How to Teach Root

by Silverchase. Posted 2024-01-18. Updated 2026-05-07.

This writeup is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Mirrored at https://teachroot.yay.boo/ and as a GitHub Gist

This is a guide for Root players who want to create more Root players out of their friends. The Teach is the notoriously difficult part of introducing a new board game to a group. They may not be familiar with “heavy” board games, but if they’re willing to learn, I hope this guide can help you teach them — I extracted it from my mental notes from having taught the game multiple times.

Requirements for this guide:

• You have the Root base game (duh)
• You’re already familiar with Root
• You have a table of four players
  • Everyone is willing to learn a more complex board game and pay attention to the teach
  • Perhaps you’re one of the four at the table
• You have about three hours to play (everyone’s first game takes a while)

Outline

This is the general structure of this teach.

1. Introduction
2. Objective and key ideas
3. Common rules
4. Faction rules
5. Recap
6. Start playing

Tips: keep in mind before starting the teach

• Do setup if you can. Do most of the setup ahead of time if you can. Don’t set up the player boards so you can hold them and pass them around.
• Welcome questions. Let everyone know that it’s okay to ask questions. You may want to delay answering a question because an upcoming part of the teach will cover it.
• How to invite questions: Ask players something like, “What questions do you have about XYZ before we continue?” Note that you should ask “what questions”, not “do you have questions”, so people must actively answer you instead of saying yes or no.
• Connect flavour to mechanics. Emphasize the thematic flavour in your explanations. This helps players connect abstract game mechanics to familiar concepts from Root’s theme.
• Save some explanations for after the game starts. Some details (like crafting) are better explained later, once everyone’s experiencing the game live and those things start becoming relevant.

Introduction

Introduce the theme, describe the gameplay, and explain why you like Root (and why they should like it, too). Here’s an example of how to deliver the introduction. Of course, change it to fit you.

• Introduce the theme:
  • After decades of rule under the birds, they collapsed in civil war, and now there’s a power vacuum in the woodlands
  • [Show player boards] Marquise is here to colonize the region, Eyrie is back to reclaim their realm, Alliance is fighting for home rule, Vagabond is making their own story out of the war
• Describe gameplay broadly:
  • Asymmetrical war for territory and control
  • Table talk and inter-player politics
  • Threat assessment: who is your biggest obstacle?
• Explain why you like Root:
  • Cool art
  • Rich in flavour: gameplay tells a story

Objective and key ideas

• First to 30 points wins
• There are general rules for everyone
• Asymmetrical: unique rules for each faction
• There are shared ways to earn points and each faction also has its own way

Common rules

Start the explanation with just the rules that apply to everyone. Don’t worry about the exceptions during this part. It’s super helpful to give examples; those are also good moments to quiz the table on the rule you just explained (“Now who rules this clearing? Why?”)

• Suits. [show cards] Cards have one of four suits; bird is wild. Note how clearings also have suits. Many effects want you to match them.
• Rule. You rule a clearing if you have more warriors & buildings there than any other player. If tied, no one rules. Examples:
  • Warriors and buildings: your two buildings will rule vs one opposing warrior.
  • Plurality rules, not majority: your three pieces will rule vs Alice’s two pieces vs Bob’s two pieces
• Moving. Choose 1+ warriors in a clearing and move them to another connected clearing. You must rule either end of the move!
• Battling. You can battle in a clearing where you have a warrior — choose an opponent who has any kind of piece there and they’ll be the defender.
  • Attacker high. Attacker rolls both battle dice and takes the higher roll, defender lower. The die is the number of hits dealt.
  • Hit limit: max hits = warriors. The number of hits you can deal is limited by the number of warriors you have there. Example: rolled 3, only 1 warrior → deal 1 hit.
  • Ambush cards. [show an ambush card] When defending, spend a matching ambush card to deal 2 extra hits (extra hits ignore hit limit). Battle is cancelled if attacker has no warriors left. Ambushes can be ambushed.
  • Remove warriors first. When you take hits, remove warriors first, then remove cardboard of your choice.
  • Extra hit if defenseless. Defender has no warriors → you get 1 extra hit.
  • Removing cardboard is 1 point. Making an opponent remove their buildings and tokens (aka cardboard) earns you 1 point for each.

