Eyrie Strategy

I have a love / hate relationship with the Eyrie faction. They have interesting mechanics and are fun to play but very difficult to win. The main thing that separates them from the other factions is focusing on their decree which can be difficulty to master and often prevents you from taking the action you really want.

Royal Decree

The key to playing the Eyrie well is to master the placement of cards in the decree. The general rule of thumb is to save your blue cards for Battle / Build as it gives you more options and flexibility.

Recruit – You usually want to place Red / Orange / Yellow cards here that match the color of your staring roost. Don’t place a color card here if you only have one roost of that color and it is within reach of other players (unless it’s well defended with warriors).

Move – I only place color cards here. It is usually pretty easy to maneuver your warriors so that you can execute a move from the matching clearing. It’s not that Blue cards are bad here, you just usually want to save those for Battle and Build.

Battle – Preferred spot for a blue card, especially in the early game. If you place a Red / Orange / Yellow card here you will eventually run out of targets and it is easy for your opponents to move warriors away so that you can’t start a battle and force a collapse. Late in the game when the board is crowded and you have lots of movement cards its usually safe to place a color card here.

Build – I only put color cards here as a last resort. You almost always only want a single blue card here. Having a single color card means you will run out of spots to place a roost in four turns. Also some of those spots are on the other side of the board and hard for you to get to.

Leader Selection

All of the leaders are good under the right circumstances. I think one of the keys to playing the Eyrie well is choosing the right leader at the right time.

Despot – Good leader for all phases of the game. Can help with scoring extra points. I will take him as my starting leader if I don’t have any blue cards because he gives a vizier for the Build action which is critical to expanding early in the game.

Commander – Probably my least favorite Leader. He can be good mid to late game when you really need to attack a player to stop them from winning, but I never choose him as a starting leader. If you want the blue card in Battle, Charismatic is usually a better choice.

Charismatic – Very solid early game choice to get out lots of warriors. Just don’t put too many cards into recruit (2 is enough) because you do cause Turmoil if you run out of warriors to recruit. This leader also lets you be aggressive in starting fights since you know you will get warriors back quickly.

Builder – I find this leader to be very situational. Not a good early game choice because you don’t have enough roosts out to craft. Can be a good mid to late game choice if you have a handful of cards you can craft for more than 1 point. This can be a good burst in points that can secure the victory and other players won’t see it coming.

Crafting Cards

Crafting is definitely not the Eyrie’s strong suit, however there are a few cards that I find helpful.

Tax Collector – This is really good with the Charismatic leader. You will be recruiting lots of Warriors each turn and this lets you convert one of them into an extra card.

Scouting Party – A properly timed ambush by one of your opponents can cause turmoil. This is especially true early in the game when you are planning to move, battle and build into an adjacent province. This can drop you below the number of Warriors needed to rule the clearing. If I have this in my hand early in the game I will usually try to move to orange clearings first so I can craft it.

The favor cards can be really good for you, but the main reason you want to hold onto them is that you don’t want your opponents to have them. If one of your opponents nukes a color and you have the color under recruit, it will cause turmoil. I usually just hold onto these cards so that they don’t get discarded and re-drawn by my opponents. Wait until the late game to play them when you don’t think the deck will be shuffled again.

Opponent Specific Strategies

Marquise de Cat – Try to avoid the Cat player early in the game. It’s fine to attack a few of the lone cats on your side of the board, but in general the two of you shouldn’t be fighting much early on. Both of you should be slowing down the Vagabond and Woodland Alliance, so you don’t want the cat player to focus on you.

Lizard Cult – You can typically ignore them converting your warriors. If you are playing well you risk running out of warriors to recruit anyway, so they might be doing you a favor. You do need to deal with there gardens because they restrict your movement (Lizard Cult always rules clearings where they have a garden) and taking them out gives you points.

Vagabond – The Eyrie typically doesn’t do a lot of crafting so don’t expect a lot of cards from them. However I try to expand towards the Vagabond player in hopes that they will give me cards for points even though I don’t have any items to offer. If they are getting too powerful you are usually in the best position to stop them. Most other players don’t want to attack the Vagabond because they don’t get anything out of it, however you have to fulfill your decree so if the Vagabond is within range, it’s usually worth it to attack and slow him down.

