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Field guide

How to play Root

2–4 players with the base box (best at 4; expansions seat up to 6) Medium-heavy — wildly asymmetric factions on a small shared core

What is Root?

Root is a woodland war game where every player sits down with a completely different set of rules, pieces, and goals. The base box pits the industrial Marquise de Cat, the feudal Eyrie Dynasties, the rebel Woodland Alliance, and the roving Vagabond against each other — and its expansions add six more (the Lizard Cult, Riverfolk Company, Underground Duchy, Corvid Conspiracy, Lord of the Hundreds, and Keepers in Iron) — the ten covered here, each listed below with its Reach, though later expansions add more still.

You all share the same map and the same deck of cards, but the way you score points, take actions, and interact with the board is unique to your faction. No two games feel the same because the factions create wildly different power dynamics every time.

Never played an asymmetric game? The secret is that you only have to master one faction — your own. Your faction board walks you through your turn phase by phase, and the rules everyone shares — moving, battling, ruling clearings, crafting — fit on a single reference card. Spend your first game learning your engine and just enough about your neighbors to notice when they are about to score, because in Root the balance mechanism is the players themselves.

Components

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

1 double-sided map board — the shared Woodland: 12 clearings, each with a suit (fox, rabbit, or mouse), building slots, and paths to its neighbors. The Fall map is on the front; the back holds the snowy Winter map for later games (the Underworld expansion adds the Lake and Mountain maps). The river only matters if the expansion Riverfolk faction is in play.
54 shared deck cards — the game's common currency, in four suits: fox, rabbit, mouse, and bird (always wild). Most can be crafted for items or effects; hiding among them are 5 ambush cards (surprise hits in battle) and 4 dominance cards (alternate win conditions — removed in 2-player games).
4 faction boards — your personal rulebook: the back lists your pieces and setup, the front scripts your Birdsong–Daylight–Evening turn and hides scoring bonuses under your unbuilt pieces.
55 warriors + 1 pawn (25 orange Marquise, 20 blue Eyrie, 10 green Alliance) — the armies that fight over clearings. The Vagabond's gray pawn is not a warrior: it can never be removed from the map and never rules a clearing.
28 buildings (7 roosts, 6 sawmills, 6 workshops, 6 recruiters, 3 bases) — they fill clearing slots, and sliding them off your faction board uncovers the point values beneath: for most factions, building is scoring.
19 tokens (8 wood, 1 keep, 10 sympathy) — wood fuels the Marquise's construction, the keep guards her home clearing, and sympathy is the Alliance's creeping rebellion. Removing any enemy building or token scores the remover 1 VP.
23 item tokens (4 boots, 4 swords, 4 bags, 3 hammers, 3 teas, 2 coins, 2 crossbows, 1 torch) — 12 form the craftable supply at the top of the map, 4 hide under the ruins, and the rest are the Vagabond's starting gear. Anyone scores VP by crafting them; the Vagabond's entire action economy runs on exhausting them.
4 ruin chits — block the four building slots marked "R"; only the Vagabond can Explore them to dig out the items beneath.
Faction cards (4 Eyrie leaders, 2 Loyal Viziers, 3 Vagabond characters, 15 quest cards) — each Eyrie leader arranges the Decree differently and the Viziers are the two bird cards it never lets go; the Thief, Tinker, and Ranger give the Vagabond his special action; quests are one of his main point engines.
16 faction overview cards + 4 walkthrough cards — reference cards for the whole table, plus a scripted first two turns for learning games.
2 custom dice — rolled together in every battle: the attacker deals hits equal to the higher result, the defender the lower.
4 score markers, 3 relationship markers, 12 clearing markers — the VP track runners, the Vagabond's diplomacy chart, and face-down suit markers for the variant setup that randomizes every clearing's suit.

