally pointless as they lag behind everybody else clearly not gonna win and in this grand theatrical production they become scenery I put me in a weird position as the guy who actually owned route because I want to take it to people's houses and show off my sexy new woodland love interest but I spent the entire game holding the experience together like a flustered schoolteacher don't do that you can't do that you shouldn't do that you need to stop that Mouse except I was bringing my own biases of how the game worked to that experience and in one game I confidently told everybody to stop the mouse and that Mouse player never recovered and had a bad game and all I could say was sorry and listen it's not that we didn't have fun during these learning games it's just that we'd finish a game of Rutten go ah next time uh we didn't say that game was great we said next time we were all just craving the familiarity with a route that would let us play this as the rich strategic experience that this game promises with its thick manual and every fiber of the linen finish on its cards and on the box and the truth is we got there you know around game four or five we all had wicked familiarity with all these different factions and we were able to just compete and you know what that was a game I like less win tinsmith reviews board games he'll be back next week game basically going from playing rout as a novelty to playing rout as a pure competition felt like my friends and I had been exploring this fun ball pit and then I stubbed my toe on something and dug down and found a rowing machine hidden below the surface with an experienced group able to wreak havoc with their Kenner animals root becomes faster which is good but it doesn't become any more satisfying and I found that it became colder you see it means that aggressive plays or clever plays give you momentum but then you're far more likely to just get knocked back by your friends which made my turns feel a bit pointless and also just means more games where everyone's points get clumped together together together together until someone finally crosses the line but that feels Arbor it's so impressive that the best strategy that I could find is to just play the fraction that came last the previous game because that means it's that you can maybe get a bit more momentum before someone around the table looks at the board and goes we should probably masochism cats and I say that that's the best possible move you could make because as clever as root is and this is by far my biggest criticism it doesn't always give you much of an opportunity to be clever don't be fooled by this player aid the size of a place setting you can't always do a great deal on your turn and that's ok in board games it just means that you plan your future turns together and a big chain but you can't predict much in route either you see the forest changes so much between all of your turns and players are holding so many secret cards that you can't predict which means and this speaks well of modern board gaming that I haven't had to say this in a long time playing brute I found myself impatiently waiting for my go incidentally it's because of this sluggishness that I actually like root the most as a three-player game not a 4/4 and while with the expansions you can play it with five or six I would never want to except maybe as a novelty and at this point let's just stop and I'm gonna give myself a sanity check because am I really giving this game a dissapointed review just look at it this box is a true beauty everything has the precise size and look that it needs to from these lovely cards to the boards to these perfect wooden soldiers oh my goodness it took me far too long to realize just how good they are they're like the supreme platonic form of a playing piece instantly readable classy touch of also fused with character they even sound good and it all comes tucked into a high-quality box that's no larger than it needs to be everyone involved in this production needs to take and yet under all that glamour became design itself doesn't feel half as right I mean put simplest root is sad when someone's losing it's frustrating when someone's winning and when everyone's tied whoever wins feels like a crapshoot and listen here a telepathy damn were all about games that can feel a bit wobbly and arbitrary most famously we love Cosmic Encounter which is a mad crush of high concepts and stupid ideas and it doesn't quite work but there's a difference which is the heavy in cosmic encounter I can teach anybody in five minutes and then we can play whereas in root I can teach you in like twenty five minutes and then I spend the whole game plucking players off the game's legal scaffolding telling them what they should and shouldn't do and it still might not be fun for you I mean maybe it'll be fun for you but then it probably isn't fun for me and and none of that can take away how cool this game is nothing can deny its ambition or its epic imagery or countless nice touches like how the Vagabond can choose their animal like they were playing a fighting game this design is a pinata full of ideas a paper animal that artist Kyle Ferran has expertly breathed life into and in a lot of ways mister Ferran saves this game because of mr. Farren's expert craft there are gonna be a lot of people out there who don't care about my high-minded criticisms and we have seen time and time again that if people just really want to enjoy a game that's enough so if you think you're one of those people here are my tips for getting the most out of root over all my friends and I much preferred our time spent trying to figure root out than we did when we actually learned the game and the novelty wore off but the good news is you can keep root weird I would definitely recommend playing it with two three and four players I would also recommend flipping the board and playing on the winter side just for a change which scrambles up all the clear and weirdly for shut up and sit down as soon as you figured out you like root I would recommend that you buy the river where is it give me the river folk expansion this expansion adds all the components needed for a second vagabond player which means the two of them are competing for resources and they both become weaker and how does that change the game it's kind of interesting it also adds components for an AI replacement for the cat which I didn't like at all but you can do it but now we're on to the real farmer because the river folk introduces two brand-new fractions the woodland our alliance are replaced with another sticky resistance group the lizard cults now the lizard cults turn begins by first checking what the most common suit in the discard pile is they become the outcasts and then you can spend dead soldiers which become acolytes to perform conspiracies and then you can reveal but not play cards from your hand in order to take actions and build gardens to a dragon and I can see why these lesser in the expansion because they're kind of bad and incredibly difficult for everybody to learn and yet it speaks of how much I need roots to be a strange and unknowable game that I'll happily play as these guys give them to me I'll make that sacrifice to keep this Wood weird but I've saved the best for last this is what you buy the expansion for the mercantile river folk company that's right now we've got beaver arms dealers three words that I've never said before in my life but now I have they feel so right I found my beavers see these guys I think represent the very best of route they are unique thought-provoking funny and colorful with the Beavers you also solve a problem in the game because remember I said you can't do much on your turn well if you're willing to pay the beavers a very interesting price now you can the beavers set prices for their river boats and cards and mercenaries on the board and people can pay warriors from their supply to the Beavers and these warriors then act as coins that the beavers can spend to Bill's shops around the board or deploy yet more killer beavers and it's just fabulous in one game I played the beaver player built a massive gang of beavers that we all threw money at to try and steer them around like a wrecking ball until we realize that in paying that cost we were funding yet more killer beavers and [Music] suddenly once again just looking at all these beautiful factions I'm thinking maybe next time you know maybe next time I'll play with the cats and the birds but with the river folk company on the winter board and what'll that be like but more realistically maybe next time I'll just play a different game one that can fulfill its core promise and when my friends leave my house saying that game was great yes maybe but I don't know I feel it was honest I just I've never I played this so much and I never quite quite got a good game out of it you know yeah so I mean you want to sleep this year I'll keep it yeah it's just that they could release an expansion later that like fixes a lot of my problems with it so maybe I just want to over come on we we say that maybe they'll fix in expansion yes you're right okay you know what you can keep it all keep the whole thing wicked whoa all right man I'll see you next week bye thanks for watching another shut up and sit down video review if this is the first one you've watched then we've got loads more on our YouTube channel you can check out also we're on twitch now roughly once every couple of weeks you can come by you can drop by and you can check us out streaming games for fun live on the Internet can you imagine such a thing I can not if you like this then can subscribe to the channel and you can like the video and also got some other reviews you can watch yeah like some some other reviews of big games you could watch what are you doing right that's my game dad's it doesn't fit you see

