I love how polite the fellow players are. I used to play Starcraft 2 competitively back in the day, and the constant relentless BM ultimately put me off online gaming completely. It's refreshing to see that people can actually play a competitive online game and act like regular human beings towards each other.

On the opening turn I usually use the bird card overwork, then build a sawmill and recruiter and recruit for the 4th action.

10:05 you said you wanted him to take your mouse bait but he has to fight and only has one movement, so moving a cat out of the mouse clearing actually forced the Eyirie player to forgo that mouse clearing.

it’s crazy to me that they don’t use the same silhouette as the wooden pieces.

Great video as always! My Marquise strategy in the current metagame: 1. If low aggression opponents at the start of the game (tinker, despot), go straight for 3-4 more sawmills then transition to 1 more workshop (if situation calls) + 2-3 recruit. Use overwork if no better actions, allows u a huge turn next round. 2. Build a workshop at rabbit first then later on mouse. The rule I follow is craft boot whenever available, and bag if VB does not need it (Ranger usually becomes desperate for a bag if ruin digging RnG wasn't to his favor), never ever craft tea for ranger and save coin to craft very late for point push (the later VB gets a coin from u, the lower value it provides), against tinker, always check discard pile, if tinker has access to tea or coin, might as well craft them to deny points from him since he would be crafting them in one or two rounds anyways. Never craft hammer what so ever for any VB (even if it's in the discard pile in a tinker game, this delays him by 1 more turn before favor if he has to craft himself) 3. On top of always holding the hammer in your hand to deny it from tinker, I tend to hold favor cards as well, as long as you are not 100% sure tinker doesn't have access to the hammer, a favor card in the discard pile does more damage to you than others in most cases, its not even worth the risk for it to end up in discard pile when crafting favor yourself even if it nets u a couple of points (unless u do it late game and win with it). I used to build fox workshop for armorer as it helps dominance victory but then I realized it's the best against Eyrie but u really should only play dominance around a turmoil so it makes it less useful (see point 5.) and u give up a bird card to craft it which makes even less appealing. But of course, if your goal from turn one is to go bird dominance without looking back, then by all means, build the starting workshop at fox and hope u draw armorers. 4. Prioritize on moving 3 cats to the center mouse and bottom right rabbit early in the game to force WA to spread onto top left fox instead, which will save u alot of headache. 5. Always keep eye out for bird dominance victory, the perfect opportunity will be claiming the dominance right before the eyrie goes turmoil on recruit right after ur turn, taking them completely out of the picture, at that point, your real threat is a well equipped VB working with WA, and if the VB reads chat, plays to win, and goes before u, tell him to even coalition with u before ur turn so that he can devote himself to screwing up WA so both of u will guarantee a 90% coalition victory by dominance. If u are on your own to win dominance and especially if bird is out of the picture, u might not always want to put all the warriors at each corner, leave some to defend sawmills and key path, this not only gives other player harder time to win by point on their turn farming your undefended wood, it also gives VB (especially Ranger) harder time to move around to stop u if he's already hostile , because it takes him 2 boots to move into clearing with a warrior and more than often , he doesn't have enough tea to refresh both boots and weapons. Also, ambush is very strong against WA in this situation. See u in game !

In a 4 player game a 30% win rate is fantastic

Awesome video, learned a lot! Thanks!

Yessss! Can’t wait to watch this entire video later!

I love these playthroughs

Really good game, loved it!

This was an awesome game. I agree with your decision to spend the Scouting Party card to clear sympathy from your mouse clearing, given the current board state it was the right call... its just ironic that you were stopped by 2 ambushes on the last turn lol.

Thanks for the video

Fantastic game!

if only you could've seen into the future and crafted the card to make ambush cards not work when u had the chance

I love your vids so much

Just played a game with Cats today and it was exactly how you said. Everyone at the table basically screaming that I'm supposed to be attacking everyone . Cats are pretty hard for me to win with so far

Play thief I feel no one really knows how to play him right especially me... enjoying the root videos!!