Setup

Lay out the map. Place the board in the center — Fall map face up (the snowy Winter map on the back is for later games). Each clearing has a suit (fox, rabbit, or mouse), open building slots, and paths to its neighbors. Suits are the game's grammar: most actions require a card matching the clearing you act in, and bird cards are always wild.
Assign factions & first player. Each player takes a faction board and the pieces shown on its back; pick the starting player and seating randomly. Choose factions whose Reach values total at least the number for your player count (2p: 17+, 3p: 18+, 4p: 21+, 5p: 25+, 6p: 28+). Reach measures how much conflict a faction projects — the minimum guarantees enough attacking that no one can quietly run away with the game. For a first game with the base box: all four factions at 4 players; drop the Vagabond at 3, and the Alliance too at 2.
Place score markers on "0" on the score track.
Draw starting hands. Shuffle the shared 54-card deck; each player draws 3 cards. In a 2-player game, first remove all four dominance cards from the deck.
Place ruins. Put a ruin in each of the four slots marked "R". If a Vagabond is playing, first slip one item under each ruin — the four ruin items (a boot, a bag, a hammer, and a sword), shuffled face down — for the Vagabond to dig out by exploring. Without a Vagabond, the ruins simply block those slots all game.
Form the item supply. Stock the spaces near the top of the map with the 12 craftable items: 2 boots, 2 bags, 1 crossbow, 1 hammer, 2 swords, 2 tea sets, and 2 coins. Crafting a card that shows an item lets you take it and bank its victory points — and once a slot empties, that item is gone for everyone else.
Gather shared pieces. Hand out the 16 faction overview cards and place the two dice by the map.
Set up each faction, in order (following the setup letter — A, B, C… — printed on each faction board). Every faction sets up very differently from its own board: the Marquise places her keep in a corner, garrisons a warrior in every clearing except the opposite corner, and places a starting sawmill, workshop, and recruiter; the Eyrie put a roost and 6 warriors in the corner opposite the keep, choose a leader, and tuck their Loyal Viziers into the Decree; the Woodland Alliance begins with no pieces on the map — just 3 face-down supporters; the Vagabond picks a character and starts in a forest with its listed gear. Read your board's setup carefully — the back of that board is your faction's rulebook.

Once every faction is set up, the first player begins.

How to play

Play proceeds clockwise, and every turn has three phases — Birdsong, Daylight, and Evening — whose contents are entirely faction-specific: your board tells you exactly what to do in each. What everyone shares is the small toolbox underneath:

Rule clearings. The ruler of a clearing is the player with the most warriors plus buildings there combined — tokens and pawns never count, and on a tie no one rules. Ruling gates movement, building, and many faction actions.
Move. Take any number of your warriors from one clearing to an adjacent one — legal only if you rule the origin, the destination, or both.
Battle. Pick a clearing where you have warriors (or, for the Vagabond, your pawn), choose a defender there, and roll both dice: the attacker deals hits equal to the higher die, the defender equal to the lower, simultaneously — but your rolled hits can't exceed your warriors in that clearing, and a defender with no warriors takes one extra hit. Hits remove warriors first, then buildings and tokens as their owner chooses, and every enemy building or token you remove is 1 VP. The defender may spring an ambush card for 2 early hits — unless the attacker cancels it with an ambush of their own.
Craft. Activate crafting pieces (workshops, roosts, sympathy tokens…) in clearings matching the suits printed on a card in your hand. Immediate cards grant items and bank their VP; persistent cards stay in front of you with an ongoing power.
Run your engine, then reset. The rest of your board is pure faction: the Marquise converts wood into buildings, the Eyrie must execute an ever-growing Decree or crash into turmoil, the Alliance converts supporters into sympathy and revolts, the Vagabond exhausts items to act. In Evening you draw cards and discard down to five.

One lap of the table. Ana (Marquise) places wood at her sawmills, marches four warriors into a fox clearing, and battles Beto: she rolls a 2 and a 1 — her 2 hits fell a warrior and a roost (+1 VP for the building) while Beto's lower roll costs her one warrior. Beto (Eyrie) must resolve his entire Decree; when it demands a battle in a mouse clearing where he has no warriors, he falls into turmoil — losing 1 VP per bird card in the Decree, discarding it, and deposing his leader. Carla (Alliance) spends two rabbit supporters to revolt in a sympathetic rabbit clearing, sweeping every Marquise piece off it (1 VP per building and token removed) and planting a base. Diego (Vagabond) exhausts a boot to walk into a ruin's clearing and a torch to explore it — banking 1 VP and a buried sword — then aids Carla with a matching card, nudging their relationship toward Allied.

How to win

The first player to reach 30 victory points wins immediately, even mid-turn; if several players cross the line at once, the tied player closest in clockwise order to the player taking the current turn wins — and that current player counts as closest. Every faction has its own engine: the Marquise scores by constructing buildings, the Eyrie score every Evening for the roosts they have built and protected, the Alliance scores by spreading sympathy tokens, and the Vagabond scores by completing quests and by aiding or harming the other factions. Two sources are universal: crafting items, and removing enemy buildings or tokens (1 VP apiece).