Woodland Alliance – Avoid moving into areas where they have sympathy if possible. It’s always better to blockade the Woodland Alliance and force them to move to you and pay an extra card (via martial law), however this might not always be possible. Make sure you can take out there sympathy tokens to eliminate the risk of a revolt. Losing a roost this way can be painful.

Riverfolk – The Riverfolk should be your best friends. You are pretty much the only player that can benefit from all of their services. Buying blue cards is good. Extra warriors to fight with is good. More movement options are good. All of their services can help you prevent a turmoil so don’t be afraid to pay for them, even when they jack up the price. Dealing with the Riverfolk is as much about psychology as it is strategy. You want to develop a mutual beneficial relationship so that you buy services and they turn around and spend your warriors so that you get them back. You can always turn on them later if they are getting too powerful.

Riverfolk Strategy

The Riverfolk are an interesting faction to play that have very unique mechanics. They rely on selling services to other players fund their economic expansion (and ultimately victory).

The Riverfolk can seem a little overwhelming at first because they have a complex ruleset and their path to victory is not as straight forward. There is not a single strategy that will work for them in all situations, the Riverfolk player must be versatile has to be good at reading other players and the board state.

Economics 101

First and foremost realize that you need funds to win. If players don’t buy services from you, then you will never score points fast enough to win. So the most important skill to being a good Riverfolk player is to learn how to price your services.

Hand Card – The price for a hand card can vary greatly based on the board state and the quality of your cards. At the beginning of the game, everyone wants Blue Cards and Ambush Cards. If I have two or more of these in my opening hand then I usually set the starting price at 3 at the beginning of the game, otherwise I set it at 2.

If no one is buying your cards try to cycle them out by over drawing and discarding until you get more valuable cards.

A couple of things to remember about pricing your cards:

• The Eyrie is your biggest customer for cards
• Eyrie will likely pay 4 warriors if it means not going into revolt
• Marquise is mostly interested in Ambush cards
• Understand Lizard Cults scoring and price cards that match the color they need higher
• Woodland Alliance will rarely buy cards from you and its hard to know what they need
• The crafting cards vary in value based on the boardstate (lots of combat means Armorers and Sappers should cost more)
• Set price to 4 if you want to protect a card so you can craft it (even if it gets bought 4 funds is good)

Riverboats – This will probably be the least purchased service. Most of the time in my games this is set at a cost of 1. However you need to be able to determine when the time is right to raise the price.

• Raise the price if Eyrie needs to Move/Battle or Move/Build and the only viable route is via river
• Raise the price if you see an opportunistic attack (undefended buildings) from one player to another
• Lower the price if other players need to move to prevent someone from winning (especially is one faction if trying for dominance)
• Lower the price if no one is using riverboats

Mercenaries – Mercenaries are probably bought about as often as hand cards. The key to pricing mercenaries is to understand their strategic value. You want to place them where they will swing battles to one side or the other, meaning that without your mercenaries, the two sides are roughly equal. So if the other troops are 2v2, 3v3, 3v4, etc… your mercenaries will help ensure victory and prevent loses of the purchasing factions warriors.

Mercenaries are probably most valuable when a player is moving on a Woodland Alliance Base. It’s costly to attack the Woodland Alliance, so start positioning warriors towards their first base when it comes out.

Marketing 101

Make sure that other players are aware of your services. At the beginning of your turn a quick reminder about the cards you have that would help them, or how much easier it would be if they could move down rivers this turn.

Don’t be greedy and opportunistic, other players will remember it. If the only way for Player A to prevent Player B from winning is to user Riverboats and you jack the price up from 1 to 4 right before his turn, everyone will see that and it could backfire in the long run. You want to provide useful services at a reasonable price.

It is important to understand the other factions play styles and what services they will likely use.

Eyrie – Can buy anything under the right conditions, especially to avoid collapse. They tend to have a lot of warriors on the board so mercenaries are less useful.

Marquise – Similar to the Eyrie, can buy anything under the right conditions. and has lots of warriors to buy stuff with. They get attacked a lot so Ambush cards and Defensive crafting cards are very valuable early game. Typically won’t need riverboats or mercenaries until later in the game.

Lizard Cult – Has lots of warriors to purchase with. Will be more interested in cards that help them score their gardens. Have a hard time massing troops so mercenaries are more valuable to them. Large groups of mercs plus their gardens can help them setup large blockades.