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 808,800

Rating: 4.9205098 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Shut Up Show, Board Game Review, Review, Shut Up, Sit Down, Board Games, Board Gaming, Family Games, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Matt Lees, Root, Root: Riverfolk Expansion

Id: Gup6lTgGdjI

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/thisappletastesfunny]

Haven't played the game yet, but what a great review.

This is what an actual critical game review should look like.

Please take note reviewers, more of this and less ten minute rule breakdowns with two minutes of 'I liked it'.

[u/zz_x_zz]

I've played the game about 15 times now and have spent more time thinking about this game than almost any other I've ever played, and pretty much every criticism Quinns has here is valid and has crossed my mind already.

The thing that really stuck with me though was the bit where he said he spent more time after games thinking about the next one then reflecting on the good experience that just ended. At first glance it might seem good to always have forward momentum and want to play another game, but it depends on why you want to play again.

For us, a lot of time we wanted to get another game going right away because the one we just finished felt weird or unsatisfying in some way. Somebody didn't stop the Vagabond when they needed to, the Lizards couldn't ever get the right outcast suit, the Otters priced their services wrongly, etc. So many times the immediate post-game conversation was, "Oh, well this was obviously a mistake and threw the whole game off. Let's try again and we'll fix that mistake" But in the next game something else goes wrong that we then vow to patch for the game after that.