Do you keep streaming and/or playing Root? I enjoyed this video and although I never been much into board games Root defo seems interesting and it would be cool to see more of your gameplays

Cool game with only the basic factions and first map :)

I thought you played very well in this game! Great video as always. I liked how greedy (ie. Sawmills) your opening was given the low aggression choices of Despot and Tinker. This is a great meta for the Cats right now. I think fundamentally it is difficult to make a Favor play with the cats, because the cost of crafting it is extremely high. It means investing several turns and staying anemic on Recruiters. More importantly, you don't get the bang for your buck that the WA or Tinker would, because you need to already rule 2 clearings in that suit. And at the end of it all, you're stuck with three workshops of the same suit! That said, it seemed to work well in this game because the Eyrie and WA were both hit hard and had trouble consolidating afterward. So, it nearly worked! Well played.

thrilling!

Angry tinker with 3 swords 🤣 25:46

I do the advanced set up for the cat because they are way underpowered otherwise. Honestly, this game is looking like a tinker victory by the @16:00 mark.

I am thankful you actually pronounce the S in marquise. No one does, which is incorrect of course. Nice video!

I'm new to the game but love your vids. I do have a question regarding Favor cards though. Don't you need to have a crafting piece in all 3 of the clearings marked on the card? I noticed you played Favor of the Mice with only 2 workshops in mice clearings, but the card shows a cost of 3. I'm confused about that. Thanks!

oof shoulda held the ambush card since using it on the vaga wasn't a useful last turn move, then moved into the left mouse roost + the fox base and done two attacks, blocking the WA's ambush with your own. Hindsight I guess!

I usually just focus on garrinson, recruit and win by dominance.

Turning the discussion away for the marquise for a moment. The woodland alliance had a tough game, what strategies could they have used? I can see why they'd focus on a single player in the beginning vs multiple folks when spreading sympathy. In the end players didn't cross into those lands to get cards to feed the engine.

I think I have been using Field Hospitals incorrectly this whole time. When do you have to spend your card? Is it always done at the start of your next turn after having lost warriors? Can it save more than three warriors (if multiple battles took place in the same clearing in the same round)?

On your last turn, could you have moved cats from the middle fox clearing to WA bottom rabbit clearing for a better chance at destroying WA buildings? Or am I blind?

Hey! Recently discovered both Root and your channel. First things first, love both! Still trying to understand the asymmetrical tactical implications of the game, and your content is definitely helping. If I may make a suggestion: on your thumbnails, there's a lot of empty space, and the content category text (strategy guide, competitive gameplay, etc) is quite small. I'd suggest zooming in on the character illustrations (they don't have to fit 100% in the frame) and blowing up the content category text. Furthermore, I'd refrain from using bright red strips on your thumbnails (I believe it's the Cruella video) since it is undistinguishable from YT's UI indicating one's watched this video already. Both of these will allow viewers to browse your video collection with more ease, and immediately find the content they're looking for. Kepp up the good work, I sincerely hope both Root and your channel are going to grow significantly. The board game seems to already have a solid community, let's make a proper online one too! PS: anybody who can point me to the community hubs (Reddit, Discord, other forums), please do! Thanks!

Question: is turn order established also by set up order?

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I've only ever played the Marquise twice (crazy, I know) and the Vagabond once (my wife's fav) but I usually let newer players play the cats as it's easier to explain haha..

How do you zoom out to see the full map? I can’t seem to be able to do it

Next player I'd be curious to see you play is the Eyrie

I would never in a thousand years base my opening moves with the cats off of holding a favor card. So strange (to me) that you used your first turn march to only consolidate a single cat.

Why did the vagabond get 6 victory points for destroying 3 buildings, I thought they were 1 each, and when you destroyed sympathy without giving a matching card, I thought they get to take one of their choice, but that didn’t happen? If anyone sees this, pls help lol

First? omg