Vagabond – Can’t purchase mercenaries and gets a free move every turn so is unlikely to need riverboats. May occasionally buy a card, but has fewer resources for purchasing so don’t focus on their needs as much.

Woodland Alliance – Mercenaries are most valuable to them due to lack of board presence. May occasionally buy a card but you typically won’t know what color they need since supporters deck is hidden. They only have 10 warriors so won’t buy from you a lot unless they get their warriors back right away.

Psychology 101

The key to winning is to have everyone think you are their friend and to stay under the radar as long as possible. You don’t ever want to appear to be a threat because it is usually pretty hard to defend all of your trading outposts and each one you lose is half of your funds gone.

Reward players that trade with you early to incentive trading with you. Spend their funds right away on warriors or a trading post to generate good will and encourage them to do it again. You want the relationship to be mutually beneficial. Similarly, punish players that attack you early or are hostile in other ways. Once you mass enough warriors you can blockade their movement or hold lumber hostage (Marquise)

I try to stay equal to or slightly behind the leading player in terms of points. If you do this for a while you shouldn’t get focused on too heavily by the other players. Realize that most players don’t want to attack you because they usually have better options. Unfortunately you are pretty easy to stop once you are the clear leader, so you need to lay low and wait for the right time to surge. I find that this is usually around the 20 point mark. You want to have enough funds saved up so that you can get points by putting out trade posts, dividends, crafting and attacking tokens of other players. If you can reliably get from 20 to 30 points in two turns you should go for it.

Engineering 101

Most of the time you will be crafting cards for points whenever possible. However here are some of the key cards you might want to craft for their abilities. Remember that you typically won’t have more than three or four trading outposts out some of the deck can be hard for you to craft.

Sappers – Eventually you are going to get attacked if you are close to winning so you need to be prepared for that.

Armorers – This is a great defensive card for you, I will craft this as soon as you see it.

Cobbler – Anything that helps you move your troops into a better strategic position is good. This saves you funds and makes purchasing mercenaries more attractive.

Root – Dominance Victory

After playing 20+ games of root I finally saw a game won by Dominance. The Marquise de Cat player drew the Orange Clearing Dominance card in their opening hand and had 3 of the 4 orange clearings within easy reach. It was a relatively easy victory since all the cat player had to do was wait for the right time to play the card.

In this case their were three red cards in the Lizard Cult pile so even though they had acolytes that could have taken on of the orange clearings, the Woodland Alliance and Eyrie players would have had to play four orange cards collectively in order to make that the favored clearing and they were unable to do so. Woodland Alliance only had one officer, so they couldn’t do anything, and the Eyrie warriors are unable to move in order to battle the Cat warriors.

So the key lessons learned were that the random setup of the winter side can make dominance more achievable and that you should be suspicious if a player is massing troops on the same clearing type. Also if you see that a certain type of clearing is massed within easy reach of a certain player, then you want to hold onto that dominance card (which wasn’t possible in this game since the Cat player got lucky and drew it themselves).

Marquise de Cat Strategy

The Marquise are the Galactic Empire of Root. The start out with the best board position but are also an easy early target for most other factions. Here are some basic strategy tips for playing with the Marquise.

 

Strength in Numbers

Consolidate your troops early in the game. You are going to get beat up a little but early on, and that’s to be expected, but try to consolidate your troops to make any attacks against you more expensive, especially earlier in the game. My typical first turn move is Build Sawmill – Move – Move. I usually abandon the positions farthest away from the keep. This consolidates your troops and makes it harder for Eyrie to get an easy battle to pick off a lone cat early in the game.

 

Blockade

The Marquise is the best faction at controlling spaces due to strength of numbers. Use this to your advantage and make it difficult for other factions to move around the board. If used correctly this forces them to fight you when you are strongest.

The Great Wall

A good strategy for the cat player is to mass troops in the clearings adjacent to your keep and then slowly expand outward once you run out of spaces to build on. A solid force of four or five cats per clearing is very intimidating for other players. This is also useful for controlling the spread of sympathy tokens. You will get attacked here and there, but if you play smart you can react and keep your perimeter intact.