Alternatively, once you have 10 or more points you may activate a dominance card during your Daylight: your marker leaves the score track for good, and you now win only by ruling — at the start of your Birdsong — three clearings of the card's suit, or two diagonally opposite corner clearings for the bird card. It's a dramatic, irreversible pivot that the table usually answers immediately.

Honest framing: Root is a fight over tempo, and every score engine is public. The table can read exactly how you plan to win, and your job is to read them back — pile onto whoever is closest to 30, and expect the same treatment the moment you take the lead.

Factions

Base game

Riverfolk Expansion

Underworld Expansion

Marauder Expansion

Homeland Expansion (Pre-release)

Hirelings

Optional helper pieces — add exactly three to any game. They serve whoever is in the lead and switch sides as the game shifts. Grouped by the pack they come in.

Marauder Hirelings

Forest Patrol Cat (Marquise de Cat)

Deploys Marquise cats that keep moving and battling across the map, and can quickly bring fallen soldiers back into play.

Demoted · Feline Physicians: Instead lets its controller heal, returning some removed warriors.
Last Dynasty Eagle (Eyrie Dynasties)

Sends out the last Eyrie regiment — bird warriors that spread out and help their patron rule clearings.

Demoted · Bluebird Nobles: Instead grants its controller a small edge toward ruling and scoring.
Spring Uprising Rabbit (Woodland Alliance)

Stirs Alliance rebels across the forest, ready to erupt in a sudden uprising that sweeps a clearing.

Demoted · Rabbit Scouts: Grants Guerrilla Warfare — as defender you take the higher die roll.
The Exile Raccoon (Vagabond)

A lone Vagabond mercenary pawn that prowls the forest, battling and taking what it needs.

Demoted · The Brigand: A weaker, more passive raiding presence.
Flame Bearers Rat (Lord of the Hundreds)

Places flame bearers around the map that force warriors out of the clearings they occupy.

Demoted · Rat Smugglers: Instead grants its controller a smuggling perk.
Vault Keepers Badger (Keepers in Iron)

Builds vaults guarded by keeper warriors that can be reinforced over the game.

Demoted · Badger Bodyguards: Lets its controller ignore the first hit taken in a battle.
Popular Band Fox / woodland (independent)

A roving band that spreads support: when you recruit, place a warrior in each of two connected clearings.

Demoted · Street Band: A smaller, passive version of the perk.

Riverfolk Hirelings

Highway Bandits Porcupine (independent)

Posts bandits on the forest paths; players lose pieces moving through them (you gain instead if you control them).

Demoted · Bandit Gangs: Adds warriors wherever bandits sit on the map.
Warm Sun Prophets Lizard (Lizard Cult)

Places lizard prophets that can force enemy movement and provoke battles.

Demoted · Lizard Envoys: A quieter, passive influence.
Riverfolk Flotilla Otter (Riverfolk Company)

A trade boat that drifts down the river handing out cards and attacking its patron's enemies.

Demoted · Otter Divers: Lets its controller move freely to and from river clearings.

Underworld Hirelings

Corvid Spies Crow (Corvid Conspiracy)

Slips spies into clearings to battle or steal cards from enemies' hands.

Demoted · Raven Sentries: Deals an extra hit in clearings where you have buildings or tokens.
Sunward Expedition Mole (Underground Duchy)

Marches mole warriors into clearings — even those without footholds — to battle.

Demoted · Mole Artisans: Instead grants its controller a passive crafting perk.
Furious Protector Stag (independent)

An unstoppable guardian that can't be battled, rampaging to remove pieces and block spawning where it stands.

Demoted · Stoic Protector: Instead makes your own pieces immune — enemies can't battle or remove them.

Homeland Hirelings

Sunny Advocates Boar (Homeland)

Choose a suit; in each matching clearing holding Advocates, replace one enemy warrior with your own, then spread Advocate warriors into new clearings.

Demoted: Demoted side: if no Advocates are on the map, place one Advocate warrior in any clearing.
River Roamers Frog (Homeland)

Frogs that craft using lilypads and battle at each lilypad — or drop two Roamer warriors and a lilypad into a river clearing.

Demoted · Frog Tinkers: Draw the top card and let you spend it as a wild crafting suit.
Prosperous Farmers Mouse (Homeland)

If you rule farms, draw a card and add a farm; then battle at a farm or place a warrior at every farm.

Demoted · Struggling Farmers: Farms can't be removed for points, and stray farms relocate to clearings you rule.