Root (Board Game) [1] Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bird

Bird cards are wild cards for most purposes in "Root." Each of the twelve clearings is associated with mouse, rabbit, or fox, which affects how different cards are used by different factions. For example, the Woodland Alliance uses cards of different suits to spread sympathy tokens to matching clearings, but can use bird cards to target any clearing.

Answer: Marquise de Cat

The Marquise de Cat starts with their keep token in one of the four corner clearings, and places a warrior in every clearing except the opposite corner (where the Eyrie Dynasties will start if they are in the game). The cats start the game with the strongest board presence, and play the most conventional area-control game to gain points, but they're also the biggest target for all the other factions.

In 2021, new Advanced Setup rules were released, which have the Marquise de Cat place warriors in all twelve clearings.

Answer: Vagabond

The board of "Root" is divided into twelve clearings, connected by paths, with forests in between. All movement of pieces is restricted to these clearings and paths except for the Vagabond player. The Vagabond has a single pawn (not considered a warrior), and can slip into the forest where no other faction can hurt it.

This is useful for repairing broken items, but usually Vagabond players will want to stay on the main part of the board as much as possible.

Answer: Recruiters (used to get new warriors)

Each player draws one new card from the deck at the end of their turn, and has a unique way to draw more. For the Marquise de Cat, they draw an extra card when they have at least three Recruiters on the board, and draw a second extra card when they have five Recruiters out.

Answer: All cards are removed from the decree

The Eyrie Dynasties are a very strict bunch: they must perform every part of their royal decree or else enter turmoil. During turmoil, all cards are removed from the decree, the Eyrie player loses a victory point for each bird card in the decree, and a new leader (with a new special ability) is chosen to lead the Dynasties.

Then they immediately move to the end of their turn. Other players have to watch the decree to see how it can be disrupted.

Answer: Despot (score extra points for clearing tokens and buildings)

The Builder puts viziers in recruit and move, the Charismatic has recruit and battle, and the Commander has move and battle. The Despot puts viziers in move and build. The Despot is a common opening leader because of the wild bird card (Vizier) in the build action, meaning the player can start putting new roosts down on their first turn, which are used to generate points, draw cards, and craft cards.

Answer: They always take the higher die roll in battles

When a battle occurs in "Root," two special dice are rolled (they are twelve-sided dice, but with numbers from 0 to 3). The attacker takes the higher roll and the defender takes the lower roll, which incentivizes attacking. The Woodland Alliance take the higher roll even when they are the defender, making them harder to clear out.

This is balanced by having relatively few warriors (only 10), which are also used as officers to take actions. The cats have 25 warriors and the birds have 20, letting them field much larger armies.

Answer: An enemy warrior moves into a sympathetic clearing or a sympathy token is destroyed

The Woodland Alliance spends supporter cards to place sympathy tokens in clearings, which are then used to craft items, and prepare a clearing for a possible revolt. The first sympathy tokens only cost one supprter card to place, but as more tokens are placed, their cost increases.

It is convenient, then, that whenever a token is destroyed, the Woodland Alliance player gets a replacement supporter card so they can replace the token on their next turn. Enemy warriors moving into the clearing will also get the Woodland Alliance a new supporter card, making it harder for the the other players to move around the map without helping the Woodland Alliance player.

Answer: Torch

The torch is used to both explore ruins and to perform the Vagabond's special action (unique to each Vagabond). There is only one torch in the game, so Vagabond players have to chose whether to use the torch on their turn to get a new item, perform their ability, or (sometimes) complete a quest.

Ruins take up a building slot in a clearing, so a Vagabond can help the other players by clearing out the slot. In games without a Vagabond, the ruins are still placed and never removed.

The bag increases how many items a Vagabond can carry (the bag itself does not take up a slot). The boots are used to move to adjacent clearings. The sword is used when battling another player.

Answer: Its items are damaged

The Vagabond has items in its satchel that it uses to perform actions. When an item is damaged it has to be repaired before it can be used again. The Vagabond can exhaust a hammer to repair one item, or it can repair all its broken items at once by ending its turn in a forest (between the clearings and connections).

The only way to get into the forest is by using the "slip" ability, which happens at the beginning of the Vagabond's turn, meaning the Vagabond spends an entire turn doing nothing just to get its items back in working order.