 

Slow Your Opponents

In my opinion the cat players strategy to winning the game is more about slowing down the other players to give you enough time to win. You will slowly gain points via building and crafting as the game progresses, but you don’t have the burst scoring that other factions have. You just need to make sure someone else doesn’t win the points race. Here are some tips against each faction

Vs. Woodland Alliance – Make use of martial law whenever possible, you want to make it as expensive as possible for the alliance to expand. If they expand into your territory it is almost always best to destroy the token. 1VP for you and one card to the Woodland Alliance player is always a good trade if martial law is in effect. Everything in Root is siutational, but I have adopted to following general strategy for dealing with bases. If undefended, always destory (it’s worth 2 cards to move in and destroy), If defended with 2 or more warrios just move in and blockade (control the clearing with the base so they can’t move out easily). If defended with just one warrior it’s kinda a judgement call. You never want the Woodland Alliance player to get all three bases out.

Vs. Eyrie – You need them to collapse at least once during the game, the earlier the better. Avoid battling groups of 3 or more birds. If you have an extra action and can move and pick off one or two bird warrios then go for it. Destroy roosts when you have a chance to do it at little cost. Look for opportunities to disrupt their actions and force a collapse.

Vs. Vagabond – Don’t craft tea, ever! The Vagabond can generally out score the other factions when left alone but at the same time you don’t want to be the only one fighting him. If you get a good chance to wound them early it will definitely slow down their game.

Vs. Riverfolk – This one is kinda tricky and very much depends on how they are being played. You generally have the most warriors to spare for purchasing services. It’s usually worth it to buy blue cards, especially to deny them from the Eyrie player. You generally won’t need rafts, but it may situationally be useful. Recruiting mercenaries can definitely help you by preventing your own losses in battle, but also realize that you are probably the best target to have mercenaries used against you. An Eyrie player might not want to take on 5 cats with 2 birds, but if the Riverfolk has three mercenaries in that clearing … The point being that any warriors you spend on services can be used to buy mercenaries that might ultimately fight against you.

Vs. Lizard Cult – The Lizard Cult are the weakest in the game and you can typically outscore them and can avoid direct confrontation. You will occasionally lose troops from conversion but you should be able to recover from it. Destroy gardens when they are placed in your “Defensive Perimeter” but you typically don’t want to spend a move action and then battle a garden.

 

Best Crafting Cards

Sappers & Armorers – You are going to get in a lot of battles, probably more than any other faction. Anything that makes you stronger in battle is good. Also the defensive cards can be really good deterrents because it makes the cost of attacking you very high.

Cobbler – This is basically a free move action every turn. This can greatly improve your efficiency in moving around the board.

Command Warren – A free battle at the beginning of your turn. Probably not quite as good as Cobbler, but it still helps. Very useful to taking out sympathy tokens and Lizard gardens that popped up since your last turn.

Opening Turn

I almost always Move – Move – Build Sawmill to consolidate troops. If you start with a Blue card, the Move – Overwork – Build – Build is also a solid option.

Woodland Alliance Strategy

The Woodland Alliance are the resistance factions in the world of Root. In my opinion they are both the most difficult to play and most difficult to play against out of the four factions in the base game. Here are some strategy tips for playing with the Woodland Alliance.

The Woodland Alliance game plan is broken up into phases. Phase I is establishing a base. Phase II is deciding how to use your base. If all of your bases get destroyed, then you go back to Phase I.

 

Phase I – No Bases

Rise Up – Your first few turns are all about establishing presence and preparing for your first revolt. The majority of the time you want to get your first base out as quickly as possible. The best places to spread presence are spots with no enemy warriors, so that you gain two cards if they attack your presence. Pay attention to Eyrie’s board during this stage. If the Eyrie player has to move and attack, try to place sympathy so that they have to come after you (gaining you two cards). Two cards for a sympathy that you can get out with one card (plus 1vp) is a very good trade early in the game.

Rebuild – If you lose all of your bases. First, don’t panic. This happens a lot. Experienced players know that the Woodland Alliance is much more powerful when they have bases out. The good news is that you should have lots of cards, so planning your next revolt should be easy. If not you should easily be able to expand into two or three regions on your next turn.

 

Phase II – Expansion

Rebel Base – This strategy involves getting out lots of officers and having at least three warriors to defend the base. This makes it very unattractive for other players to attack the base since you get the high roll. You can use your officers to recruits troops and have a small but significant force of warriors. This strategy is most effective when you need to slow down another player by directly attacking them.