I'm still down for playing Root but the more I play it the more it's evolving from what I initially saw as Better Vast to Better John Company. Vast is an attempt at a competitive asymmetric game that's just too bloated and overwrought for anybody but an extremely dedicated group. Root lowers the barrier of entry quite a bit, but increasingly it feels more like the sandbox of John Company than a game where I feel satisfied with its competitive trappings.

In John Company, players are rewarded simply for tinkering with the system. Cole created a fascinating machine and it's fun to see how things connect and what levers you can pull that have interesting and non-obvious effects. But in my 5 games of John Company I can't tell you who won any of them. Getting victory points is the least satisfying part of the game and I simply don't care, beyond narrative, who ends up in what abstract retirement home after their term in office.

The more I play Root the more the experience takes on this type of character. I don't obsess over people making the right move and I just have fun pulling levers. Maybe one game everybody is relatively close and then we all forget the Woodland Alliance has built up twelve supports and they race forward for a win. In another maybe the Vagabond just jumps out to a lead and wins by 15. Our group knows how to play now and turns go by fast. It's still fun switching around and playing different factions and Root as a 60 minute game can be a great time, but my obsession is definitely dying down at this point.

[u/QTobiQ]

Though I disagree on some things, I praise SUSD for not blindly hopping on bandwagons and giving their actual opinion on the game.

[u/dokdoyle]

I really like SU&SD reviews, and I agree with a lot of his points.
But....

The fact that the game provokes so much thoughts, and that he wants to come back to it so much shows the value it has. I fully understand why they cannot recommand it. It's hard to learn and hard to teach, and it's not an exciting game full of fun. It's a game that demand attention and dedication from its players. But it sticks to the mind. It sets out to tell a story, and it does that very well. Better than any other wargame I've played.

Root is a weird one, and his popularity is surprising to me, but at the moment, I really love it.

[u/monstron]

I think SU&SD are trying to address a larger problem in the hobby with their review style: BGG has made the community obsessed with ranking and comparing games. People want an objective ranking of the "best" games based on "facts". There's no room for taste or nuance in a ranking system but it doesn't have to be that way.

SU&SD are more like restaurant critics; it is entirely about the experience. It's possible for me to have a terrible experience at your favorite restaurant, and I think most people can easily understand that concept. If I review a restaurant, I'm writing to encourage or discourage you from sharing my experience. Sure, certain things in my review might be objective (the fish is flown in fresh every night) but that still has very little to do with how much you'll enjoy your experience. It might inform it, it might make it more likely, but you could still have a terrible time. Again, I think most people inherently understand this about a restaurant review.

With board games, many people in the community seem to insist on objective, quantified "facts" about a game that place it in a heirarchy. I believe you simply can't separate these things out and I think a lot of the community wants to quantify things that shouldn't be quantified.

Bravo to SU&SD for informing us on the experience of the game and not reducing their reviews to a score.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm a bit disappointed that Quinns is disappointed because I absolutely love this game, but I don't think he's wrong in any of his comments.

[edit: THE BEAVERS?!?!?!? HOW DARE YOU!!]

[u/mowngle]

Both halves of this review speak to me. I’ve played once, so I feel I owe it more tries, but I left the first game thinking, I wish I hadn’t been attacked so hard to allow another faction to run rampant.

Next time...

(I also enjoyed the psycho/birds joke)

[u/AnticipatingLunch]

He articulated what I’ve been thinking.

The game is lovely and brimming with potential for intricately and precariously balanced war. And unless I make 3 clones of myself to evenly spread out my knowledge of the game to all players, I’ll never quite see that potential realized. And even if it is realized, it doesn’t quite conclude with a bang.

His comments about the Victory Point track really struck home. I wonder if VPs just isn’t the best way for this game to decide a winner? Not sure what the best option would be, but that does seem to be the moment where the asymmetry clashes together and sounds somewhat...wrong, whereas the rest of the game it clashes beautifully.

[u/dictionary_hat_r4ck]

Wow, this thread. Quinns literally gushed over this game, said it didn’t have staying power, and then literally made a joke about giving it away but not being willing to part with it, and YET, people are obsessed with the parts where he said negative things.

All in all, I think this is a very strong review.