Whew! That was a lot! Remember to invite questions from the table: “What questions do you have about XYZ before we continue?”

Faction rules

Pass the player boards around. While that happens, explain each faction broadly. Focus on their gameplay, main source of points, and (if possible) compare them to something your friends are familiar with.

• Marquise de Cat
  • Start the game in control of the woodland
  • Manage army and logistics
  • Earn points by building buildings
  • Think Starcraft or Risk
• Eyrie Dynasties
  • Fight to reclaim the woodland
  • Plan and execute increasingly complex turns
  • Earn points by building roosts and defending them
  • Think RoboRally or programming
• Woodland Alliance
  • Guerrilla warfare for the revolution
  • Obstruct opponents, invade their clearings
  • Earn points by placing sympathy tokens
  • Think… I don’t know. IRL guerrilla warfare?
• Vagabond
  • Lone wanderer, mercenary, wildcard
  • Navigate a woodland at war, manage your inventory, and profit
  • Earn points by completing quests and interacting with other factions
  • Think an RPG, like Skyrim

Ask the table what they think of the factions. As a group, work out who’s going to play what. You choose last.

Once everyone has a faction, explain to each player the details of playing their faction. The others don’t need to pay full attention.

Go through each player’s board with them. Draw their attention to the box detailing the phases of their turn. Use that box as the base for your explanation. You can also quiz them on how they can earn points.

The rest of this Faction Rules section is my outline for explaining each faction. Not all rules and details of the factions are included! I explain the deeper things when they come up in-game.

Marquise de Cat

Core mechanic: make wood, use wood to build buildings

1. Birdsong: Place wood at sawmills
2. Daylight: Do up to three actions (more by spending bird cards)
   • Battle
   • March: move two times (they can be separate)
   • Recruit: place warriors at recruiters
   • Build: pay wood to place a building in a ruled clearing. The wood must connect to there! Gain the revealed points.
   • Overwork: place wood again
3. Evening: Draw 1 card, +1 for each exposed plus-card symbol. Discard down to 5.

Abilities

• The Keep. Only you can place pieces in its clearing. Others can still move their pieces in.
• Field Hospitals. Spend a matching card to send your removed warriors to your keep instead of actually removing them.

How to earn points

• Build buildings
• Remove cardboard

Eyrie Dynasties

Core mechanic: bigger decree → more actions during daylight

1. Birdsong: Add 1-2 cards to decree, max 1 bird card
2. Daylight: Follow the decree. Do each action in matching clearings. If you can’t, turmoil!
3. Evening: Gain points based on your roost tracker. Draw and discard.

Abilities

• Lords of the Forest. You rule even if tied.
• Disdain for Trade. Crafting items gives you only 1 point instead of the listed point reward.

How to earn points

• Keep roosts to earn points every turn
• Remove cardboard

Woodland Alliance

Core mechanic: use supporters to place sympathy tokens, then revolt there

1. Birdsong: Spend matching supporters to place sympathy (adjacent to already sympathetic clearing if possible). Gain the revealed points.
   • In future birdsongs, you can spend 2 matching supporters to revolt!
2. Daylight: Do these any number of times
   • Mobilize: put card from hand into supporters
   • Train: spend matching card from hand to add an officer
3. Evening: Do actions, up to the number of officers. Then draw and discard.
   • Move
   • Battle
   • Recruit: place one warrior at one base
   • Organize: replace warrior with sympathy token

Note: +1 cost for sympathy if someone has 3+ warriors there

Abilities

• Outrage. When someone removes sympathy or moves warriors into sympathy, they give you a matching supporter from their hand.
• Guerrilla War. In battle, you always take the higher number.

How to earn points

• Place sympathy
• Remove cardboard

Vagabond

Core mechanic: collect items for actions and quests

There are different Vagabond characters. Start with Thief. Note the ability and starting loadout.