Support Of The People – This strategy involves getting exactly two officers and performing a Move and Organize action every Evening Phase. This plus your supporter cards means you can spread sympathy quickly. Also the Move and Organize action is not affected by Marshall Law, so its great for spreading into areas with lots of enemy troops and threatening a revolt. This strategy is great for getting your second base out quickly.

The Empire Strikes Back – Once you have your second base out expect everyone to focus on you. Experienced players know that letting the Alliance have two bases for even a few turns can be devastating. So have a plan. You usually won’t be able to stop the enemy offensive, but your goal is to make it as expensive as possible for the other players. Focus your efforts or hurting the player that is the biggest threat to you (as far as points are concerned)

 

Dominance Cards – I have never seen an Alliance player win via Dominance. It would be very hard to pull off due to a general lack of board presence, but I suppose in very rare circumstances it might happen.

 

Opening Turn

Try to get out three sympathy tokens if at all possible. If you can only get out two then you need to read the board state to determine where you want to be. The best spots are empty ones, which is possible if the Cat player went before you. If that is not an option then the best spots are towards the Cat player, but not in spots where they have buildings. A Cat player will not want to waste early game actions going after your sympathy unless it threatens their buildings. They probably won’t care if you revolt and kill a single warrior. You also want to be close to the Vagabond if possible because the Vagabond would much rather aid the Alliance or Eyrie than the Cats in the early game.

I almost always place my entire starting hand into the supporters stack unless you either have an ambush card or something that is really good for you to craft.

 

Best Crafting Cards

Anything that gets you more cards is good. Cards are more valuable to you than to any other player

If you are going to commit warriors to defending your base then anything that helps your defense is good. Armorers means that it will take another player at least three battles to destroy your base, if defended by 3 warriors. This makes it very unappealing for other players to try and attack you. Also armorers works on offense if you are being blockaded.

Root – Boardstate Analysis

This is a board about 4 or 5 turns into a game of root in the middle of the Eyrie turn. The turn order was Eyrie -> Vagabond -> Marquise -> Woodland Alliance.

During this turn the Eyrie player moved into the yellow clearing (top middle) and chose to attack two cat warriors instead of taking out the sympathy token. At the end of the turn the Eyrie player was in second place with 7 points.

Marquise – They have a good early lead and have consolidated and built a few buildings. You can see the beginning of a defensive perimeter forming however the Marquise player should probably shift to putting pressure on the other players at this point . Personally I like to have a few more cats on the board to get martial-law into effect as early as possible.

Vagabond – The Vagabond player has just been exploring ruins and gifting cards up to this point. They are just doing their thing, trying to get items to setup for the late game.

Eyrie – The Eyrie player is doing fine and is slowly expanding in a controlled way to prevent collapse. The picture doesn’t show the top row, but they had 4 roosts out at the end of this turn.

Woodland Alliance – The alliance player is in a very strong position here, despite being last in points (after Eyrie’s turn is over), they have two warriors, four sympathy and one base out, which is very good at this stage of the game. They are threatening revolt in three clearings.

Analysis

In my opinion this was one of the defining turns of the game. Mainly because the other players under-estimated the strength of the Woodland Alliance. The Eyrie player should have removed the sympathy token in the yellow clearing at the top. Not doing so basically guaranteed that the Woodland Alliance would revolt there next turn.

The Vagabond player explored the ruin, gifted to the Marquise player and moved on their turn. The cat player is basically forced to remove sympathy in the orange clearing (middle of board) and they also chose to remove it in the yellow clearing (bottom left), their third action was to build. On the Woodland Alliance turn they revolt in the yellow clearing (top middle) and spread sympathy to the orange clearing (bottom middle). Now they have two bases, four officers and good sympathy coverage. That is a very hard combination to combat since both the Eyrie and Marquise player are relatively low on warriors. They both had to waste entire turns moving and combating the Woodland Alliance spread where they were only getting one point. The Woodland Player could then easily expand out again because they were getting so many cards.

Conclusion

I think this is a great example that shows how the strength of the Woodland Alliance can be deceptive on the board. Most people are used to relatively equal factions where strength on the board can be measured by the number of pieces of that players color. Root is not like that and it takes a while to learn to evaluate how well a given faction is doing.