Abilities

• Nimble. You can move ignoring rule.
• Lone Wanderer. You’re not a warrior and can’t be removed from the map.

1. Birdsong:
   1. Refresh items
   2. Slip: may move to clearing or forest for free (only player who can access forests)
2. Daylight: turn items face down to do corresponding actions
3. Evening:
   1. If in forest, repair all items
   2. Draw and discard
   3. Ditch items that exceed your satchel capacity

Relationships

• Aid another faction to improve relationship. You may take an item from them.
• When you pass an aid hurdle in one turn, the relationship improves and you gain points

Hostile relationships

• Remove a warrior → faction is hostile for the rest of the game
• Costs one more boot to move into hostile clearings
• Gain points for attacking and removing hostile pieces
• Can still aid just to take an item

How to earn points

• Complete quests
• Aid friendly factions
• Attack hostile factions
• Remove cardboard

Which source of points to focus on depends on game conditions

Recap

Summarize key rules again and emphasize easily overlooked rules (like removing cardboard for 1 point).

• 30 points wins.
• Moving. Must rule either end.
• Battling. Attacker high, defenseless, removing cardboard is 1 point.
• Marquise: Build buildings, Field Hospitals.
• Eyrie: Keep roosts, rule if tied.
• Alliance: Place sympathy, always high roll in battle.
• Vagabond: Do quests and manage relationships.

Invite questions again, since this is the last moment before starting the game.

Start playing

Distribute helper cards to each player for them to reference. Complete the setup.

The game includes a walkthrough script that guides four players through the first two turns of the game; ask if they want to use it. If so…

• Follow the script’s special setup instructions
• Have everyone read from the script when it’s their turn
• After each turn, invite questions from that player. Highlight the key mechanics in action to everyone.
• If you can, explain the why of that turn. Why do that action? Explain the point of doing it and the strategic impact.

Once the game gets going, remind everyone to narrate their turn. (This is a good habit to have in all tabletop games.) That will help them learn their actions and highlight to other players what’s going on in the game state.

Appendices

Glossary

Players will probably ask about game jargon. The Learn to Play booklet included in the box explains them. Here’s my summary of the commonly-asked ones.

• Warriors are wooden animals (except Vagabond). Buildings are cardboard squares. Tokens are cardboard circles.
  • All are pieces. Buildings and tokens are cardboard (this is a popular mnemonic for the point reward for removing them).
• Spend a card means you discard it to pay for something.
• Extra hits bypass the hit limit.

Concepts to explain later

Some rules are too finicky to explain beforehand. Leave them for later, when the game has started. Here's a list of things the teach skipped over.

• Crafting [1] (explain a few turns in)
• Dominance
• Turmoil
• Battle as Vagabond [2]
• Must have matching base to revolt
• Explain (or look up) obscure effects when they come up
  • Pop quiz! What happens when an effect (like revolt) tries to remove the Vagabond?

  ---

[1]: Crafting explained:

• Everyone can craft, but only Vagabond can use items
• [show item card] Craft items for points or to entice Vagabond (table talk, ho!)
  • Vagabond takes a crafted item by aiding that player
• [show Cobbler card] Craft other cards for their effect
• Crafting cost is in the top right and bottom left
  • Pay by “tapping” matching resources: workshops, roosts, sympathies, hammers

[2]: Battle mechanics for Vagabond:

• Hit limit = undamaged swords.
• Defenseless if no undamaged swords.
• Getting hit damages items. When you take hits, move that many items into the Damaged zone. Slip to the forest to repair.

Handy resources

• The Root Database — Online version of the latest Law of Root
• How To Teach Board Games Like a Pro by Shut Up & Sit Down — Important viewing for learning how to teach board games. It helped me teach Root better!

Afterword

I wrote this using Apostrophe. What was supposed to be a quick brain dump for someone became an effortful writeup that I think is now worthy of publishing online. Tell me what you think!

😺️🐦️🐭️🦝️